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)
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
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Having grown up in evangelical Christianity, I don’t quite understand the attack on liberals here?
Zionism is a major part for the conservative manifesto to create the New Jerusalem to bring forth the return of Jesus. Evangelicals view Jews as reluctant Christians yet to accept their king.
Liberals support Israel because of Cold War propaganda labeling. That evolved into the good guys versus terrorism propaganda we have now, which blinded us to things like stealing land, the blockade, interfering in elections, and indefinite detainment without charges or trial. It was all hand waived because "terrorists". But in reality it was the only way left for them to try to defend their sovereignty.
It has been a political wedge issue used as a weapon by conservatives. Liberal buy-in to zionism is its primary support system.
lefties love to hate on liberals for whatever reason. Even though the definition of liberal is not very specific and encompassing.
I still haven't quite figured out why. Idk if people just don't broadly understand the definition of liberalism in a political context, or if it's just "hurr durr not lefty bad" shenanigans.
on another note, if anybody in the comments has any expansive explanation to this, please, indulge my curiosity.
Liberals are right-winger in most of the world. Only backward countries like britain still have conservative. We had the intelligence of shooting them a long time ago,
really? I guess it might be different in the US, but liberalism here in the US is primarily governmental, you can be liberal governmentally, and socially progressive for example. Liberalism here in the US pretty much amounts to the founding ideas of the US government, so it makes sense it would still be around in some capacity today.
In the U.S., it's from anger at the Democratic party. Mostly anger at, "when they go low, we go high," "reach across the aisle," "we need a strong Republican party," tolerance paradox, and that kind of stuff. Liberal economics isn't really compatible with leftism either.
i can understand that, but that's not really liberalism, as far as it should be defined anyway. Granted the dem party has a significant overlap with liberalism so there is that.
as far as economics i'm not really sure, i guess i just don't know much about lefty economics outside of the fact that people seem to hate everything, which is definitely one of the choices of all time. Although liberal economics has a pretty broad definition, considering it goes through like 200 years of history up until today.
I think it's American rugged individualism, conservatives have an easy time agreeing on binary decisions (women's rights bad, science bad, immigrants bad, etc) whereas anything progressive requires complications solutions and problem definitions. In that there are many right answers, and liberals seem willing to be more angry with someone 95% in agreement with them rather than the people trying to drag the country backwards.
this confuses me a little bit, but i think i understand where you're coming from. Liberalism by nature values variation in ideas and discussion surrounding them, so it would make sense you would end up debating across lines more frequently. Although i'm not really sure what the first part is about. I think even if true, you would still find a large majority of liberal people willing to work with more progressive people given a common shared goal. In fact i tend to find at least here on lemmy, that lefties tend to be more fractural than any other group of people (just look at all the election discussion and people yelling at each other about things, man vs bear etc)
i guess you could say the dissenting opinions are liberal, but i wouldn't really agree with that on face value. I think a correct way of characterizing it would be that liberals are more willing to disagree with someone, and argue about things, but are also more willing to tolerate variance of viewpoints as well.
i will agree with the tidbit about progressive solutions being more complex and problematic, i think that's a broader issue present among social progressivism right now. We can accomplish the same goals with simpler solutions, and i think that would be an arguably better path forward. For the most part at least.
It's the new wrench to move the ratchet
I'm gonna invent my own political ideology ("I am not altogether on anybody's side, because nobody is altogether on my side" and all that) and call it responsibilitarianism. OK, the word kinda defeats it alone. Point being that a political structure is as good as the fullness and equality of responsibility for its citizens.
i would argue that american liberalism has been pretty successful historically, though it's had rough times over the years, we are a new nation, so that is to be expected. And a lot of those were fairly global at one point.
So i'm not really sure i follow the inability of it to function in society. Although i don't think liberalism functions properly in society primarily because people are improperly using it, and then getting surprised when it doesnt work.
also this is a fairly strict way of defining a political ideology, the most broad way to define it would be "a governmental form of societal cohesion to promote function as a unit towards a common goal" There are broader ways to define it, but you start getting outside of politics at that point, and into society at large.
Not really.
My point was that liberalism functions pretty similarly to monarchy or and kind of tyranny when those conditions about responsibility are not met.
Not a new idea too, digging through treasure troves of antique literature one can find it said many times. Not just equality, but fullness of responsibility. You can lay down the responsibility for your existence and actions.