Lefty Memes
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of "ML" (read: Dengist) influence. 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, discussion and agitprop/stuff that's better fit for a poster than a meme 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. Please post agitprop here)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Try to use alt text or image descriptions to allow for greater accessibility
(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)
We encourage alternative text (from now referred to as "alt text") to be added to all posts/comments containing media, such as images, animated GIFs, videos, audio files, and custom emojis.
EDIT: For files you share in the comments, a simple summary should be enough if they’re too complex.
We are committed to social equity and to reducing barriers of entry, including (digital) communication and culture. It takes each of us only a few moments to make a whole world of content (more) accessible to a bunch of folks.
When alt text is absent, a reminder will be issued. If you don't add the missing alt text within 48 hours, the post will be removed. No hard feelings.
0.5.1 Style tip about abbreviations and short forms
When writing stuff like "lol" and "iirc", it's a good idea to try and replace those with their all caps counterpart
- ofc => OFC
- af = AF
- ok => OK
- lol => LOL
- bc => BC
- bs => BS
- iirc => IIRC
- cia => CIA
- nato => Nato (you don't spell it when talking, right?)
- usa => USA
- prc => PRC
- etc.
Why? Because otherwise (AFAIK), screen readers will try to read them out as actually words instead of spelling them
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" (read: Dengists) (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.
6. Don't irrationally 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
- Sexual 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
They're still doing apologia by playing with definitions to argue that not only is Russia not imperialist, but they're anti-imperialist. Stating that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is irredentist and not imperialist carries the assumption that Russia's officially stated reasons for invading Ukraine are truthful when they are clearly not. Russia wants Ukrainian territory not because it's populated by ethnic Russians, but because they want to exploit the natural resources contained therein. Irredentism is the justification for imperialism, they are not mutually exclusive.
It's inherently difficult and subjective to speculate about motivations, and doubly so when talking about a country with multiple groups with their own motivations. Of course, in any conflict, enemy countries will be assigned the worst motivations possible, which is why virtually every conflict draws comparisons to Nazis, and the idea that the enemy will just keep attacking forever if they are not defeated. This was said about Vietnam (Domino Theory) and Afghanistan ("if we don't fight them there, we'll be fighting them here"). Those examples show that motivations assigned to enemy countries are often inaccurate.
I don't think it should be considered "apologia" to express reasonable skepticism that the motivations of a rival country aren't what some people speculate. Especially when they're still assigning a negative motivation to said country, just a different negative motivation than the one you assign. That's kind of a ridiculous degree of purity testing, "It's not enough to condemn Russia, you have to agree with my exact assessment of their motivations, otherwise you're doing apologia by condemning them in the wrong way."
As they said, they condemn both Russia's invasion and irredentism in general, so my main point was to correct your misunderstanding, when you asked if "tankies" don't realize that irredentism leads to negative results.
Trying to divine Russia's True Motivations for invading Ukraine is a total Red Herring side show distraction in the context of this discussion.
The problem we're discussing is that tankies employ definitions gymnastics to escape giving traditionally capitalist negative labels to their beloved authoritarian dictatorships, like "imperialist" and "tyrant."
"Russia is not imperialist because they only invade for irredentist reasons" and "Russia is not imperialist because they oppose imperialist nations" are both half-cooked, dumb assertions.
It doesn't matter if Russia invades other countries and takes their resources because they think the Bible says they should, because there are people with similar genetics in neighboring countries, or because Putin is bored; it's still imperialist.
Imagine if someone said the USA is not imperialist because they're only bombing Iran to fulfill a biblical prophesy, so they're actually just theocratic. That's obviously a ridiculous thing to say and you wouldn't jump in to defend them because you're biased to defend tankies but not western capitalists.
I'm not interested in discussing anything else with you until you answer my other comment, because it seems to me that you just blatantly lied claiming you didn't label the other user a tankie. If you blatantly lied about that conversation, then I should expect you'll lie about this one too. Even now you're labelling them a tankie again, after claiming not to.
That's because you have difficulties reading and comprehending English or logic.
Speaking of blatant lies...
Claiming that it's a blatant lie after I described you calling them a tankie and you replied "that's not what I was asserting," wtf you're just trolling.
You described why I called them a tankie, and your why was wrong.
It's not trolling, you're just too thick or bad at English reading to figure it out.
Hell, you don't even read my comments before you downvote them and you call me the troll? Blocking you unless my most recent comment is an eye-opener and you apologize or get back on topic.
I read all your comments before down voting them, and for the record I'm a native English speaker with a degree. It's not my fault if you communicate unclearly and then refuse to clarify because "you don't respect me." And that when you finally did clarify, you explained that you didn't call them a tankie for being too prone to Marxist definitions, but for using "definition gymnastics," which entailed... being too prone to Marxist definitions.
TL;DR: "This comment you just made explains away my confusion so I refuse to respond to it because I am (pretending to be) confused about the other comment you made."
Oh look, you're lying about this conversation too, just like you did the other one! I should know better than to engage with you liberals in good faith.
Nope.
Any reader can see you're playing silly games. Allow me to make for one less reader of yours thanks to the beautiful Lemmy feature known as: Block.
+1 in the bucket for my ongoing internal question of "Should I just block lemmy.ml?" Socialists are usually pretty cool, but it seems the tankies tend to flow from lemmy.ml more than other instances.
Any reader here
hcso is full of shit and we all see it.
You're one reader, actually, but I applaud you for saying something. That said, your instance is no coincidence. Obviously tankies are going to back tankies no matter what; that's one of the defining characteristics of a tankie.
Before I consider your opinion, please attempt this tankie-screening captcha:
Is there a genocide of the Uyghurs going on right now and is it the fault of the CCP?
Did the Holodomor happen and was it a manmade famine perpetrated by the USSR?
Is the Kim dynasty of the DPRK a hereditary dictatorship wherein there is brutal violence and starvation to suppress dissidence to enforce the strict hierarchy of the regime?
You said any reader am I not a reader?
Jesus Christ you sound like trump saying he's winning the Iran war. Just keep insisting your right and everyone agrees with you.
If it looks like the opposite why it must be rigged! Quick block those pesky tankies! They're cheating!
The worst kind of idiot is the kind that never realizes they're an idiot because they can never learn or grow.
"Before I consider your opinion" fuck off you clearly don't consider much of anything.
Sorry, but you didn't pass the captcha.
Troll.
"Anyone who pops my echo chamber bubble is a troll."
Lol, that's incredibly rich when this whole conversation happened because you dismissed someone as a tankie for condemning Russia but in the wrong way.
That's an oversimplification that bolsters your side of things in a bad faith way.
So... typical tankie behavior.
It's so funny how you just throw around debate terms randomly like accuse this of being an oversimplification, that of being a straw man, the other thing of being blah blah blah but you never even attempt to substantiate any of it, like everyone is supposed to read your mind and follow some convoluted leaps of logic and if they can't then they must be a dumb illiterate foreigner and/or tankie, which retroactively justifies your bad faith behavior because "you don't respect me." The reality is that you do this vagueposting because you have nothing, and you're just completely full of shit.
Oh and dismissing everything I say on the accusation that I'm a "tankie" is textbook ad hominem btw.