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!
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.
ik that Biden isn't re-running, but Kamala is basically the same from the macro pov
No. They decide that they prioritise the other issues over a vapid gesture of protest.
For direct democratic votes, you directly vote on a specific issue. But in a representative democracy, you vote for the candidate best representing your preferred policies. If there is no candidate that ticks all your boxes, you prioritise and decide on a tradeoff.
That tradeoff takes into account the strategic realities of the voting system. If I have to choose between "Genocide", "Genocide, but worse" and "I'll let the rest decide", abstaining or voting 3rd party is no noble gesture, it's complacency.
You'd let an out and open fascist take the reigns, if he'd stop one particular genocide?
So much wrong with this sentence. First, no, I'm not a libertarian. If you mean liberty, check your translator. Second, we're very far away from "max liberty". Third, that's a false equivalency: To refuse one extreme doesn't equal embracing the opposite. There is a lot of space between them.
Fourth, if it's about the defense of civil rights, I need to look to my own freedom first. I can't help anyone else when I'm chained down myself. Particular if I can't help the others this way anyway, it's a lot smarter to prioritise things I can actually change than try to set a sign and hope it stays up long enough to matter.
Brilliant! Your example for "that one issue" is the exact guy Trump would love to buddy uo with! The exact guy whom I hate with a passion because of so many issues, not just one. Would Hitler have been a good person if he hadn't killed the Jews (just enslaved them, deported the gypsies and generally still been an all around racist cunt)?
That says a lot about where the window is, yes. Because both major parties fit that description, except one of them is even worse. Hence, the less bad one is a left, relative to contemporary political center.
So you'd rather have the rest of the people decide? You don't care about gay rights or all that shit, you have no horse in that race, doesn't matter to you whether the winner starts rounding up political enemies (you know, lefties like you and me)?
Because I fucking care. And I'm not going to throw a tantrum and quit the field because one issue I care about isn't even on the board.
I don't understand why people are so sure that a hard pro-Palestine stance would help them. It would make them the prime target of propaganda designed to alienate the superficial moderates. It would make them a clear enemy of the AIPAC and other pro-Israel PACs that together hold a non-negligible amount of sway. I don't think that the voters they'd gain by that outnumber the white moderates that hear "They're antisemitic moslems" and believe it.
If you believe that using the ballot to protest an issue not being on the agenda is more important than the other issues that are on the agenda, you're very narrow-minded.
The first mistake was bartering with moderates - if a person is willing to compromise on genocide - what would they not be willing to compromise on?
MLK said it 60 years ago and it's still true today: “…that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season'"
But keep waiting and hoping that next cycle the window wouldn't have moved further to the right
This election isn't the only measure to take, and it requires no waiting. You can still protest and riot and everything else - none of that conflicts with also voting. It's not either or.
What MLK complains about are the people that only vote to stall and never do. I'm pretty sure he'd have been in favour of voting and taking action.
What else do you propose? What do you think would be the strategic choice?
As I replied to the commenter above - I'm not telling anyone to not vote for whoever they think has the highest chance of minimizing harm - just don't rely on voting being the only way to exercise your opinion (as some people have claimed is the only power they have left) - if you remember that voting blue is a just a short term strategy to prevent orange man from getting in and fucking shit up - do it. But don't forget that voting is only the beginning - and until we have tens of millions out on the streets protesting against the Dems being okay with literal genocide - nothing will change for the better.
We can't have our freedoms be won on the backs of bombing children - it wasn't okay when Obama did it - it's not okay now.
Was that not your comment? Equating "you vote for Harris" with "you don't care about genocide" does sound like you're trying to influence people away from voting Harris.
My argument is that harm reduction ≠ endorsement of genocide. Voting for a block of policies doesn't mean you're fine with all the policies, just that you think it's the most strategic option for your convictions. Not voting leaves the choice up to everyone.
Unless you think voting will make no difference at all for anything, even the chance of slowing catastrophe and buying time for other measures is valuable.
Because on this point we agree:
I think both can be true - strategically voting for dems is still a conscious choice to vote for a party that supports foreign genocide.
Like in the trolley problem - you can decide to kill less people but you're still a murderer either way - and because your hand was forced you can then spend the rest of your life using the guilt to figure out who tied those people to the tracks and how to make sure it doesn't happen again.
My fear is that the bread and circus that the dems are selling is too comfortable so people wouldn't feel the need to rise up in arms against the system since "they haven't come for them yet" - but so long as blue voters always remember they have blood on their hands and feel remorseful about the choice they made - that can be channeled into positive change via direct action.
Yes, saying that killing innocents is wrong is 'vapid'.
Yet, when you - very rightly - raise the horrors of Trump, the very real and dangerous potential of him harming innocent people is terrible.
Are you contradicting yourself?
No. Refusing to vote or voting third party is. At best, it will make no difference.
Protesting against the Genocide is right and important, but I'm railing against the people intent on dragging this topic to the public right before an election. The only people it will affect are left-leaning voters, and drawing them away from the non-Trump option sabotages that option.
Save the protest until the election is done, then hold the government (not just Harris; allocation of funding is a parliamentary decision and the President's veto can't do much but delay it and lock up government) accountable.
To be clear, Genocide is bad, what's happening in Gaza is Genocide, the US regime is complicit and all of this is fucked up. But the immediate priority should be unity to keep things from escalating beyond democratic control.
Will anything make a difference to Israel being allowed to continue state terrorism and war against civilians? I'm concerned the answer might be 'no', as the political will to do this hasn't been high.
The killing of innocents is not less important just because of political convenience.
It is not the fault of a particular individual voter that they are given two options, both of which are right-wing, and both of which are complicit in killing the innocent. This might even be a situation which is not fixable at the ballot box, considering how Trump has a history of starting armed insurrections against democratic norms.
Only one way to find out: Trying. But mathematically, drawing votes away from the non-Trump candidate increases the risk of another Trump presidency, and that carries the risk of further curtailing options.
...and which innocents do you actually have a chance to protect?
On a pragmatic level, what is your suggested course of action?
I am not pragmatic about the chances of humans when it comes to not oppressing each other. They seem to do it in order to profit from the power imbalance.
I'm just saying I don't like it, and waiting to die.
Yeah, well, some of us aren't willing to give up just yet. Some of us are willing to reach for that slim chance that there is a way out. Some of us are trying to make things better, but like all political activism that has to follow some strategic approach.
I didn't hear many people complain about "both sides endorse genocide" until this election. Up to the primaries, pressuring your party to be anti-genocide is good and reasonable, and after the election is done, when the new government is being formed, pressuring it to be anti-genocide is critical, but right now, the strategic thing is to focus on things this election can change.
That sudden upsurge of "both sides" rhetoric particularly in leftist spaces is concerning. Whether out of ignorance of how funding works, defeatism like yours or genuinely bad actors seeking to manipulate the election, it sabotages that pragmatic effort to keep the fascist out of office and buy time for more direct measures like protests, petitions, whatever else you want.
"Both sides bad" may be true, but right now, it's not helpful for leftist efforts.