this post was submitted on 11 Apr 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.
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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.
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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).
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The only dangerous minority is the rich.
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We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
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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.
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While I donāt doubt that russia benefits from trump winning and Democrat voters not voting, the reason why hexbears (and other communists or socialists) donāt believe in voting is accurate, but shitty.
Voting for a communist party wonāt work in america, since such a party will never be able to gain political power due to state repression stopping their movements, generations of anti-left propaganda, and probably a dozen other reasons that were debated before bush was even in office. While I donāt understand a lot of ML theory, I do know itās old.
While anti-voting rhetoric already exists on hexbear, I think itās a terrible place to try and reach people who would actually vote for biden since most instances arenāt federated. While lemmy.ml is federated, a lot of people are hyper-vigilant about tankies there, and therefore will distrust anything against the grain that ckmes from there.
As an anarchist, I donāt believe in voting either, but Iād be stupid if I didnāt recognize that voting does have consequences, even if they arenāt what Iād want. Anarchists often believe that means and ends are entwined, and therefore supporting a hierarchical system can never get rid of it, much less that supporting the state could ever topple it.
I agree with OP that itās perfectly fine to not vote biden in a solid red/blue state, and since I live in such a state, Iām not voting for Biden. But I havenāt really seen an uptick in anti-voting posts (admittedly I have some hexbear communities blocked).
About 2 weeks ago (it feels like less, but that's what my history says) there was a deluge of them in a few meme communities that I happen to frequent, notably on blahaj 196.
Please explain. Edit: oh, do you mean they won't vote because they can't vote in a communist?
The accuracy comes from the fact that in the american system, there is not, and wonāt be, a candidate or hopeful that can have an impact to bring america in a socialistic direction, or for the more electoral MLs, there is no communist/socialist candidate. Either way, most people on the far left, anarchist, communist, etc, also recognize that if there is a person of their values who gets into power, odds are they will either be milquetoast in the end and coopt the movement. Or if things are particularly bad, there will be a conflict due to such a candidate winning.
I think those people are silly. They are too far-sighted to consider the local scale of elections and the conditions that come from them, even though I generally agree with the critiques of the electoral system