this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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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, 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
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- Rape or assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
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- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
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Memes like this, at least to me, mostly accomplish two things:
We don’t know when small actions added up will make a difference or perhaps even lead to bigger actions. But I just don’t think, as a general rule, we should sit at our computers mocking those who spend their time doing something productive or at least attempting to make things a tiny bit better.
So in this case: help get Pikachu a firehouse. Or go find a squirtle to help. Perhaps you have a better solution on hand and you two can work together. Either way, pointing at him and mocking his attempts to be helpful, even if they maybe won’t solve the issue, just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.
That would imply that (liberal) reforms are a good way to solve our issues, but that is not the case. Of course posting memes is not praxis. But to say that reforms, especially liberal reforms who even fail to see capitalism as the root problem, are good because someone is at least doing something is just as wrong. This is not a new debate and none that needs to be had for the hundredth time. All this reform vs revolution talk has been plentifully discussed over a 100 years ago. Rosa Luxemburgs “Reform or revolution” makes the biggest points perfectly clear. Reforms can be a way to temporarily make things better (if done right, which is not the case with most liberal reforms), but we should not be kidding ourselfs by thinking that we can solve this systemic issue by making new laws. The powerful won’t just sit there and watch their power be handed over.
That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying do the work or put the effort into help sell people on and direct them to better action. Critique is easy, solutions are not, and this post doesn’t really propose solutions. It feels like red meat for people who want to go “liberal reforms are nonsense amirite?” - notice how most comments are functionally just nodding along or just giving this post the same dismissal in kind. Ridiculing well-intentioned people with a pikachu joke and then walking away is worse than inaction, frankly. If your goal is buy-in, I’m seeing quite the opposite, which is unfortunately a kind of post that is generally rewarded online. Yet I imagine we both want to see meaningful change!
Let me ask you this: why was this posted? What was the goal?
someone posted a photo of you earlier
come on now, that's not good conduct!
Please refrain from ad hominem/personal insults in the future, I would like for this community to be in the image of rule 1
Lol, so they get to sealion and gish gallop, but pointing out that what they are doing isn't productive is somehow the problem? ok...
(E: also it's not an ad hominem, I didn't attack anything about them, but the point they were literally making)
that is not what I said. If you want to constructively point out flaws in other peoples' argumentation, feel free to do so. Friendly discourse in the comments is more than welcome!
It's the insulting/ad hominem or using/painting caricatures that I cannot abide
reacting to the edit: Maybe using caricatures to point things out isn't best practice
If this is the path we are going down then I'm not really in the mood to continue this conversation. Have a good one man.