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
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- Zionism
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view the rest of the comments
Yeah sure. And the way in how peace is preferable to endless imperialist proxy wars.
And the way how reality is preferable to fantasy. How woke is preferable to asleep. Like acknowledging that the CIA funded the coup by far right elements in Ukraine. Like they did plenty of times before all over the word! But facts are only selected among alternative facts if they serve politics in this post truth world. Nothing can be true that could lead to diplomacy and acknowledging "this is partially our fault".
Because if we acknowledged the historical facts and that Russia just might genuinely feel threatened by NATO we could move forward with diplomacy to end this war.
All I see when I look at "leftists" today is the image of nazis endlessly screaming YES! YES! WE WANT THE TOTAL WAR! YES! YES! WAR!
How sanity is preferable to insanity. Although I am slightly envious of your blissfully empty minds just flowing along with the majority opinion towards the end of history.
You know if you were even a little bit sane, you'd think about how bad this war is for climate change and you'd let Russia have a little Crimea. God forbid a burgeoning empire have a little Ukraine. Like even if the evil caricature of Russia was true, in a utilitarian perspective it would be better to let them take half of Ukraine because of the insane amounts of greenhouse gases this war produces. Less people would be dead too. But you can only think in childish principles and scold anyone who doesn't want Ukraine fighting to the last man. Surrender was always a shitty option.
Basically it's better in every way to not support an endless and pointless war.
Anyway, lets agree to disagree.
Russia's whole economy relies on green house gas production, so much for the climate. It's really easy to say you should capitulate to a foreign military invasion when you aren't the one being sacrificed. Russia wanted control of Ukraine, and every place they lost when the USSR collapsed. Making it clear his goals are to annex land from other nations he sees as part of their lost empire. If you don't believe me Putin keeps saying things like how annexing lost land isn't invasion, it's reclamation, then uses the Peter the Great's similar justification for expanding their empire into Sweden centuries ago, how it's just reclaiming their god given lands, like on the 350th anniversary of the event, in a speech defending his invasion of Ukraine, which undermines the veracity of how threatened they felt in this situation, or how that was why they invaded Ukraine. He rambles on about it so much he even went on an tangent about it in a meeting with an organization of young Russia entrepreneurs who were still in university. NATO and the EU, also acting in their self interest, wanted Ukraine to favor trade, and defense pacts with them instead. So there has been a proxy war between them, in Ukraine, and guess what? Russia lost. So, unwilling to accept a cold defeat, and going with the concept that they have a god given right to Ukraine, they fired up the military again, and went in for a full invasion this time, with a bunch of BS excuses, like de-nazification, as they sent in a PMC ran by nazis, to accomplish this task.
Neither actor in this is operating for some sort of altruistic reason, Ukrainian oligarchs are pursuing who they think they can use to enrich themselves the most with, and the Ukrainian people are stuck between two forces they are much smaller than, who are fighting over their homeland. You give favor to one empire in this situation (and you acknowledge that is what they are, and what they are doing), the one who has used it's military to slaughter 150 thousand, or more, innocent people, because you believe it will be the best option for you. You are both acting in self interest on top of the lives lost, because "just giving" Russia Ukraine is just that, sacrificing the lives of those who's home they are invading, and falling for the falsehood that trying to appease imperialists will make them stop waging wars, taking land, and slaughtering people in the process, thus supporting endless war by giving the empirical power what they want, more empire, thus justifying use of military force, because it results in more empire. You are doing is with the thin veneer of an excuse that is b-b-but the environment, ignoring how, by your own ideas of a utilitarian perspective, that it's actually best to allow Ukraine to align more with the west, because it was Russia that sent the military killing machine in, while NATO was sticking to routes far, far, less damaging to the environment, and human life.
And you call me insane?
So your argument boils down to that the CIA operation to regime change the democratically elected government of Ukraine is a preemptive strike to...
uh, gain control of Ukraine. And Russia should just concede that they lost.
I mean fine, I think that is what the people who planned this brinkmanship thought too. All is fair in love and war and so on. With "people" I mean Obama and Biden btw.
The problem is this was dangerous warmongering and we KNEW how Russia would most likely react. Even during the Maidan "protests" when senior US politicians visited Ukraine as support there were articles in western newspapers warning of this.
Because the exact same thing happened when the CIA interfered in Georgia with the "Rose Revolution" and talk of EU and NATO led to Russia invading. And yes there is hard evidence for CIA/NED interference in Georgia as well.
So: if you know that action A leads to consequence B, and you do action A anyway, you are accepting the consequence as the price for your actions.
So the moral question becomes - is it justified to start a war in order to bleed the dangerous ~~Orc~~Russian empire?
If your answer is yes, then that puts the onus of providing hard evidence that the alternative would have been likely to occur and to be worse.
And even then it doesn't justify fucking shitting on everybody who points out the historical facts and that this war was partially provoked? Why continue demanding unwavering support for the US, NATO and EU imperialism? Why deny reality? Why pretend that the western mainstream media is somehow reporting the objective truth and everything else is "Russian propaganda"?
The answer is that ONLY if you deny all historical evidence can you build consensus to endlessly continue the proxy war and make it sound like diplomacy is impossible.
Anyway, yeah Putin talks a lot of shit, he's known to do that. He's a sociopath who rules Russia by means of propaganda. But he hasn't started any wars except in response to US imperialist aggression (or maybe one, don't know about the Chechen war). So I don't think he would actually invade neighbors unprovoked. Ukraine could have stayed neutral and be... well not perfectly fine. But better than it is now.
What Russia did do is pretty much the same as what the US does - interfere through propaganda and other means in the democracy of other countries. This would justify harsh sanctions in my opinion, but does not justify war because moderating social media like facebook and twitter to filter propaganda would not even be that expensive. But that is not something you'd hear from a neoliberal.
It all boils down to this: This war was provoked, the evidence for interference and regime change is indisputable (they admitted it), there are actual nazi sympathizers holding power in Ukraine's military today. Would Ukraine be better off without a CIA plot and still neutral under Yanukovych's successor?
BTW this does not excuse Russia's invasion or make me pro Russia. And neither is this argument invalidated by any war crimes committed since the coup, or excuse these war crimes.
On a personal note I have to say that well at least the EU would be whole fucking lot better off without this imperialist bullshit. Without this insane wealth transfer to the military industrial complex. Without rearmament. Without the left completely turning off their brain and drinking the fucking NATO cool aid.
I did not, do not misrepresent what I wrote! I called them a burgeoning empire, an itty bitty little cute empireling! (/s in case you missed it again)
But yeah I think objectively Russia is the lesser of two evils by far.