this post was submitted on 25 Oct 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.
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,
as well as 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.
7. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Rape or assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
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I don't get what you mean?
Wasn't the above comment saying that you like Stalin if you're against imperialism and genocide?
They are saying that Stalin was a genocidal imperialist.
Sure, he wasn't a capitalist genocidal imperialist... but he was still a genocidal imperialist.
EDIT: Unless I am mistaken, English is not your first language.
If you do this...
or this
You can hopefully see that the reply to your post is equivocating Stalin with imperialism and genocide, that is, saying they are one and the same.
You may or may not agree with this, but I'm trying to just illustrate how to understand their reply.
Thanks for clearing it up! You are correct, English is not my first language. But I'd like to think I'm on the road to C2/proficiency
Usually I can grasp stuff like this but stress is not rly helping my sleep-deprived brain ^^'
Hey, no problem!
... sometimes a brief reading of someone's previous comments can actually be done in good faith, to attempt to better understand someone...
... even though its often done by poorly intentioned hyperbolic trolls.
But yeah, as with most people I meet in the internet whose first language is not English, but are conversing in it...
You speak and understand English better than most Americans I meet and know in the real world.
Seriously, the average American has the reading comprehension of approximately a 6th or 7th grader... a 12 year old.
Our education system is horrifically bad compared to every other 'developed' nation.
Thank you, kind stranger :)
though I'm curious how you would gauge that based on some comments
had me thinking of this (satirical) article:
Average number of languages spoken by North Americans falls to 0.7
💀💀
I'm throwing this all in a spoiler as its a wall of text and pretty far off topic
A short explanation would be:
You can understand words with 5 or more syllables.
You do not speak almost entirely in slang/memes derived from TikTok.
You have the patience to read multiple sentences and paragraphs before responding, and you respond to the entirety of what was said, as opposed to ... just a small fraction of it.
... And, this isn't really reading comprehension, but you do not require repeated praise to continue a conversation, nor do you get irrationally angry when someone suggests you may not be understanding something correctly.
But this is not what I'd call 'better than most Americans in general'.
Its 'better than most Americans I talk to in person.'
Its a long story, but I ended up homeless for around a year... while disabled.
Barely managed to end up at a shitty roach motel for most of this year.
Basically all of my 'neighbors' are constantly screaming at each other, getting into fights, occasionally shooting or stabbing each other (lady upstairs got taken out on a stretcher two nights ago)... and all they ever talk about when they aren't assaulting each other is drugs, idiotic ideas about how to fix their cars that haven't moved in a year, who stole what from who when, who owes who money...
... yeah.
Poverty, bellicosity, and ignorance often go hand in hand.
thank you for your feedback. Also I'm sorry you had to go through that....
Though I do not think that the people are at fault. Just like someone starving isn't guilty of stealing at a grocery store (if you saw someone shoplifting, no you didn't)
It's the material circumstances, an unjust education system and the resulting cultural/social situation that drive the things you've described and all that stems from capitalist exploitation (and the material conditions it causes)
I think X put it quite well: