this post was submitted on 06 Nov 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
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,
as well as 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.
7. 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
(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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Revolutionary action is 100% actionable. Always and forever.
Theoretically, but having an actionable idea means to have an idea that you have a plan to put in action. So as always, where is it?
... revolution. That is the idea. We are talking about two completely different things, you expect run-down people to think logically and clearly about something as complex as an alternative*(edit) societal system while actively existing in some of the worst social contexts we've seen in decades, while we are talking about acting in such a manner as to free up the cognitive bandwidth necessary to determine what you demand.
It's like any other toxic relationship, you can't begin to heal until you've exited said relationship.
To clarify, by any means necessary. Start demanding, start opposing, start rallying. Spread the word, keep the reality of things alive in people's awareness, because the natural instinct is to retreat and deny in order to protect oneself, but that's exactly the trap the Right sets and then springs for a massive boost in support from downtrodden, desperate people.
Edit to add: the Right and Capitalism, because they both infiltrate and exist by solving problems they themselves create, thus garnering support through necessity.
You can easily look up the answer to your question by yourself: leftist theory, often in the form of books (or even just watching video essays, listening to podcasts etc. etc.)
You can start over on here https://www.marxists.org/
One could argue that there are too many different socialist approaches to revolution or rather that it's not all that easy finding the correct one to your situation
Additionally, check out the previous revolutions from around the world! Most of them didn't happen on a basis of theory, but of people determined to change their condition.
Take Romania, for example. Sure, that's an example of a revolution which ended up replacing one disaster with another, but even that holds a lesson for us: word-of-mouth is king, don't give into desperation when figuring out the next attempt.