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 never beat them.
The west ensured that Nazism survived, filling the ranks of West Germany's security services with them and then institutionalising fascist terrorist groups all throughout Europe through it's "Gladio" networks. Japan's economy was essentially just handed back to the very same pack of colonialists and industrialists that had fuelled Japan's imperialism in the 20s.
Hell, even the Romanian Communist Party got in on the act - those vicious Iron Guard bastards were just too good at torture and murder to pass up, I guess.
So no... we never beat them.
Maybe it's too pedantic of me but I think we beat them. We failed to fix the corrupted system that spawned them. The inequity and the propaganda, The oligarchs pitting a us against each other. Marginalizing groups as scapegoats.
We (the US) let those little those freedom checks and balances we were touted in school be destroyed with barely a whimper
You're wrong, they did not fail it was intentionally.
US/UK made sure plenty of fascists escaped after surrendering to them.
Kept them in power in all of Europe with a slap on the wrist at most.
How many nazis where trialed at the Nuremberg virtue signaling trials? 24.
NATO literally had fascist regimes in it, Spain, Portugal, Greece.
Even leading NATO/EU and various countries. .
All of this has been swept under the carpet.
https://ebeggin.substack.com/p/ratlines-nato-and-the-fourth-reich
https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2024/01/12/nato-as-seen-from-one-who-grew-up-under-us-sponsored-neofascism-unherd/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB_Gs-0dhOo
Scratch a fascist and a liberal bleeds - see, that's how you can tell that we did not, in fact, defeat the fascists - if we did, liberalism would be dead and buried, too.
Instead, we allowed "liberal democracy" to nurse fascism back to health, hone it's murderousness by using it as a tool of colonialist domination, and pretend to be shocked when these fascists just suddenly show up to protect their precious capitalist status quo back home in the imperial core.
None of that was an accident - when we say fascism is just colonialism coming home to roost we don't mean it figuratively.
Eloquent, but also bull#$%. What would you do? Execute every last person in Germany and Japan to make sure you rooted out the fascists? None of the fasscists that were alive then are in charge of what's going on now. The neofacisct groups have nothing to do with WWII other than they decided to celebrate them. This isn't the problem of an organization allowed to thrive and grow, it's an ideal that's being picked up by people and used as a tool.
Oh, it's "bull#$%," eh?
No, Clyde, I'll tell you what is actually bullshit - people like YOU literally WATCHING both liberals and fascists play their respective parts to protect the status quo right in front of your goddamn eyes and STILL pretending that any of this is some great mystery to you.
That's bullshit.
Hold on, I'm trying to find my tiniest violin while I block you.
You're up for three more years of your liberal overlords pretending to dislike fascists while they tell you to "vote harder" - you might want to save that violin for yourself.
You are doing a fantastic job of pitting one group against another, so apparently knowing the problem doesnt make you immune to it.
LOL, even the Naz!s knew the problem with that! "(c) that non-Germans shall be prohibited by law from participating financially in or influencing German newspapers, and that the penalty for contravening such a law shall be the suppression of any such newspaper, and the immediate deportation of the non-Germans involved. The publishing of papers which are not conducive to the national welfare must be forbidden."
Of course, then they then go too far with: "We demand the legal prosecutions of all those tendencies in art and literature which corrupt our national life, and the suppression of cultural even which violate this demand."