this post was submitted on 08 Nov 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, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low-quality!
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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)
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.
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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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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.
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And did they do anything to make that happen? Right, they didn't.
Yes, in 2020 some of the lunatics were boosted but this is a relatively new phenomenon. And not to mention, is pretty damned strategic and as someone who understands how damaging republicans would be, I'm kind of okay with it.
If you aren't constrained by reality, sure, this is a valid point!
Except Bernie lost the primary vote 43% or so to 55%... Let me ask, this was important to you, did you vote in the democratic primaries? Did you canvas for Bernie? Bring friends to vote? If so, awesome. If not, you, like most folks under 40 once again lost to the people who actually show up and vote. Almost like the younger, more progressive wing keeps buying into stupid ideas like both parties are the same and thus voting is pointless...
(You might be shocked to learn that the labour movement has had most of their victories by gasp getting candidates elected, becoming a force to be reckoned with. Unions were the backbone of the progressive coalition for a long time and had all sorts of victories with, yup, electoral politics. Weird how that works huh?)
Nobody said voting was pointless, it's the bare minimum. Labor organizing provided an outside influence to party politics, the party politics weren't the vehicle for change there. Democrat delegates and members don't want Bernie or class policies, because they aren't a left party, they're a neoliberal capitalist institution supported by and for capital interests. Their branding is what you're talking about when the "vehicle for change" stuff comes out, if they stood by broadly supported left-rooted measures they would say as much, but they don't because it would lose them material support. For political involvement I have had close friends run for office as socialists, and campaigned with them in two elections. I'm also involved in my labor union doing unglamorous work and hopefully as a delegate one day.