this post was submitted on 22 Dec 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.
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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.
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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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The belief that "history has ended" and that there will be no major revolutions in our lifetimes is one of the greatest weapons of capital and the ruling elites in general.
If we are to progress as a species, socialist revolution is a historic necessity, there is no other way.
Trying to make capitalism care for humans, animals, nature, our environments and climate; trying to mate it more "humane"/green/queer-friendly/feminist etc. etc. is simply impossible since all those things are in direct opposition to the interests of capital (e.g. profits forever growing).
Sure you might get a few concessions here and there, but those are usually funded by outsourcing the gravest forms of exploitation to the global south; in the rare case that capitalists do give in and decrease their profit margin, a timer starts ticking towards one of the following: either neoliberal austerity or fascism
Don't get me wrong, I fully agree with you and the post. It's what SHOULD be happening - after all, the rich and powerful are not going to let power be voted away from them, which means some kind of direct action is needed.
My issue, however, is that there's just no such action happening in reality and there really hasn't been for decades - there are protests, there are some attempts, but they're nowhere close to being successful enough to make an impact. Hell, the right seems to be doing a better job on that regard for some reason, with events like January 6th being something that the left should have been doing.
With all this in mind, that kind of rhetoric starts sounding more like empty slogans or even LARPing in a way.
you seem to be talking about the USA specifically. The USA is not the only country that exists
I'm not from US, but rather Eastern Europe, though I do admit that the most news I see is from US due to them being the majority on most popular internet sites.
That being said, I'm not talking just about the US but rather western world as a whole, particularly US, Western Europe and my home country, Lithuania. Unless I slept through some event where oppressive systems there got dismantled this century, what I wrote should, at least from my perspective, still apply to those regions and not just the US.
ah I misunderstood you then, mb