this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2025
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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!

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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)


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.


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That means 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.

(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Mantic Minotaur" when answering question 2)


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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.



  1. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Greg is gonna shit on the floor when he'll learn that happens everywhere in Europe.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

In socialist Europe, I walk to the groceries, comrade... I take 15min train ride from home to work in the city center... and I wait no longer than 5 minutes on train because that's its frequency.. but I have no car...

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Don't a decent amount of European businesses even do delivery in back by train?

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 14 hours ago

"boss battle"

So fucking cringe.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 17 hours ago

Woke agenda:

Legs, Gondolas, Buses, Trams

[–] [email protected] 83 points 23 hours ago (4 children)

The best is when the grocery stores are so close that you don't need a car or a train. Japan does it right. You can always walk to at least one grocery store.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 13 hours ago

This hillbilly has never been to NYC

[–] [email protected] 26 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah there's this thing called LIGHT RAIL, but even heavy rail, the NYC subway and BART are actually both heavy rail transit systems that one could absolutely casually take to the grocery store.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 18 hours ago

Their real issue is they think they have to travel 20+KM to the closest Walmart every time they want to buy something.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

What if trains weren't slow? 🤔

[–] [email protected] 11 points 17 hours ago (5 children)

Wdym? In what clown world are trains slow?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Me watching the cars crawling on the highway at 120 km/h when I zip by at 330 km/h in my comfortable TGV seat, playing on my Steam Deck.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 hours ago

Amtrak has entered the chat

[–] [email protected] 16 points 16 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

"Oh no! Trust me. Free market capitalism is gonna bring us so much innovation! "

  • brings you broken infrastructure
  • slow trains
[–] [email protected] 6 points 13 hours ago

If I wanted to take the train from my city to NYC, I'd end up spending about as much as a flight and I'd be on the trip for about 34 hours.

Freedom! Prestige!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

They are slower than driving except in peak traffic. Caltrain san Francisco to san Jose is about 2x driving time, and on neither end does the train get you into real downtown. San Jose is close but still a 15 minute walk before you get to anything interesting. Francisco is in a relatively shady area near a stadium, also 15 mins from market.

If you don't have to park, getting to the airport by transit involves switching from Caltrain to BART at a random suburb so as an example San Jose to SFO is 30 mins by car, 1:30 by train. Note the tracks for the Caltrain and Bart are parallel here.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Ah, American trains. Outside of the USA and Canada, trains are fast.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

If you mean to say "trains with high average speeds have high average speeds" I'll agree, but even in countries trying to get faster average speeds it's still relatively new outside of Japan.

There's also cost to consider. You can get a fast train Paris to Berlin and it's 4 hours faster than driving, but costs more than 4x to transport 1 passenger vs a car which can bring 5. The main route is slow, matching the speed of a car. (If you had a family, would you pay 60 euros to drive, 520 euros to train at car speeds, or 932 euros to train faster?)

However the "fast" train is still only reaching normal highway speeds (120-130 kmph) on average...it's just the roads are so bad google is estimating an average car speed of less than 80 kmph which is essentially like...suburb/business area street speed here in this country.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

is the paris-berlin route really that slow?

vienna-munich travels at around 200 km/h...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

I'm cheating slightly because I'm considering distance in terms of the direct train. The other is faster but goes another few hundred km wayyyy out of the way so I'm considering that to be the average speed for comparison purposes.

The other fatal flaw in the analysis is that while gas (actually I used VW+diesel) is pretty flat rate, trains can be cheaper off-peak. But I was mostly looking to confirm that the general economics aren't that different.

Where the us is real dumb is we actually have a shitton of space. Like the whole LA-SF train if we built it would be literally just next to i-5 in the middle of a redneck wasteland....plenty of space to get up to speed, and pretty much no reason to stop between sf and la. But we don't do it because we suck.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

Train should take the German highway to go faster

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I get her point but trams!!!

I think she should see a city with trams and see how useful it is when implemented properly :)))

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[–] [email protected] 129 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Many cities at one time had trolley service which did local point to point connection. Then they were forced out because there was more profit in growing car dependency.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

Fun fact: this is the premise of Who Framed Roger Rabbit

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