this post was submitted on 11 Apr 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

Version without spoilers

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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[โ€“] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I think it's an acceptable course of action to vote 3rd party if you are in a solid red or solid blue state. However, I think the way you phrased it got people's hackles raised.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, it's not a terrible idea. Another idea is to send the message that the Republicans will continue to lose the popular vote by 10+ million votes if they don't start putting forth solutions to the real problems that Americans are concerned about.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I agree. My distant hope is that the republican party will weaken to the point that the left-wing of America will be able to take advantage of the Vaccum left behind. The events talking place in the GOP are remarkably similar to what the whig party did right before they became irrelevant.

[โ€“] LazyPhilosopher 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for agreeing. ๐Ÿค

How would you have phrased it?

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

"It's alright to vote 3rd party if you're not in a swing state" or something like that. The Overton window shifted away from the idea that there's some moral failing for voting for Biden because of the anti-voting astroturfing that happened recently.

[โ€“] LazyPhilosopher 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Where are you getting this idea of anti-voting astroturfing? All the propaganda I see seems to be catered to getting people to vote for the lesser of two evils.

Also don't get me wrong. I'm very much against not voting. I just don't see any money being spent on pushing anti-voting but maybe I've missed it. ๐Ÿคท

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

Russia is known to do this at this point. A sudden spike in talking about how voting for [current DNC candidate] is immoral usually fortells a report a few months later that it was started by Russians being paid to spread that message. The fact that lemmygrad, .ml, and Hexbear users suddenly started pushing it 2 weeks ago right after Biden started making serious progress against Israel suggests this is the case. I don't know that Russian bots are using Hexbear as a staging ground, but even if they aren't it's still at the very least directly downstream from Russian propaganda.

[โ€“] LazyPhilosopher 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Kind stranger, I will keep an eye out for this. Thank you for bringing this to my attention and for talking with me like a normal person. ๐Ÿ™‚

I hope you have a great day. ๐Ÿ‘ˆ๐Ÿ˜Ž

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's russia and their shills but it's also tankies and other shills, fash, stooges, etc.

They want the fash cheeto.

[โ€“] LazyPhilosopher 1 points 8 months ago (2 children)

You think "tankies" want trump? I'm going to need a source for that one.

The other groups I'm totally with you on. But I don't understand why more moderate lefties are so quick to pretend that far lefties are fascist. Unless you meant something else by that term, I've only ever heard it used to describe socialists.

[โ€“] Woozythebear 1 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Liberals are just a hop and a skip away from being full blown nazis so they hate on the actual Left to try and convince people they are radical crazy people and the liberal nazis are the norm.

[โ€“] LazyPhilosopher 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I guess so. Cut a liberal a fascist bleeds ๐Ÿ˜ž

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

They're not actually the same, btw. The person's absolutely cracked.

Edit: to be more specific, they just equated liberals with Nazis and then accused me of being a liberal (and thus adjacent to being a Nazi) because I disagreed. These are the kinds of people you should generally distrust.

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Liberals and fascists are in fact very, very different. Convoluting the two only serves to distance potential allies and elevate the standing of fascists.

[โ€“] Woozythebear -1 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I didn't have work today. Thanks to the union, I was able to take a couple of hours for a walk, enjoy the sounds of birds, smelled the flowers, buy a stupidly unhealthy meal, and eat it while watching a playlist consisting of anarchist news media and Tolkien literature analysis.

Going outside, being in nature, and connecting with the people around you as well as speaking with people you disagree with are all healthy activities that you should try when you're able. Also, if you don't have a union, fix that as soon as possible.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Iirc, Infrahaz is or was in favor of Trump, as was Caleb Maupin (who also notably worked for Russia Today) when he was still around. Also, Tankies aren't socialists.

[โ€“] LazyPhilosopher 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

What does tankie mean to you? Genuine question I promise. This is what I see when I Google the term.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Generally, tankies are individuals who advocate for authoritarian regimes while claiming both they and the regimes are leftists. These regimes usually include russia, china, or North korea. Communism is a classless, moneyless, stateless society. Every single country that tankies usually advocate for fails in every single one of these criteria, and so I do not believe it is useful to refer to them as communists.

These definitions may be flawed, but they are what I am currently using, which was the question.

[โ€“] LazyPhilosopher 4 points 8 months ago

Thanks for clarifying ๐Ÿ‘ˆ๐Ÿ˜Ž

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

While I donโ€™t doubt that russia benefits from trump winning and Democrat voters not voting, the reason why hexbears (and other communists or socialists) donโ€™t believe in voting is accurate, but shitty.

Voting for a communist party wonโ€™t work in america, since such a party will never be able to gain political power due to state repression stopping their movements, generations of anti-left propaganda, and probably a dozen other reasons that were debated before bush was even in office. While I donโ€™t understand a lot of ML theory, I do know itโ€™s old.

While anti-voting rhetoric already exists on hexbear, I think itโ€™s a terrible place to try and reach people who would actually vote for biden since most instances arenโ€™t federated. While lemmy.ml is federated, a lot of people are hyper-vigilant about tankies there, and therefore will distrust anything against the grain that ckmes from there.

As an anarchist, I donโ€™t believe in voting either, but Iโ€™d be stupid if I didnโ€™t recognize that voting does have consequences, even if they arenโ€™t what Iโ€™d want. Anarchists often believe that means and ends are entwined, and therefore supporting a hierarchical system can never get rid of it, much less that supporting the state could ever topple it.

I agree with OP that itโ€™s perfectly fine to not vote biden in a solid red/blue state, and since I live in such a state, Iโ€™m not voting for Biden. But I havenโ€™t really seen an uptick in anti-voting posts (admittedly I have some hexbear communities blocked).

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

About 2 weeks ago (it feels like less, but that's what my history says) there was a deluge of them in a few meme communities that I happen to frequent, notably on blahaj 196.

accurate, but shitty

Please explain. Edit: oh, do you mean they won't vote because they can't vote in a communist?

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

The accuracy comes from the fact that in the american system, there is not, and wonโ€™t be, a candidate or hopeful that can have an impact to bring america in a socialistic direction, or for the more electoral MLs, there is no communist/socialist candidate. Either way, most people on the far left, anarchist, communist, etc, also recognize that if there is a person of their values who gets into power, odds are they will either be milquetoast in the end and coopt the movement. Or if things are particularly bad, there will be a conflict due to such a candidate winning.

I think those people are silly. They are too far-sighted to consider the local scale of elections and the conditions that come from them, even though I generally agree with the critiques of the electoral system

[โ€“] Woozythebear -1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

So is the Genocide Biden is supporting Russian propaganda?

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

The genocide in Palestine will be worsened if Trump wins the election.

Please don't misrepresent me like that again, and touch some grass.

[โ€“] Woozythebear -1 points 8 months ago

How can it get worse? There is nothing left in Gaza... not a single building is habital anymore.