Lefty Memes
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
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.
- 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
view the rest of the comments
when/where has that worked, if i may ask what you're referring to?
Any fascist parties in China or Cuba or Vietnam or Laos approaching power as in the case of the entire western world?
any ... parties ... in these countries?
Yes, communist ones. Now ask yourself what system is better, the one growing at a 5% GDP and average income yearly, or the one stagnating and turning to fascism
basically all of (south) eastern europe + all (now ex-)soviet republics until the 1990s
the bullet part: civil war in ussr (the whites were proto-fascist af) and ww2 in the rest of (south) eastern europe
+ fascists were perpetually heavily persecuted by the agencies of state socialism
now the movement part: socialism builds around solving the issues of the working classes first and foremost by changing the material basis of society. It provides solutions which take the problem by it's root (e.g. nor reforming capitalism – which is the root cause of poverty, homelessness, hunger etc. – but eliminating it)
facism (partially) uses a perversion of leftist rhetoric to fool and garner support from working people.
after said state socialisms found their ends, the following bourgeois "democracies" failed to address the needs of working people, allowing for fascist rhetoric to capture the minds of many. and ofc the rigorous persecution stopped too
the former territory of the GDR provides one of the best examples of the combination of the two
western and southern europe (mainly France and Italy; with the exception of Spain, which had a continued fascist presence long after WW2) had momentary violence against fascists, which was not upheld after ww2 (or after the revolution in Portugal's case), but still had flourishing socialist movements (talking about real socialism, not the french "socialist" party), mainly strong communist parties. after their disintegration in the 90s, fascists had a much easier time and we are seeing the effects today just as well in the rest of europe as in Germany
so what, all that nationalist, fascist scum in yugoslavia war in the 90ies just materialized from nothing in no time?
no of course not, but the breakup of Yugoslavia is a special case...
Although you could argue that the SFRY in (especially late) 80s was hardly socialist anymore, since they had to implement exceedingly more wide-reaching reforms dictated by the IMF. Thus giving rise to material conditions which could be exploited by fascists as soon as the strong suppression of fascism stopped (which started much sooner relative to other ex-socialist countries, thanks to said reforms).
Or even that it had stopped being socialist with the beginning of deeper implementations of "self-managment socialism" (to judge that is out of the scope of this comment), giving more time for those sentiments to foster.
Ofc the sudden rise of fascist and (ultra-)nationalist forces wasn't only bc of material reasons, even if they fed the spread of it. Culture, questions of ethnicity and nationalism played a huge role for both historical and structural reasons.
Yugoslavia was a multi-ethnic state with deep interwoven ties between it's peoples. A part (or result or reason for, again out of scope) of that was either a confused dispersion, or deep regional integration of said ethnicities, depending on how you put it.
Here is a map based on the 1981 census
To cut things short, ethnic tension was one of the main problems the '74 constitution tried to solve. It didn't succeeded, but was able to prolong it's "explosion" for quite a while.
With the gradual weakining of the central government – aggrevated by Tito's death – nationalism was allowed to spread or even cultivated inside of the individual republics...
Edit: another thing (aside from western intervention ofc) that enabled the dream of unity and brotherhood between the southern slavs to turn into a nightmare:
It's the military doctrine of "Total Defence"
also:
yet another reason was the liberlization of religious policies which led to more freedom for the catholic church and of muslim organizations, which fostered nationalistic oppition in both Croatia and Bosnia
(those are the instances I know of, might be that religious orgs of other beliefs did the same and/or additionaly in the other republic)
Edit1: writing this comment made me wanna rewatch the following video: History of Yugoslavia through music ♪♫.
It always manages to make me tear up, especially "Samo da rata ne bude" at 12:30 which practically devestates me. every. fucking. time. after that still but less so
Here is the full version with eng translation: "Samo da rata ne bude" - Yugoslav Anti-War Song [Just let there be no war]
Edit2: in it of itself "Total Defence" is a sound doctrine and the SFRY executed it quite well with their own characteristics. It's not inherently bad, I do not mean to critize it, just inform about some ground laying aspects of the following wars; their unfortunate and partially coincidental combination just lead to horrible outcomes