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, upvoting good contributions and downvoting 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,
as well as 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.
7. 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
(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
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The problem is the paradox of violence to solve the problem from the view of the revolutionary. If you make them hate us, then we can’t deprogram them. If you make them scared of us, then they pass a law that allows cops to drive tanks. If you kill them, then they round us up and imprison or slaughter us.
If you talk with people that are sitting on the fence, then you might make them avoid becoming a cop, or to get vocal against a war. If you teach pissed off workers about the revolutionary half of why their workplace is bad and corrupt, then you can make a union leader. The goal is to shift favour and culture to reject authoritarianism by taking direct responsibility. Instead of forming governments we ARE the goverment, we each exert ourselves to help shape the world, also known as democracy and anarchy.
We are slaves, our parasites won’t be willing to kill us at the wrong time, while also being forced to maintain illusions of democracy. We can act out peacefully and they just can’t do anything about it. If they kill a MLK then people don’t just stop, they learn and grow. It’s paradoxical for them to kill dissidents until a large fascist movement(which is veeeery close) is ready. We need to decrease the taste for violence and reduce their simp-base so they cant get the voluntary armies the size they need. We need to sow dissent and raise awareness.
Violence when used by anarchists benefits the state!
The correct way to make a fascist into a progressive, is to show their club is bad and our club is better. As they say, you don’t fight hate with hate, you fight hate with love. Conservatives are desperately lonely(see social alienation) and are enticed into the cult of fascism because of no healthy alternatives. They would give up fascism as fast as they picked it up if we helped them. They absolutely fake being civilised non-fascists when we don’t realise their allegiance, because they know they will be rejected for their toxic fascist views. Make them prefer us fully through non-violence. We don’t even need to target the average fascist as they have fence sitters leaning into fascism, they also have progressive fascists, and ones that believe the lies about it being for the good, as apposed to it being about simple power.
Fight better in non violent ways, unions, parallel structures, deprogramming, planning,
spread awareness!
etc.Gonna copy-pasta myself here as to not waste my breath:
Look around - the violence is already here, it has been inflicted on to the working class for centuries, killing hundreds of millions (at least, in all that time) for profit in war, with hunger and restricted access to water, with homelessness and poverty, with preventable disease, with climate change, with immoral laws and entire systems designed to keep large segments of the population as slave labour, which is what they used to gain their power and wealth to be in the position to impose all of this in the first place. And all that just off the top of my head, there is so much more violence that is inflicted on us daily, they've just got most people convinced that's just life, when it really really isn't. And those who actually benefit are never just going to give all of that up.
TL;DR
Not entirely true, there have been peaceful movements (though rare) like Gandhi's Ahimsa movement
Did it work on its own or did it only work as a contrast to violence?
If the latter, then the violence is what forced change and Ghabdi's movement allowed for an acceptable avenue for the change.
Whitewashed nonsense every bit as much as the modern teaching that Martin Luther King, Jr achieved the goals of the Civil Rights Movement in the US single handedly through nonviolence rather than against the backdrop of Fred Hampton and Malcolm X.
Gandhi achieved nothing without Bhagat Singh and Subhas Chandra Bose, but interestingly enough Western powers don't like to teach you about those two names.
"Give me blood, and I will give you freedom."
https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/give-me-blood-and-i-will-give-you-freedom-bhagat-singh-subhas-chandra-bose-and-the-uses-of-violence-in-indias-independence-movement/