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, upvoting good contributions and downvoting 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:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Rape or assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
(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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The conclusion is moot when the premise itself is wrong. Twitter was only "a neoliberal place" if you're only looking at the neoliberal part of it. It's like saying "YouTube is a site about sports highlights" because that's all you watch.
If you used Twitter and only saw neoliberal garbage, that's on you for following neoliberals. It completely ignores the majority of communities.
When I was active on there, if I saw a political tweet it was pro-socialist 95% of the time.
Aral is promoting the Fediverse.
He’s also saying neoliberals/centrists are largely performative, and they are fine with fascism. It’s a variation of the Nazi bar story.
There were always problems with Twitter’s moderation as it was lighter on the right than the left. The famous comment about not banning Republicans congresspeople comes to mind. It was never as right leaning as Facebook though.
There are plenty of ways one can promote the Fediverse without saying things that are factually wrong
I am a proponent of the fediverse as well but I do it without disparaging the people on X who are still there because the community they've been a part of for 2 decades is still there.
No, those weak-willed people are a big part of the problem and are therefore even more deserving of disparagement.
Abandon all your friends and family or you have a weak will
Yes. Real leftists have no loved ones.
The only love we need is our love for Marx, may peace be upon him.
Fuck that guy, we're doing anarchy. There are dozens of us.
After the infighting we can fight the fascists, this plan is flawless.
That’s how it works in anime right? We do a tournament and the survivor will be the strongest leftist. They’ll be able to defeat all fascists by themselves. Truly a masterful plan.
That'd actually make a pretty sick anime imo
Like the antifa version of Hetalia: Axis Powers
Sure, you could argue that it innately defeats the entire point, but just toss in a team up at the end and it's all cool
My friends and family are in my life, not an app.
It's the end of the world! (of Warcraft)
Be real now you don't need to follow them on Twitter. They're on your phone.
That's like saying "you don't have to be in the guild, you can still private message people"
There's more to a community than just the people you're close enough to have other forms of communication with. I don't have the contact info for a lot of my acquaintances online outside of the specific platform I talk to them on
Well ok then. It's not like im attacking your choice man, just joking about your hyperbole. :)
Yeah, but you don't need them on your phone...they have a mailbox.
i think youre misunderstanding the point they're trying to make, but then again they're not expressly clear who they're talking about either and "neoliberal" is a term that means different things based on how we've been using it etc etc.
I suggest they're referring to the ownership of Twitter, not twitters users here. Twitter was owned by neolibs (they assert) and sold to Elon. They're saying Elon is making X more fascist, not speaking about the userbase.
Now he's moved to the userbase, which is confusing and muddles things up a bit. but his point here is the neolibs are the ones who stayed on X even after fascist users started coming in due to a fascist ownership. They complain, but they get by, because (and this may now just be my projecting my own thoughts) neoliberals have 0 morals and 0 insight.
You said you aren't there anymore. I think this means you're exempt.
Anyway that's what i got from it
I stopped being active on Twitter long before the sale for unrelated reasons but I've popped on from time to time because I still have friends on there who don't use other platforms.
I take issue with the "everyone who stays is complicit" argument in the same way I have issues with the "everyone in Alabama is a racist magat" because it completely ignores why people actually stay - community and connections.
Unless you can convince your entire circle to switch to a different platform all at once, the move is painful. I get it.
Those aren't comparable situations IMO.
People can't just pack up and leave because they disagree with their neighbors in real life, that takes money which not many people have a surplus of, especially in Alabama. That's not a choice.
Using Twitter is completely different, it costs nothing financially to stop going go a website. Your point about the social aspect and need for community is not wrong, but also if one values their social connections with fascists and fascist-enablers.. well.. I think you see where I'm going with that. That is a choice.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
... And? If they sell ads, does that make you a neoliberal?
The analogy falls apart here because socialist message were not censored on Twitter.
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.
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?
Also the OOP's line of logic seems to imply Elon bought Twitter because it was neoliberal?
Elon has billions of dollars he could buy half the lemmy instances if he gave the admins the right check amount.
He bought it because even though he has more money than he could ever spend, all his small mind craves is other losers thinking he's cool. He was granted extra money when he bought it by people who hated the fact Twitter was used to support revolution in the Middle East and wanted to ensure if that ever happened again, they would control the person who could shut it down.