this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
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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

Version without spoilers

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)


0.5 [Provisional Rule] Use alt text or image descriptions to allow greater accessibility


We require 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.


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" 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.



  1. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:

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[–] bob_lemon@feddit.org 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Off the top of my head, from someone not even in the US, there were the student loan forgiveness programs, or the insulin price limit.

Both are arguably remedies for symptoms, and the right is far more efficient in undoing anything good. But pretending the liberals didn't do anything in the past 10 years is disingenuous.

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

And I'm not going to deny they tried to do something good. But the student loan forgiveness program alone:

  • Could have been fought harder. As soon as they were lightly told no, they stopped trying. Decorum was more important than reliving millions of Americans from billions of debt.
  • Student loan debt not being removed from bankruptcy and tied to credit lines was cause by Biden. He wrote the bill. I am happy he can acknowledge his mistakes and try to correct them, but when you're the reason for a bad thing, and do not try hard enough to make it go away, you are an enabler.

And the insulin price limit is good, but it was done with the stroke of a pen. Trump removed it with a stroke of a pen. If something that light can be done or taken away with a stroke, what more can be done? Where is the limit? Could Biden just nationalize the insulin production companies?

Small wins are important, but when I know of someone who is broke and getting insulin was literally a life or death situaion, sometimes selling small mementos and items to be able to just live without keeling over, the cap could have been 0.99 cents, or zero.

Incrementalism is a lofty goal when citizens are paycheck to paycheck, can barely afford a random expense, have nothing in savings, food and rent prices are going up, etc. etc. It makes people willing to ignore history and consider listening to a conman who enabling the worst of humanity.

When people are stressed and unsure what to do, they'll be desperate. Sometimes its robbing a convenience store, sometimes its stealing from big retailers, sometimes its sometimes its voting for a fascist.