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.
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If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
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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)
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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.
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as well as condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
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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).
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The only dangerous minority is the rich.
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We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
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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.
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I'm gonna need a source on that, bud.
I gave you the source. Mein Kampf.
Hitler regularly spoke about the "harm" he believed Judaism was causing. He infamously demonstrated his belief that the Jewish mindset was dangerously harmful to society, and used that risk and danger to justify acting against them. His argument was that Judaism was "intolerant" of German culture, and he came to the same conclusion that Popper would come to a little later: it is morally correct to suppress the "intolerant".
The correct lesson to learn from Popper's Paradox is the insidiousness of fascism. Intolerance for the "intolerant" is the foundation.
It's different because the Jews weren't fascists.
I dunno man, Israel serving some real fashy vibes rn.
If a philosophical model leads to atrocity when it is adopted by your enemy, that model is irreparably flawed.
The moral lesson from the Intolerance paradox is "you are justified in destroying those who do not agree with you". That philosophy is identical to and indistinguishable from the personal worldview of every oppressor that has ever existed.
Whether the Jews were actually, objectively fascist or not is irrelevant: the German public believed them to be their enemies, and believed themselves justified in destroying their enemies. Popper's Paradox does not improve that situation; it worsens it. It gives them a sense of legitimacy for whatever actions they decide to take against their enemy.
No, the moral lesson from the intolerance paradox is "destroy intolerance".
Bad people always find excuses. Do you believe in feeding the homeless? What if the Nazis fed the homeless Jews Zyklon B, would you still believe in feeding the homeless then, you genocidal freak?
You're not quite grasping the concept.
The entire point of Popper's Paradox is to encourage "Good" people to use the exact same excuses as the "Bad".
The problem with the paradox is that nobody identifies themselves as the bad guy.
You have demonstrated hostility toward me, intolerance of my viewpoint. My philosophy of "tolerance" calls for me to tolerate your speech, up until you actually call for harm against me. Your philosophy of "intolerance for the intolerant" calls for me to suppress you.
Adopting your philosophical model, I should hunt you down and destroy you. Maintaining my own philosophical model, I should endeavor to tolerate your intolerant attitude and behavior.
Shall I maintain my own philosophy? Or shall I adopt yours?
You're not quite grasping the concept. Bad people always copy good people's excuses, so that's a very lame excuse not to be good. Do you tolerate everything except the intolerant? Great, then I tolerate you.
You trust bad people to realize they are bad?
No.
So, bad people, thinking they are good, are going to be following your philosophy? They are going to be attacking the people they believe to be bad?
Bad people do what they want because they don't care.
You can do better. Try again.
You can do better. Try again.
The Nazis were the bad guys. It doesn't matter how they identified themselves. They were still bad - because they didn't tolerate Jews, homosexuals, disabled people or Gypsies.
The Nazis stole their eugenics policies directly from the US. What they called "Lebensraum" our ancestors called "manifest destiny". Their "Rassenschande" was cribbed from our "anti-miscegenation" laws. "Sonderweg" was "American Exceptionalism". Long before they had the Holocaust, we had the Trail of Tears.
The people fighting the Nazis were performing many of the same atrocities as the Nazis. We even had our own concentration camps filled with Japanese civilians, interred simply because we deemed them a potential threat.
We have been the bad guys. We will be the bad guys again. When we were the bad guys, we didn't call ourselves the bad guys, yet we subscribed to a philosophy that would later become the Paradox of Intolerance and committed uncountable atrocities against "the intolerant", who we would later determine to have been the good guys.
If your philosophy leads to atrocity when adopted by your enemy, your philosophy is broken.
I suppose leftists did all of those things.
You're trying to convince me that because Nazis killing Jews is bad, Jews killing Nazis is bad too. That won't work.
No, I am not trying to convince you of anything like that. I am saying that the Nazis were only able to justify their intolerance of the Jews by subscribing to an intolerance paradox.
I am saying that they were following the exact philosophy that you are promoting.
I am saying that they could not justify their actions under a "tolerance" policy
The Nazis could justify their intolerance of Jews with anything they wanted.
Do you think it's ok to punch a Nazi?
That is exactly my point.
You can justify your intolerance of anyone with anything you want. That's what the Paradox of Intolerance lets you do. You don't need any further justification than "I don't think they like me very much.".
I guess we shouldn't let orphans have showers! After all, the Nazis gave people showers, and look what happened.
Dingus.