this post was submitted on 06 Nov 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

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:

(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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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Almost as if they are doing it on purpose and are just the more culturally liberal of the two Wall Street parties... 🤔🤔

[–] TwoBeeSan 21 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Someone like AOC and Bernie will never be allowed anywhere near actual power. God damn money.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

and even if they did get in power, they'd still support NATO and imperialism in general, still support capitalist exploitation, and still would only pay lip service to or fight symptoms of systemic issues instead of ripping the cause that is capitalism out by it's root

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago

Cries in Latin-American Spanish

[–] [email protected] 0 points 15 minutes ago

kamala was not pro corporate.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 hours ago (3 children)

And this is when you vote for a third party. IMO the mentality of “having to vote one of these two” is toxic for a democratic system.

It’s a trap and these two parties massively profit off of it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 hour ago (2 children)

I hate that you're not wrong. Gotta get rid of the current "winner take all" electoral system first though...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 hour ago

Im with you. If such trap can exist the system is wrongly setup.

[–] Madison420 3 points 46 minutes ago

Mandatory vote, ranked choice, popular no electoral

[–] [email protected] 2 points 35 minutes ago

My understanding is that for third parties to become viable at the presidential they have to have first become viable in other levels of government. A third party presidential candidate should be the culmination of bottom up building, not a once every 4 years thing.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil 6 points 48 minutes ago* (last edited 47 minutes ago)

Its the fundamental death of democracy. There is only ever one "correct" choice on the ballot. No real decision except to show up and vote straight ticket or suffer guilt or derision from your peers.

This works just as well on Republicans as Democrats. You don't see any dark horse Buchanans or Perots on the ballot anymore. Conservatives know any vote for someone other than Trump will be seen as a vote for the Democrat, just like Liberals know the opposite. And when the top of the ticket sucks (as with Hilary in 2016 or Romney in 2012), turnout sags and upsets happen.

The bitter truth Dems can't face is that they ran bad candidates on weak platforms after disappointing terms in office. And this is what drove down turnout. Not insidious Arabs or nefarious Jill Stein voters or Russia. If they'd had a candidate as appealing to voters as Trump, running on the left side of the ticket, they could have won. Instead, they shed 15M votes chasing the Liz Cheney endorsement.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 hours ago

They don't care about winning. They care about being cool at the right DC cocktail parties,which they have achieved by extracting their own base from the party in favor of a war criminal who left office with 13% approval.