this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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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, 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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This is really all that hard to answer. I mean, theoretically, it is. Practically, though? There's an well-researched connection between a group characterized as "invading pests" and political violence against that group, for example. There was an increase in violence against Asians during the coronavirus pandemic, too. And it'd be ridiculous to believe that calling it the "Wuhan flu" wasn't related to that violence.
Frankly, many calls to violence that masquerade as "shit I don't agree with". Merely calling someone "evil" is, imo, a call to violence. It least justifies it, because evil is not to be persuaded or collaborated with, but driven out and opposed militantly at every step. Especially at the national level, characterizations of evil preclude more deliberative alternatives by default.
But many people don't think that way and don't see the connection between words and violence. I also don't think many value more peaceful alternatives to violence either...but that's just my opinion.
Honestly no.
It is easy to diferentiate those things.
For example;
"I dont like that x people do z thing because it affects y people in a negative way."
This one its not calling for violence against x people. its calling out x people for affecting y people in a negative way. Now if people get violent about it its because there is no denying that there is a number of people that already hate x people and are looking for anu excuse to lash out against x people, and they are gonna end up doing just that whatever they find it or not.
"I dont like x people because they could be a negative influence in our community."
Its a hard one but it is a call to segregation because it is saying that x people dont belong on the comunity that whoever is talking belongs in, now wathever this is true or not, by saying that it is implied that taking them out of the comunity would be a positive thing. So it is a call to do bad things but very subtelly.
So should the 2nd one be banned? No imho because it is very subtle about it and could be said as a genuine mistake. But it should and will be called out by people that dont agree with it and smart people would see it as a poor argument because it calls for segregation, and while a very bad opinnion it shouldnt be outhright banned, just called out and laughed at.
Now what should be punished or banned should br saying in a very public forum in front of lots of people something like the following:
"I dont like X people, they harm the good people of our community and they should be exilled from it and punished for their crimes such as z"
This one is an obvius one, it calls for violence and segregation for x people, punishment and comes of more as rallying than a genuine argument. So yeah, bann that.
I made that frase and used it as an example because people that use the "tolerance is intolerance to the intollerant" argument usually use it because they dont tolerate someone else having diferent opinions than them and say they are being intolerant when that is not true. And censoring genuine diferent points of view that do not call for violence or segregation is in my opinion a form of discrimination/segregation. So they themselves are doing what they preach is bad.