this post was submitted on 20 May 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)
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.
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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.
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Isn't that the point of the meme? Leftists can share 94% of views, but if they disagree on one thing they are treated as the worst enemy, rather than the people who share 0% of the same views.
Correct, if those differences are irreconcilable. I can ally with lefties that want slightly different things, but "America is evil therefore Stalin wasn't that bad" is not someone grounded in reality.
Don't take this as Stalin defending, but if you are trying to accomplish movements to the Left and both Person A and Person B want Worker Ownership of the Means of Production, and Person C wants literal fascism, is Person B being a Stalin defender worth creating a 3 way battle when people who identify with C far outnumber A and B combined currently? That seems to go against what is strategically necessary in the US, at least.
I think it's more important to build a cohesive worker movement that's as large as possible before we move on to discussing Marxism vs Anarchism vs some other flavor of Leftism, at least in the US.
History shows that allying with authoritarians rarely works out for those who don't want authoritarianism.
They're the same picture /s
But seriously, the only reason Stalin's USSR wasn't "fascist" is because fascism is explicitly a right aligned ideology, but it was essentially fascist in practice. His whole thing was totalitarian rule and blaming enemies of the state for any shortcomings, which is just fascism with a coat of paint.
Those things people disgree on are entire political axioms, so yes it is much bigger than a meme. Tankies think strong men are a good thing, which should be antithetical to anyone with the faintest hint of actual big boy anarchy in their politics. Worshiping leaders OR positions is literally and directly antithetical to MUCH of the left.
OFC there will be infighting when most people don't even understand what the left stands for. IMO, we shouldn't even dignify tankies and other strong-men liking idiots with a label anywhere close to "left". They're just idiot fascists wearing a different coat to try and fit in.