this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
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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!

Rules

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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.


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.



  1. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:

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If the Twitter/X thing teaches you one thing, let it be this: Twitter was a neoliberal place. Then Elon Musk made it into X, a fascist place. Once again, neoliberalism laid the foundations of fascism. But that’s not the (whole) lesson… Neoliberal folks are still using X, calling it Twitter to make themselves feel better, and pining for the good old days. And there’s the real lesson: When neoliberalism turns into fascism, neoliberals will adapt to life under fascism. Right, class dismissed.

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(We really need a better way to crosspost from mastodon...)

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[–] AFaithfulNihilist 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

The users on it might "do socialism" but the owners, curators, and managers just saw that as a product for them to sell ads next to. The socialism is sort of bait.

Having a show featuring socialists or with socialist themes doesn't make your network socialist.

[–] glimse 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

That's a fine take and all but the screenshot in the post is about the users, not the owners.

Using your analogy, the hosts of a socialist show are neoliberals because the network - the only network for over a decade - is neoliberal.

[–] AFaithfulNihilist -2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yes, Jon Stewart is a neo-liberal. I didn't really think that was seriously disputed.

Anything approaching a socialist network was dismantled long ago. There is no left-wing establishment. They were priced out of existence intentionally and then targeted by brutal crackdowns, hostile regulation, buyouts and in some cases straight up outlawed.

[–] glimse 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'm sorry but I'm not sure I understand how Jon Stewart and socialist networks relate to what I said.

I'm saying that if your only option for a network is neoliberal and you have a (socialist) message you want to get out, using that network to do it does not make your a neoliberal.

[–] AFaithfulNihilist 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If you have a socialist message that network is not going to let you get it out unless it thinks it's going to be able to sell commercials alongside it.

If at any point in time that network thinks that something you're going to say is going to undermine its neoliberal position it will censor you and it has proven that time and time again.

Your mistake is thinking that you get to use the network to do your message when in reality the network is going to use you to get its revenue.

If one of the owner bros decides to give you a platform it's because they are making money on it. Just like neoliberals give platforms to fascists. Neoliberals don't really care about the ideology as long as it doesn't threaten their revenue.

[–] glimse 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

... And? If they sell ads, does that make you a neoliberal?

The analogy falls apart here because socialist message were not censored on Twitter.

[–] AFaithfulNihilist 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's hard to think that you're being serious with this kind of reasoning.

You're drawing some pretty spurious conclusions from what I'm saying.

They don't have to censor every socialist message just the ones they think will undermine their position.

[–] glimse 1 points 8 months ago

It's not a great analogy to compare tweets to television in the first place but I'm still not sure of a few things:

  • Why bring up Jon Stewart and his political views?

  • Why do you think I'm assuming you meant all socialist messages were censored?

  • What kind of messages do you think were getting censored on Twitter?

  • How does posting pro-socialist sentiments on a neoliberal website make you a neoliberal?