this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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Lefty Memes
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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).
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The only dangerous minority is the rich.
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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.
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LOVE it.
I wish I knew where it came from. I've had it floating around my phone and my brain for years now.
Organized crime might be a little more accurate.
It was instilled in me from a very early age that cops are not your friends.
They are not. You were raised right.
I think my parents did a fine job, when me and my brothers were little we would play 'crips and bloods' how kids play 'cops and robbers' but none of us wanted to play as a cop.
Well done your parents!
Last time I checked the FBI classifies Local Law Enforcement as the largest gang in the country...so you're not lying to your kid.
There are lots of gangs in the world but that is one of the worst.
You'd be correct.
That's the most vicious and insidious gang member...the class traitor!
You can just say you're going to be honest with your kids...
You know, they really look like one...
They are. Sad but true.
In all fairness, the qualifier to be considered a gang is a low, barely existent bar when you consider all of its definitions, especially ones like "A group of people who associate regularly on a social basis."
So... Cops? gang. SCOTUS? gang. Boy Scouts? gang. Lemmy? gang. Classroom of 1st graders? gang. You and your coworkers? gang. A literal family? gang. ...you get the gist.
tldr, you (and everyone else) are literally gangsta!!
I'm a straight up g.
Casting agent: "How did the job go"
Aspiring actor: "Why are my family receiving death threats?"
Que
'There's something happening here. What it is isn't exactly clear...'
May I ask, how do you want to keep criminality under control? I'm genuinely curious. Do you just let it be? Do you educate people? Do you create some separate unit to police?
Like I understand when one is let's say dissatisfied with police. But in my opinion the solution isn't to let it be. And definitely not to form some para-military organization. Reform the police, have one group in country to keep order. If the group doesn't work, fix it.
But that's just my point of view, I'm curious to read your's
The vast majority of crime committed by the public (that is, by individuals, not by corporations who actually commit the vast majority of crime, typically against the workers in the form of wage theft) is a symptom of poverty, especially generational poverty. Without launching into 10 or 12 paragraphs explaining the systematic effects of this, the best way to reduce crime is to reduce poverty in the general population. give people stable homes, stable incomes, and stable education, and crime plummets. Populations with low poverty, and where people have generally stable lives and stable incomes have low crime rates. Easy access to medical care and strong, social safety nets reduce crime even further because they reduce the desperation people encounter when they fall into poverty.
Also, increasing easy access to abortion also has a prominent effect on reducing crime.
Edit: btw, more info about corporate crime and wage theft:
Nobody advocated removing the police. The meme only says that currently they’re basically organized crime. So your question seems more like sealioning or JAQing off.
Just to add onto what others are saying: to what extent do you think cops prevent crime? Most of what they do is catch people after the fact, and even then many (if not most) cases go unsolved.
I don't have the statistics in front of me at the moment, but the comparison that should be made is crime prevented by cops vs. crime that only exists because of cops, including things that cops just never get prosecuted for. I understand the impulse to think that cops are at least better than nothing, but I don't honestly know if that's true.
Cops don’t prevent crime, not in any significant way. Their job is to enforce the law, typically by responding after a crime has already occurred. Because they are trained to primarily respond with force and to believe any and every thing in existence absolutely will try to kill them at any moment, and to treat everyone the encounter as guilty and sources for incriminating information, they act as hammers treating everyone as a nail. They are dangerous, paranoid thugs never to be trusted.
Pay them better, ruthlessly background check for white supremacy and extremist behavior, put more money into mental health services and address chronic poverty problems are a few solutions. Also way way more training.
Law enforcement in the U.S. in its current form is a gang. The key points here are lack of accountability, lack of oversight, and a lot of unjust laws. The latter may not be their fault per se, but it is still a factor that needs to be corrected.
Agreed! ONLY COPS can PREVENT CRIME! Social Safety Nets to lift people out of poverty and ensure they have access to food, water, shelter, education and OPPORTUNITIES do NOT Prevent Crimes! ONLY COPS who solve under 50% of their cases and kill unarmed children dogs and hostages CAN! So we NEED to give Cops MORE money while taking it away from ANY and ALL Social Safety Nets!
Ok, I'd say: Education and democratic involvement.
You sleep in the bed that you make. People don't shit where they sleep.
When people make the laws, people won't break the laws.
And sex crime for example?
Edit: People downvote, but no one provides an explanation for the monsters who do shit where they sleep?
Just because a sentence sounds good, doesn’t mean it’s true.
You're downvoted because it seems like you're trolling with that sentence fragment. What exactly to you mean by "sex crime" and how does it connect with the previous comment?
It’s a pretty easy to infer question from the context of the comment chain.
But as some people are apparently lacking in such an ability what I mean is how is education and democratic involvement going to stop people who commit crimes that aren’t born out of ignorance or lack of freedom?
A rapist will gladly shit where they sleep, they are not engaging in illegal acts for rational reasons (ex. Poverty or disenfranchisement).
The notion that those two thing are the solution is ridiculous.
It’s a pretty easy to infer question from the context of the comment chain.
IMHO, it was less a case of what you said but rather how you said it. That made people want to not engage.
But as some people are apparently lacking in such an ability
I'd suggest you'd adapt your tone a bit. You kind of come off as an asshole with some shit like that.
As to your point: If society focuses on eradicating the reasons that lead to people becoming rapists (e.g. lack of community, need for power over other people, mental health issues, ...), rape cases should go down.
Genuine question: In what way and amount do you think is the police actually preventing sexual assault?
People don’t rape because lack of community and you can’t just magic away power desires.
Also I don’t support the police full stop. I’d like to see the whole thing abolished, I just don’t think you’ll solve all crimes through such idealistic nonsense.
Being part of a community could keep potential rapists in check, making them not wanting to shit were they sleep.
Desires of power aren't integral to humanity. They were fostered once, they can shrink again.
You can look outside of the us and readily find examples of doing most things better. Generally speaking it starts with education, workers rights, not a circus for as a government, etc. The situation the US is in has been hand crafted for 30+ years to solidify the death grip these things (read: nationalism, fascism, etc) have on our culture and government, amongst other things.
You want like an unironic peek at this shit happening just go watch Borat again and see how the crowd reacts to him in the rodeo. Shit has been cooking for years. It all needs to be thrown out, it's so perverted and rotten at this point I do not you can realistically save it by any natural means anymore.
I just love how you get downvoted just for asking an honest question with no clear malice or derision. Peak Internet.
We don't know they are honest. Many cop apologists in the world. Could be sealioning or JAQing off.