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
If a genocide is going to occur regardless of the vote, then the vote doesn’t matter.
In regards to what? The genocide? Project 2025? Healthcare?
If people want to vote for Joe Biden to preserve LGBT and minority rights, that’s their choice. If someone wants to not vote for Biden because he is aiding in a genocide, that’s their choice.
It’s egotistical to think that my priorities are more important than others.
Do you think that more people in Palestine will suffer if trump is elected?
Hypothetically, I think there would be no difference than what is occurring now. The rhetoric from his administration would be more belligerent though. If you take the genocide out of the equation, Biden is clearly the better choice. Unfortunately, it is part of the equation.
Ah, see that's the assumption where you differ from most other folks in this thread.
The base assumption made by others, backed by trump encouraging a fast victory for Israel , as well as other GOP politicians with similar calls are signs that trump would press on the accelerator hard.
His commitment to Israel is in stark contrast to how he's treated other longtime American allies.
Lastly, let's not forget his infamous Muslim travel ban.
Trump and the other Republicans will say a lot, but they aren’t going to act any different than what Biden and Blinken are already doing with Palestine. The only difference is the symbolic language the Democrats use to assuage their voters. What are they going to do, send more arms and money faster?
Muslim travel ban, Golan heights, and Jerusalem recognition + US embassy adoption there suggests that there are real world acts that the administration would do differently to me, what do you think?
Precisely, afaik he doesn't give a shit about the people of Palestine, he's more worried about Israels bad PR and wants them to end it fast.
EDIT: just to check, did you read the JNS article? It's pretty bad, and he spells out exactly what he wants to do... A small excerpt is below.
That last bit is actual government thought policing.
bill clinton signed the recognition of jerusalem and the embassy move. all trump did was stop delaying it.
The, “Biden is bad, but Trump will be worse,” argument is tired. It’s not working, and may be actively making voters dislike Biden more.
It's definitely not working, but all evidence I've seen suggests it's right.
Do you agree with me that "Biden is bad, but trump will be worse" is a correct statement?
I think the tiredness you're referring to is a result of people voting emotionally and not logically, or just being exhausted with this whole shitstorm.
You seem to have honorable intentions, but these exchanges are argumentum ad nauseam.
If you have to tell people why they should vote against Trump, instead of why they should vote for Biden, then he’s already lost.
I'm starting to suspect that the arguments seem as nauseam because I'm trying to reason people out of a decision they didn't reason themselves into - i.e. they're voting emotionally, and not logically. Inconvenient questions get ignored, and we're left with very surface level arguments.
I particularly saw some users comments reflected in this excerpt in the retrospective voting article you shared:
Perhaps they're voting this way to try and recapture efficacy in a world where they feel they have very little.
You seem genuinely interested in this topic. One I spent a considerable time researching last year and left me disillusioned. A study that may help is from professors Adam Dyne and John Holbein: Noisy Retrospection: The Effect of Party Control on Policy Outcomes. It’s quite a read but demonstrates:
Simply put, in large elections with millions of people, our votes count very little.
# An Expert Explains Why Your Vote Won't Matter
His study: The Brennan–Lomasky Test of Expressive Voting: When Impressive Probability Differences Are Meaningless
We should still vote. It matters for local elections, but when it gets to the state level and higher, the impact of our votes have little to no effect.
Dude people ain’t voting for Biden for any reason. They’re voting against the lunatic that tried to incite an insurrection. The dude that has the mentality of a child.
That’s it. Trump is a sociopath and people don’t want him in charge of nuclear weapons.
As to the rest of your comment. Yes you can do what you want but alls people are saying is Trump would far worse in every regard and not voting against him is basically saying your cool with that.
Does that make sense? I don’t mean that in a condescending way, I’m really wanting to know if you understand my point of view and the consensus of this thread. And the majority of people.
If you’re not voting Biden who are you voting for?
If you want to me to say that I’m voting for Biden, I will. The question everyone should be asking themselves is why do they need that validation. Is it only okay to vote for Biden if everyone else does? If I change my mind in the next six months, and decide to vote for Cornel West or Jill Stein, is it not my choice? The people that have decided to not vote for Biden because of the genocide aren’t gonna be persuaded by randos pressuring them on the internet. It’s not their fault he is helping Israel do a genocide.
I literally said in my last comment it is your choice do what you want.
I’ve also covered, ad-nauseam, that the only person getting elected is a genocide supporting one and one of those is less dangerous than the other.
How many times do you want to ask the same questions to get the same answer.
I DONT SUPPORT GENOCIDE. I DO SUPPORT PALESTINE. ISRAEL IS AN APARTHEID STATE. WE THE PEOPLE ARE POWERLESS TO STOP IT. BIDEN OR TRUMP WILL WIN. BIDEN IS LESS FUCKING INSANE THAN TRUMP. BIDEN IS A GENOCIDE SUPPORTER.
What more do you want me to say.
I guess what hasn’t been said is you could get