this post was submitted on 26 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.

Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, upvoting good contributions and downvoting 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:

(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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[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I don’t know about the 1/2 half of Gen x careers being necessarily easier. I’m older Gen x born a few years after the generally accepted start for that era.

As a teenager and a young adult I saw that the structures that the silent and boomer generations set up and relied upon weren’t going to be there for me as a senior. Pensions being removed as employment benefits. the GOP demonizing social security and Medicare and underfunding the programs. Graduated from college in a white collar depression. Went though the same multiple crisis that the millennials did, just at a later phase of my life and career development. About the only real advantage my generation had was to be the right age bracket to catch the early internet boom. But also at the right age to catch the outsourcing to China / India boom.

I guess my point is that all the signs were there all along my life of the coming disruptions. I had the right combination of luck factors. Good stable childhood home. Enough food. Decent public schools despite moving as much as I did. Parents that paid for college. No physical or mental issues that prevented me from attacking a career path. Low inflation for most of those years. I did (and do) okay. I’ve helped myself now because I was pretty pessimistic about my future years.

It’s clear to me now we need systemic changes. I had hoped COVID would smack us around enough to give momentum to pivot as a society. But nope! It seems the divisions and right wing political extremism is even worse now. I don’t know where the impetus is going to come from now. For sure it can’t come only from Gen x. We don’t have the numbers. And enough of my generation have fallen down the MAGA cult black hole.