this post was submitted on 28 Oct 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, 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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Jerkoff (vegantheoryclub.org)
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by hamid@vegantheoryclub.org to c/leftymemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
 
all 49 comments
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[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 53 points 7 months ago (2 children)

How I feel is the CIA overthrew a left-leaning democratic government in my country because it threatened to close down a CIA base. That's not tanky.

[–] Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world 10 points 7 months ago

Sadly america seems to have way too much power over Australia.

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 40 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I hate the people who can't stop licking the boots of Stalin's corpse, but I also hate the idea that America is always good and moral. The CIA is fucking evil, end of story. If they told me the sky was blue I'd double check before I "suddenly committed suicide with 3 shots in the back of the head".

Tankies suck shit, but they are (often, not always) right about how America is fundamentally not always correct.

[–] WarmApplePieShrek@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Tankies take it so far, they think because America is evil, if you hate America, then you are good. This is how they support people like Hitler and Stalin.

[–] alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Stalin I get, but I have yet to see a revisionist (read Dengist or "ML" larper) who defends fascist Germany

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 7 points 7 months ago

This is how they support people like Hitler

Citation really fucking needed.

[–] SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world 37 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The A in CIA stands for anarchist.

[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 17 points 7 months ago (1 children)

C is for practically Community-ist

[–] RamblingPanda@lemmynsfw.com 20 points 7 months ago

The H stands for humanitarian.

[–] SARGE@startrek.website 34 points 7 months ago (1 children)

He's right about one thing, the CIA (probably) isn't "as bad as tankies say"

It's (probably) MUCH worse.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 34 points 7 months ago

That's the thing with tankies. They're wrong about communism, but right about capitalism.

[–] sepi@piefed.social 23 points 7 months ago (2 children)

bro wtf did the Culinary Institute of America do?

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Culturally appropriate other countries' cuisine.

[–] Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee 4 points 7 months ago

Cultural appropriation - the addition of high fructose corn syrup

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 7 months ago

Honestly though... unironically, this is my favorite part about America lol

[–] Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 7 months ago

Gordon Ramsdeeznuts.

[–] Commiunism@lemmy.wtf 21 points 7 months ago

"This comment was paid for by the Central Intelligence Agency of USA."

[–] merthyr1831@lemmy.ml 20 points 7 months ago

"I am a black man and Obama has done nothing to help me" moment

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 20 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

The thing is, the CIA might be as villainous as tankies think it is, but it’s far less competent. They see spooks in every shadow but many, perhaps even most CIA programs have been abject failures. Not everything wrong with the world can be attributed to the CIA, influential as they may be.

I think it the tankie mythos around them actually makes them more powerful.

[–] Mac@mander.xyz 14 points 7 months ago

I'm sure they would love for everyone to think they're useless failures and look away from the laundry list of fucked up yet known operations that have been successful.

[–] alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

It's just that the CIA did sooo many fucking atrocities, that quite a few of them (most notably experiments and their silly stuff like trying to murder Castro) turned out to be failures.

And during the Cold War the CIA was some axis of evil shit. Any time some leftists came to power in the US's "backyard" (read the Americas and Caribbean. but tbh most of the world), you would either see a fascist coup or some other attempt to delegitimise them...

Guess who trained the mujahedeen in Afghanistan and the contras in Nicaragua, and gave money, resources and guidance to the fascist military in Chile? (just some historic examples)

Nowadays you still have the same shit but less. Especially in the US's "backyard". Like Bolivia a few yes ago bc they wanted to nationalise their resources (most notably lithium mines)

But a lot of the time the CIA just makes the preparatory work for US Invasion (Grenada, Iraq and Afghanistan to give some examples)

[–] alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

It's kind of interesting how under an anti-CIA post, some of the first associations ppl make is "man the USA is bad but have you heard of them tankies? I hate those ppl"

Like no one even said anything about revisionists or wannabe MLs lol.
The word tankie doesn't even mean anything anymore

[–] bl_r@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 7 months ago

The CIA stands for Communist Insurrectionary Anarchism

[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 16 points 7 months ago

Counterpoint, this isn't even an opinion. This is like magnetic poetry tiles after a dog tried to climb the fridge

[–] Dippy@beehaw.org 15 points 7 months ago (1 children)

As an actual anarcho communist, I know that the only difference between the CIA and your local neighborhood tankie is that the tankie has no access to power, large sums of money, or the ability to achieve violence.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 2 points 7 months ago

Debatable, but you need to know Russian or Mandarin to find a true believer with power.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 15 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

This guy's a CIA special operative planted to fool Reddit: Kanye-No.jpg

This guy's a high school student who just aced his US History AP exam: Kanye-Yes.jpg

"America is the greatest, bestest, most amazing country in the whole world" is straight out of the course material. You don't need to be a double-secret super spy to post it.

[–] FreshLight@sh.itjust.works 12 points 7 months ago

I feel like a CIA wrote this.

[–] tfw_no_toiletpaper@lemmy.world 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Imagine trying to glow on a website with like 20 users

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] tfw_no_toiletpaper@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Oh shit you're right, I'm dumb

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 months ago

No you're not. Be kind to yourself.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

That's about as strong an "argument" as saying that the NAZIs were socialists because their party name included the word Socialist.

[–] carl@chaos.social 2 points 7 months ago

@hamid Each time I read about a discovery of natural riches anywhere in the world I think to myself "O dear, I hope this poor country can keep the riches for itself and has not brought 'democracy (tm)' and 'freedom (tm)' by the US upon them!"

[–] rad@todon.eu 1 points 7 months ago

@hamid

*screams as liberal democrat pinochet throws them out of a helicopter, therefore is unable to make a sound comment*