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
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 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
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It's funny because no one on here was talking about the how bad the Democrats' strategy had been before the election, yet now suddenly everyone is an expert on what went wrong
Yeah, everyone who spoke up was told to shut up. Already white middle class liberal Americans are scrambling to blame anyone but themselves and the democratic party. Liberals are not a challenge to fascism.
I was banned from a couple communities for saying it
Going online to gripe about DNC strategy to other online leftists accomplishes nothing but generating more apathetic non-voters. Organizing in effective ways can actually accomplish something: mass letters directly to the DNC, banding together into massive documented coalitions, mass petitions.
If the Uncommitted movement had tens of millions of registered voters come together and pledge to vote Harris if and only if she took a harder stance on Israel, that might have helped.
When you're speaking up to the wrong audience, and thereby doing more harm than good, yes you should shut up. Toward that audience, or at least with that message. The Democratic party is a lot of unsavory things, but they aren't totally stupid. They have a great number of analysts developing strategy based on the information they have. If you want them to change, they need actionable information that supports that change.
Complaining in already largely leftist anonymous online spaces is not actionable information.
... are you familiar with what the Uncommitted National Movement was asking for? Like, half of Lemmy is bashing the Uncommitteds for the 15m vote difference between Biden in 2020 and Harris in 2024.
Like, do you get that Listen to Michigan alone got 101k Uncommitted votes in the Michigan Dem Primary to Biden's 618k? That they had a stated goal of "an immediate and permanent ceasefire"? That there were Uncommitted delegates to the Democratic National Convention that were denied the opportunity to speak at the convention? That the there were protests outside the DNC demanding the Uncommitted movement be allowed to speak?
Which part of this is failing at being the movement you're saying the DNC would listen to? If the 15m gap is truly completely at the feet of the Uncommitted, then what are you saying was the reason that the DNC cut them out of their strategy?
I talked about it and got straight up bullied. I shut up about 45 days before the election because it was just harmful at that point. But you can not bully people into voting for you. You can not tell them the economy is great when they're in pain. You can not transparently be the puppet of a foreign government. You can not tell your base to get excited about people they've hated for literal decades.
The list just goes on. You can not win an election by enforcing a top down attitude. The Republicans worked ground up. Yes they did a lot of lying and gaslighting. But that brought people in and they worked from that during the actual campaign period. The Democrats did nothing to educate people and then told them they were wrong during the campaign.
This is a big thing in most western nations right now. The "economy" does not mean a healthy middle class, it does not mean higher wages for people, it does not mean affordable heating/food/shelter. I can see people struggling to make ends meet, and nothing pisses them off more then being told the "economy" is great. Basically the wealth inequality at this point has mostly removed the middle class and people being told the economic equivalent of "Git Gud"
And when those people complained that they're literally unable to make a decent living despite working hard, they were told "you don't get to complain, you're a white male so you live life on easy mode".
That is liberal identity politics which everyone hates. Real leftists like Sanders and AOC have never said anything like that.
Oh I don't even need to make it an identity politics thing, there is always someone "less privileged" to use. I have seen single non white mothers told that they have a house so need to "think hard" about that before complaining. A large part of the "western world" has become tone deaf to the reality of the working people. No one cares (clearly shown this election) that the numbers went up.
Anyone telling a single working mother that she's privileged needs to SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP!
Agreed, I have also seen a Vet get told to remove their veteran license plate because "they where not a real veteran", A man fighting cancer to "shut up and stop whining, just take it like a man" and watched a fight break out when someone was not let into a reserve casino because they said that the people there "where not real Canadians and they need to be deported".
People suck, and identity politics is just another way for people to be tribal and awful to each other while maintaining a perceived moral high ground.
This is just pattenly untrue.Unless you litterally live I. a corporate news echo chamber, the writing for this has been on the wall, and being discussed as such, litterally everywhere.
However, it was also being downvoted at a preposterously high ratio. So while it was present, Lemmy (and reddit too and pretty much all social media) was dutifully ignoring and abusing those saying that Kamala wasn't winning.
Not only that, but there were bans, and significant bias in moderation behavior to support the building of that echo chamber.
So no. Only if you live in a self construct d bubble was this not obvious since the convention.
Yeah, its funny comparing online to real world discussions.
Most people I talked to seemed to never like Harris but all agreed Trump was worse. This tracks, makes sense, and the ones that did not think Trump was worse would vote for him.
Compare that to here where you had every negative thing said about Harris come with some heavy baggage (like .ml accounts) or out right dog piling.
Wait a minute, is it "patently" untrue, so false that you couldn't even get a copyright on it, or is it "Pattonly" untrue, a feignt tactic like those used by US general Patton in the Great War 2 against Irwin Rommel in Africa?
They were. You called them Russian trolls and ignored them.
I made this meme a while back. Got downvoted.
"You're a Russian bot sowing division! These shills will disappear after the election."
I mean, I said Harris was a sure fire way to a Trump presidency. Does that count?
Fuckin LMFAO
Literally dozens of us on this very site, but I guess before the election we were all Russian trolls and deserved getting downvoted out of the conversation.
Not only that, but they done forgot pro-corporate, "PrO-gEnOCiDe" Biden WON the previous election, running the same kind of campaign.
In 2016, Hillary received 65,853,514 votes, and Trump received 62,984,828
Harris received 68,103,050 votes. Trump received 72,757285.
It's almost like a lot of Republicans worked hard and encouraged each other to cast their votes for Trump.
Meanwhile, all I saw on the Dem side was smug aholes trying to create voter apathy every chance they got. Either that, or there are a lot of Dem voters that will just. NOT. vote for a woman for president.
Behold this type of person, head in the sand, who will always blame the electorate.
The party can never fail, the party can only be failed