The less polite ones don't even ask you first!
this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2026
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Lefty Memes
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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.
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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
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- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
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Nothing wrong with communists. I feel so radicalized by capitalism I'm almost there anyway.
It's the Russian/China apologists that are annoying.
Russia is bad, Chia.na is bad, and the U.S. is bad. All those things can be true. But all the insufferable posts about how great China and Russia are, and all the bad things you have heard about them m are just Western propaganda...
If they were serious about their ideology, then why do they care so much about someone thinks about China or Russia.
If they didn't brigade those issues so much, straight up ban people, just because they disagree, or hlrefuse to have any real discussion that doesn't center on just shutting other people down, then maybe people outside their group might take them more seriously.
I once got at least 10 comments telling me how good russia and china are and how bad USA is and that i am a USA sucker, welp kinda my fault for making a comment in the wrong instance
Anarcho communists welcome you. We hate all nation states equally. Unfortunately there aren't enough of us to brigade anything.
Some of us are just tired of western people not wanting to get a little nuance about none western countries. And the instance you admit that ofcourse no place is perfect you get hit with. "See x is bad, communism can't work in reality." It is tiresome and eventually I end up defaulting to standard answers or blocking people if they are rude.
On top of that I do think it is amazing how for instance India, China and Vietnam has improved the lives of billions, but every single time it hit western news it is followed by "but at what price".
And finally I have realized that things are not always as they seem and the propaganda machine makes it hard to discern the reality of many things. This goes for everything. I have no clue if it actually is dangerous to go USA or it just seem that way.
I'm sure you've had this explained before, how a unipolar world is worse than a detente.
Yeah, yeah, communists, whatever. Did you know that some people still pretend to be Finnish here?
Hey I'm just on the Finnish instance. No one doubts from where I am posting. Always seemed like a convenient bouncing around of signals.
torille.
Unfortunately half of them are tankies larping as commies
The other half are posting, which is just as much a larp of political action. Effective organizing doesn't happen on the internet.
Of course it does, posting when and where to meet for public protests can happen with image posts on local area comms. Like someone posted an image that held information for dates, times and locations so people could attend March for Palestine. Really it's about sharing information which can be done with the good ol' wheat paste and paper, but can reach a lot more people on the internet.
While thats true, I do think people really forget that the actual labor that improves your community is offline, not another sick meme to dunk on the liberals
Its easy for it to end up feeling like performance to fit in with the in-crowd more than actual desire to fix problems. The internet can be helpful but only as a tool in service of actually doing political labor. If its not work you're probably not really accomplishing anything.
You gotta remember that no one except known communists are pitched lemmy on the basis that it's developed by a communist. Everyone else gets that fact omitted.
I never cared about those politics, it's just all the drama that gets weird. No developer is required to disclose they're a what-ist. You would hear a lot more about it from whiny Americans, if so.
And liberalism only survives in people that are fundamentally incurious about the conditions under which the goods and services they use are manufactured or arise.
Finally somebody says it. I was pitched Lemmy as a version of reddit that won't enshittify because it isn't run by Spez. There was no mention of communism whatsoever. I came expecting reddit as it had existed a few years prior to the API debacle. Now everyday I have to read a genocide denier accuse someone of supporting genocide because they voted against a fascist who supports genocide. Make it make sense.
And like, the communist thing isn't a problem in itself, but there is some kind of brain rot going on in this particular online space. You know last week I stumbled into a thread full of people claiming that North Korea is some kind of utopia and all the overwhelming evidence to the contrary is propaganda? That's not regular leftist discourse, that's some kind of looney tunes shit.
Reddit was awful from the moment it was created because it was designed to commodity and control the commons.
I remember on reddit seeing discussion about the mullvad vpn nonsense and someone replied that they were based, it's not like the left would ever care about privacy.
And I was just like...brutha, wut? People are truly that dumb aren't they?
Too many people have an inversion to leftism.
Transgender Anti-War Communists, no less.
The only thing scarier is a Muslim Mayor.
Is it at least of the luxurious gay space kind?
Unfortunately we're at the screaming at each other over precisely how to realise a stateless, monieless, classless society stage.
Although we do get to enjoy devouring the occasional lib that stumbles in.
Although we do get to enjoy devouring the occasional lib that stumbles in.
Mmmm... Lib vore...
We need to bring back feeling ashamed
Uh-oh. Somebody's got a shaming kink...
Whoa there are one here? does that matter? in this era the letter c are kinda better than f or t, if you think about it.
Food for thought indeed.
I don't think any of them are anymore communist then the CCP tbh.
They're just making free software with no algorithmic feeds, inherent bias, user monetisation, or dark patterns for everyone for other reasons.
No see, you don't understand.
The 'free market place of ideas' needs an 'invisible hand' to make sure it doesn't make any uh... mistakes.
And obviously, my particular and specific ideas about how to puppet that hand, well they are objectively correct.
/s
Or at least they WERE but you assholes are UNWORTHY of being SAVED so never mind!
/s
So the head lemmy devs are communists? ?_?
Go chat to Dessalines or Nutomic about it and see what they have to say about their views.
I tried once, but they banned me for five billion years because they're tankies.
I've exchanged 5 sentences with you and I've gotta say I'm sympathetic to them already.
They are based ⚒️⚒️⚒️