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.
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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)
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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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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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When you say "they," are you referring to all humans throughout all of human history? Not conquering/displacing people is a much more recent international norm
More of a recent virtue signal we've been propagandized to believe, while continuing the conquering and displacement without skipping a beat.
While the west was writing the UN declaration of human rights, they were hard at work creating the state of Israel, directly denying Palestine their right to democracy and displacing a million of them.
At the end of WW2 America, and the rest of the anglo-allies, assisted France in trying to reclaim their colonies, rejecting hundreds of millions their "basic human right" to democracy; all of this went on for decades after the declaration was ratified, as if that meant anything.
Human rights don't apply as long as you are labelled a communist, terrorist, separatist, extremist, pedo, etc, etc. Then they can torture you in a black site all nice and legal.
Most of our history has been written by sociopathic criminals.
If you look at the entirety of human history, genocides and displacements have objectively been at an all-time low since the end of WWII
It's not the first time that peace exists you know, and it's an incredibly short span that you're describing, one which I think everyone agrees is closer to its end than anything
if you look at the entirety of human history, since WWII is a blink of an eye
fight complacency.
The ancients very much understood the value in just changing leadership. So conquering yes, genocide? Usually only when religion is involved.
You live in lala land.
Losing a war meant death to all adult males and raping of the women. Not different then any other mammal on earth.
My genes, and my genes only!
That's breathtakingly untrue. I know it's the sensational popular view of historical warfare but it's just not true. Generally the worst thing that would happen is to be enslaved. But as time goes on and we develop different power structures after the Romans, decapitation of the government becomes far more preferred. So there's a big battle, the loser leader gets killed, and the remaining nobles swear loyalty to the new leader. Trained people are simply too valuable to kill out of hand.
Of course we do have documented instances of genocide and mass destruction. Nobody is saying it didn't happen. It just wasn't the normal mode of operation.
This is fundamentally not true. Invading, looting then burning down entire towns, killing men, and raping and/or kidnapping women and children was practiced across the globe by many different cultures for thousands of years
You're confusing the fact that stuff happened, with that stuff being the go to thing to do. Even the Mongols preferred to take towns with the populace intact so they could get taxes as soon as possible. Popular history blows the genocidal stuff way out of proportion.
Dude. I'm confusing "the fact that stuff happened" with the fact that stuff happened lmao
I don't know what history you're reading, but sexual violence and the destruction of towns and cities has been pervasive in war for millennia. Here's a brief introduction for you
Stop. Just stop. If you can't defend this-
Without bringing up a Wikipedia article about rape then you've already lost.
Not true. At least not for the Muslim conquest of the Levant according to Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister:
Ben Gurion is quoted by Shlomo Sand in his book https://blogs.umb.edu/joinercenter/2012/10/09/review-of-shlomo-sand-the-invention-of-the-jewish-people-london-verso-2009-translated-by-yael-lotan/