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
view the rest of the comments
lefties love to hate on liberals for whatever reason. Even though the definition of liberal is not very specific and encompassing.
I still haven't quite figured out why. Idk if people just don't broadly understand the definition of liberalism in a political context, or if it's just "hurr durr not lefty bad" shenanigans.
on another note, if anybody in the comments has any expansive explanation to this, please, indulge my curiosity.
Liberals are right-winger in most of the world. Only backward countries like britain still have conservative. We had the intelligence of shooting them a long time ago,
In the U.S., it's from anger at the Democratic party. Mostly anger at, "when they go low, we go high," "reach across the aisle," "we need a strong Republican party," tolerance paradox, and that kind of stuff. Liberal economics isn't really compatible with leftism either.
I think it's American rugged individualism, conservatives have an easy time agreeing on binary decisions (women's rights bad, science bad, immigrants bad, etc) whereas anything progressive requires complications solutions and problem definitions. In that there are many right answers, and liberals seem willing to be more angry with someone 95% in agreement with them rather than the people trying to drag the country backwards.
It's the new wrench to move the ratchet
I'm gonna invent my own political ideology ("I am not altogether on anybody's side, because nobody is altogether on my side" and all that) and call it responsibilitarianism. OK, the word kinda defeats it alone. Point being that a political structure is as good as the fullness and equality of responsibility for its citizens.