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.
ID: A scene from Legally Blonde of a conversation between Warner and Elle in the corridor at Harvard, in 4 panels:
Warner asks "What happened to the tolerant left?"
Elle replies, smiling "Who said we were tolerant?"
Warner continues "I thought you were supposed to be tolerant of all beliefs!"
Elle looks confused "Why would we tolerate bigotry, inequity, or oppression?"
I didn't see that at all. I saw a bunch of liberals who were confused why the left weren't kowtowing to a liberal party as it committed genocide and telling everyone to shut up, but liberals aren't the left. Meanwhile, anarchists, communists, and anyone else was busy trying to stop this slow motion train wreck.
Yeah you pretty much Proved my point
Liberals literally aren't the left though, we're not on the same side; liberals support capitalism, we don't.
This is why liberals would literally rather lose an election than enact the overwhelmingly popular policy the left prescribes.
This is not the common definition of "liberal" used for the past few years. I've only ever seen that distinction here on Lemmy. Colloquially, liberal now seems to mean liberal social views like acceptance, progressive safety nets, etc. NOT liberal capitalist views. That's why people use left and liberal interchangeably these days and then folks like yourself and others who know true definitions have to clarify and remind all the time. To the average, US citizen, liberal and left are the same, liberal and libertarian are two completely separate things.
If that's true, it's because you have never read a book or a serious article. This is a hundred year old distinction, and is how the entire rest of the world and the study of politics uses these words normally. E.g. in Australia "the liberal party" is the right wing pro capitalist party.
It's true that in North America the common use has diverged somewhat, so it's not totally surprising that people haven't always heard it, and you could make a good argument that it might be more practical for American leftists to do outreach using different words to make conversation easier. But it's nonsense to come into a leftist space and get upset about a much more traditional usage of those terms and which draws exactly the distinction which divides leftists from liberals, even "centre-left" liberals.