Lefty Memes
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)
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.
- 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
view the rest of the comments
We had help with the rest of the world.
Germany didn't get out of the third Reich by themselves (which is what is going on)
This sounds like the defeatist attitude they want you to have. Just give up, it's hopeless. No one is helping you.
No, I don't think I will. I think I'll do something. We need more people feeling empowered to take back this country. Not thoughts of hopelessness.
Consider that Germany was in far more dire straits economically, and Hitler's approval was crazy high even towards the end of the war (something like 60 or 70%). So the entire time the opposition was outnumbered.
In comparison, Trump's approval is around 45%.
Look up the history. Hitler wasn't elected by a majority but appointed by an elite and then killed the opposition. There was massive opposition before, including street battles. But that's also why he got the dictatorial power. Apporoval means nothing if people obey executive orders.
Could you link some sources for that massive resistance? Wikipedia says there was very little organized resistence for most of his rise to power, and the regime was SO popular amongst the populace, it prevented even anti-nazi's in the intelligence services from acting on their underground networks.
What we're seeing with the current fairly widescale open resistence is far beyond anything that happened in Germany.
Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti. There is a free pdf file of it with some searching I know.
Edit: https://welshundergroundnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/blackshirts-and-reds-by-michael-parenti.pdf
Found it. You read this and it's gonna sound a lot like modern day.
Eh, generally not a fan of Parenti, as he gives far too much of a pass to authoritarian marxist-leninists regimes for my comfort.
Thanks for the going through the legwork to share the link, though.
From what I recall from Behind the Bastards, a major part of Hitler's bloc was the upper middle-class. Shopkeepers, factory managers, so on. It basically came down to the opportunity to eliminate wealthy Jews, and taking their stuff - fancy furniture, buildings, their businesses, ect. The destruction of the Jews was a matter of greed that happened to fit hand-in-glove with racist ideology.
The scale of the opposition would be difficult to quantify - the whole reason liberals hand power to fascists in the first place is to violently suppress dissent against the status quo, after all.
Italy gives a clue, however - almost the entire north of Italy was liberated by antifascist Partisan movements (before the US and UK suppressed them, of course.) The same thing happened in Greece - and Greece had turned fascist even before Italy and Germany did.
So yeah... Hitler's (supposed) "popularity" should be viewed with the same suspicion as Putin's.
Fair enough, though I could also see Hitlers public approval rating being real for a few reasons.
I'm not well read enough on Greek or Italian fascism to know if Mussolini or Metaxas were worse at quelling dissent or keeping the non-targeted groups 'happy', but from what I recall of Mussolini, his conquests were far less successful than Hitler's, which may have limited his economic ability to keep people pacified in the same way.
Resistence is too late. There was opposition before the nazis gained power.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichsbanner_Schwarz-Rot-Gold
German site says 2.5 million members were organized mostly by SPD, with 250,000 in the elite units.
They are mentioned as opponents to the SA:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung
Strangely there is no information about the conflicts. This is what I found, on the site of the communist units who also fought the nazis.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roter_Frontk%C3%A4mpferbund
If it is not clear, it's the other way round.
I wasn't aware of the scale of those opposition parties, the Reichsbanner in particular. I also can't really find much info on their conflicts pre-1932, I assume they are only written about in German? Definitely an interesting topic to delve into.
Cheers for sharing the solid research :)
Once white people are getting vanned for lack of patriotic fevour I'm sure Trumps ratings will increase, too.
notably the soviets, but we don't have any equivalent today thats willing to do that.
Germany didn't want to, at least not a majority. Maybe if Germans would have known where it was going (unwinnable war vs all neighbours at once etc), they would have tried early. US Americans have the advantage of this knowledge.
Look where having the advantage of this knowledge got us.
Maybe knowledge is a bit intense for some.
Unfortunately, that knowledge doesn't just help those who wish to fight against it. Those who seek that kind of authoritarian power also were able to learn what worked and what didn't.
They then spent decades patiently cultivating the type of society, through extensive social manipulation that has since been exacerbated thanks to expanding technology, to create the perfect environment for them to try again.
This is all by design of those who hold the levers of industry to further facilitate their concentration of wealth.
LOL 'help'
The Soviets killed 85% of the nazi troops.
The rest was all other countries combined.
And they would've been on the Atlantic in no time without trouble if the allies hadn't come in to take a piece of the European loot.
The nazi's enemy were the communists.
They didn't fight as much against the west which gave them all the chances to surrender and escape punishment.