ACAB, especially that bastard relative of yours.
The capitalist state and it's forces in the form of Police and Military primarily exist to protect the private property of the rich. All other functions are secondary.
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!
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
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.
The cops are not inherently bad, it's just the system currently encourages and supports bad ones while driving away good ones. Change the system, cops get less bad.
Defunding or otherwise reducing the number of police is just a temporary harm reduction measure, since in a lot of places things are actively worse WITH police (as they stand now) than they would be WITHOUT police. That's not to say things would be great if we permanently abolish police. It's just a choice between two evils and, crazy as it is, actual criminals are the lesser evil in many cases.
Ideally, we would have police, but an entirely different set of police with an entirely different structure supporting them.
For example, make "protect and serve" a job requirement instead of a slogan, end qualified immunity, get rid of grand juries for police, etc
It's true. The good ones get purged and blacklisted, while the bad ones get hired at another station if they get fired for good cause. Just listen to the stories that the actual good cops tell when they're forced out for actually being good.
The system can be fixed, but it would have to be remade from the ground up with a select group of trustworthy people who would have to be very scrupulous about background checks and creating a culture. We might be able to bring in outside consultants from places with better cops, like Europe or Canada.
No. ACAB as long as a state exists. And if there is no state anymore, there also aren't any cops any more.
Executive branch of government will always be corrupt and attract the worst people and reinforce that.