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.
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)
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,
as well as 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 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.
7. 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
(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
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According to the Bible, yes. Which is most likely not true. Remember that Zionism started as a secular movement, with religious people getting more (very) on board relatively recently
Interesting... Is there more accurate information about how the Israelites ended up in that region? Did they just never do the whole Egypt thing?
The history has scant evidence, but we can discount the whole exile story. Slaves tend to be maltreated and are the last ones to be fed during famine, and that leaves physical evidence on their skeletons. We don't have evidence of that in Egypt; for the most part, their monuments were built by farmers who didn't have anything else to do when the Nile flooded. Also, a large nomadic group--which Israel would have been under Moses according to the Biblical account--should leave behind a lot of trash for archeologists to find today.
Fundie Christians like to say "Egypt wouldn't have told stories about a time they lost", but that doesn't matter. First, you better bring some good evidence to say the Red Sea parted and people could walk on dry land. Second, as shown above, there should be physical evidence that we can find. It's not there, and it's hardly for a lack of trying. This is one of the most picked over parts of the planet by archeologists.
What seems to have happened is that they just came from there in the first place. Yahwah started as a war god among a larger pantheon. The people who later became the Hebrews worshiped that god as their primary; they didn't discount the existence of other gods, but they worshiped this one as their primary one (still polytheism at this point). This later evolved into discounting the importance of other gods (henotheism), and much later disregarding the existence of other gods altogether (monotheism). That especially came into play with Persian Zoroastrian influence after the Babylonian Exile.
In short, it was a religion that evolved out of the beliefs of the people already living there, and they mostly stayed right there. The Egyptian slavery bits were probably from oral stories at a time when Israel had a conflict with Egypt.
There could have even been a smaller group of former Egyptian slaves that fled and settled in Israel with the people who already lived there and over time their religion/culture was adopted by more and more people until it became the dominant one.
Like a large group of people wandering a desert for 40 years doesn't make sense, even if 40 years is just a metaphor for a long time and was just one full year. But a small group could have wandered and visited other settlements that might have helped them out but didn't want them to settle down there, even for a long time.
Kinda like how most Christians today aren't descendents of anyone who would have had anything to do with Jesus or even descendent from Jewish people who believed in the Christian predecessor religion. They were just people who at one point were told they had to convert by words, swords, or guns.
Just speculation based on thinking about the scenario and what cases might put the story somewhere between fiction and truth rather than just being entirely made up (which is also certainly possible).
Do you have any sources to start learning about/researching this? This is very fascinating and haven't heard much, if any, of this before.
Religion For Breakfast is a pretty good YouTube channel for this. Would also recommend Bart Ehrman's podcast.
This is great to know! Thank you
Everything before the Babylonian Exile was made up, because the Babylonians sacked, well everything. They destroyed the First Temple, and took away the nobility and priests.
It was only after the Exile ended that the Hebrews became monotheistic... Sort of. There has been some noises before the Exile, but afterwards it was official.
It was also after the Exile that the stories of Noah and Moses were first added to the Torah.
As a note, the Epic of Gilgamesh has a flood story, and as an ancient Babylon story, would have been available for the hostages (the Hebrew priests and nobility) to read.
Not entirely made up. Some of the late first temple period can be verified. Such as the split between the northern and southern kingdoms, or the Assyrian invasion under Hezekiah. The further you go back, though, the worse the evidence gets. David and Solomon are questionable as historical figures, and anything before that, just forget it. The Egyptian exile never happened.
Made up, for a given value of made up. They weren't completely inventing things whole cloth, and had some surviving material to work off of. That and Babylonian records. They had those too. Since Babylon was gone... Well, finders keepers.
Makes sense with the flood story... I wonder where the Moses story came from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses#Historicity
The TLDR; no mentions of Moses in Egyptian or Persian texts until about the 4th century BCE. He may have been a Hebrew specific quasi mythic figure based on a possible real person. But there's no evidence at all.
Which makes sense, because that's the timeframe that the Achaemenid Empire conquered Babylon and started letting the exiles return to Judah. Exiles who compiled a new Torah from scraps they saved and from making shit up.
The tribes of Israel were most likely Canaanites that made up the whole came in and conquered everyone in the area after being slaves story.
That's correct