this post was submitted on 31 Jul 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.
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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)
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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.
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as well as condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
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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).
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The only dangerous minority is the rich.
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We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
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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.
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(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
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Showing to us all you haven't studied the figure of Lenin in an honest way in your life.
Lenin dedicated most of his life (in exile from the tsarist regime for doing so) to study, write on, and agitate against, the issues of the masses. He was openly against becoming a personality cult, he maintained his democratic ideals until the moment a civil war broke and terrorist attacks started to kill members of the party and attempted to kill him, and if you read any of his writings it's patently obvious that he's obsessed with the well-being of the working class.
Both Napoleon and Hitler ~~wrote~~ had other people write of them that they had the best intentions for true respective populaces. However in practice it turned out they used them as cannon fodder.
Hitler had famous writings detailing his ragingly racist and antisemitic views, and committed holocaust against specific ethnicities and nationalities out of Aryan-supremacism.
Napoleon was a militarist nationalist whose life was purely a militarist endeavour. He pursued violent expansionism out of patriotic fervor.
Comparing Lenin, a lawyer who escaped the autocratic regime of his homeland and spent a life in exile examining Marxist texts on how to improve the life conditions of people, to either Napoleon or Hitler, shows you have absolutely no idea of the values Lenin valued and promoted, you haven't read one single of his texts, and you're speaking purely out of anti-communist sentiment that's been ingrained in your brain.
I'm not comparing their politics, but making the point that the self proclaimed ideologies of leaders may be embellished or different from the practice.
Saying that Lenin in theory had the week being of people in mind is rather moot if I'm practice he didn't give many shits about the people and only tried clinging to power regardless of the suffering his people went through.
And now you're proving you don't know anything of the history of the russian revolution. The only event you can point of "authoritarianism" during the Russian Revolution and Lenin's life, is the red terror. By any reasonably account, the red terror was very measured and not arbitrarily applied, and it happened in the context of a civil war against monarchists in which 14 nations including England, France, and Italy, sent troops and agitators to the Russian Socialist Federation of Soviet Republics, with numbers comparable to that of the oppression by the republicans towards fascists in the Spanish civil war.
Do you know why you've never heard (unless you're Spanish) condemnation of the repression against fascists during the Spanish civil war? Because the reds lost. The only good leftist for you anticommunists is the leftist who dies to fascism, like Salvador Allende. As soon as a communist revolution triumphs, you declare it a perversion and oppressive regardless of the history.
I know of the Spanish Civil War, I studied history. I'd even identify as leftist. I'm only staunchly anti-authorithorian. Hence me opposing Franco in the Spanish revolution. Just like another person whom you might hate a Eric Arthur Blair (aka George Orwell).
I mean I respect Stalin as a theoretician, but actions speak louder than theory. And like my main point; people's own writings are only maybe proof of intention, but practice shows the commitment to those and most autocrats tend to be quite loose with them.
Now moving the goalposts to Stalin. The great terror was unnecessary, harmful, excessively cruel and unjustified, and overall a disaster that should never have happened.
Ok, now, why did Franco win the war? What if the republicans, instead of "ohhh evil Franco! We got you! Don't try to plot a coup again, ok? Please!", they had actually organized before the coup and repressed the fascists that needed repressing? What if Salvador Allende instead of being just the best democrat, had imprisoned or murdered the fascist opposition? What if we could have avoided decades of fascism as the USSR managed to do? Assuming you support the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, do you realize that you're only supporting the leftists that lose, and that as soon as leftists take control, you categorize it as authoritarian?