Lefty Memes
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
Agitprop (I.E. everything that would be more fitting on a poster than a meme) goes here.
Serious posts, news, and discussion go in c/Socialism.
If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low-quality!
Rules
0. Only post socialist memes
That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme. Please post agitprop here)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Use alt text or image descriptions to allow greater accessibility
(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)
We require alternative text (from now referred to as "alt text") to be added to all posts/comments containing media, such as images, animated GIFs, videos, audio files, and custom emojis.
EDIT: For files you share in the comments, a simple summary should be enough if theyβre too complex.
We are committed to social equity and to reducing barriers of entry, including (digital) communication and culture. It takes each of us only a few moments to make a whole world of content (more) accessible to a bunch of folks.
When alt text is absent, a reminder will be issued. If you don't add the missing alt text within 48 hours, the post will be removed. No hard feelings.
0.5.1 Style tip about abbreviations and short forms
When writing stuff like "lol" and "iirc", it's a good idea to try and replace those with their all caps counterpart
- ofc => OFC
- af = AF
- ok => OK
- lol => LOL
- bc => BC
- bs => BS
- iirc => IIRC
- cia => CIA
- nato => Nato (you don't spell it when talking, right?)
- usa => USA
- prc => PRC
- etc.
Why? Because otherwise (AFAIK), screen readers will try to read them out as actually words instead of spelling them
1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here
Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.
2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such
That means condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.
That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" seen on lemmygrad and more specifically GenZedong (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
4. No Bigotry.
The only dangerous minority is the rich.
5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Mantic Minotaur" when answering question 2)
6. Don't irrationally idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
- Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Rape or assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
view the rest of the comments
This is a pretty conservative take. Does OP understand why someone living in desperate circumstances would join their local gang, or why they would choose a much larger and much more powerful gang like the military? Does OP understand the difference between explaining why a bad thing happens versus excusing that thing?
I don't think adults should give heroin to vulnerable children and traffic them into sexual slavery either, but the reason that's happening isn't because a bunch of heroin selling hobbyists decided to be as evil as possible for fun, it happens because of economic context producing survival-orientated people who behave ruthlessly for their own self interests. People making anti-social livings probably wouldn't have chosen the road they're on if they had the opportunity to have a comfortable life doing something safe. A lot of the time they were conned into it in the first place and can't get out. Nothing justifies murder, but to stop the murders you have to understand the context of why they're happening.
Joining the military is not ok. Trying to understand why a kid would be think it's ok to kill people overseas and then willingly do it is ok.
How exactly does it help if I, or you, understand the why? I would argue that a lot of people are aware of the whys, nonetheless there are still gangs and militaries.
Because understanding that the cause is poverty encourages everyone who understands it to focus on solving poverty. Poverty should not be allowed. If there was no poverty in the US there would be less of an incentive to do desperate things such as join a gang of any size.
Yes, I agree, but now we're at least 2 understanding that, but nothing will change. It probably won't change in the next 50 years.
If you think discussion and communication are so worthless... Why keep commenting on Lemmy? We are all here to exchange ideas and I think that we can agree that ideas and how they spread can change the world in a big way.
Silence/lack of discussion is part of what has allowed this issue to become so serious.
What issue are we talking about? US American imperialism, or wars in general? Because I think both have been discussed and talked about a lot since the seventies. And I don't think that we're getting anywhere close to an improvement, looking at what the US does to south americans in boats right now.
Talking is a good start, but what we need are actions. And education, but I am not sure how we could get any of them. Talking on Lemmy definitely doesn't help a bit.
Welcome to leftism. We'll get there.