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
view the rest of the comments
This has so completely disappeared from discourse over the past four years. I remember when it used to be that "building the wall" was stupid at best and bigoted at worst. But now, it's all, "Of course we agree that we need a strong border, but we're the ones who will actually do it, Trump's all talk."
It's always the Republicans that get to set which values and goals the country persues, while the Democrats just run on pragmatism and efficiency. It's like they're allergic to making moral claims.
It's because it's a one-party system masquerading as a two-party system.
Oh, oh no, no no no no no, No. this isn’t a one party system, this is something far worse, this is what comes exactly right before a one party system. That is a two radicalized polarized adversarial party system. One must go but neither will leave willingly, there is more concentration of money and power in these two parties than possibly any other group on earth and maybe through out all history, make no mistake the only thing that will hold the country back from civil war is the Bomb, and that is only a maybe.
We might not quite be that bad yet but all the peaces are in place and adversarial moves are already being made.
it's really not one party.
To be clear we have one party, that is effectively fascist, and another party that is, center left/right and very moderate.
Two parties, one donor class.
well yes, people are the one species with money, so that does apply. (yes it's a rich people meme i know, that is a big problem)
If we're breaking it down this significantly there is no politics, merely the human hierarchical structure of control.
I'd love to hear the perspective where this makes sense.
the animal kingdom.
Animals fight and kill eachother over territorial disputes regularly.
Humans have done this since the beginning of human society. Technology arguably only exists as an extension of being able to kill other people more effectively. Politics is just a mechanism for directing and organizing the effectiveness of modern human society in order to best defend it's values and resources.
TL;DR given the ability to influence and control things, humans (or animals) will take the opportunity to do so. Everything around you is just an extension of this ability.
An important party of governing is listening to constituents. They border is the second highest concern of voters (behind the economy) and an overwhelming majority want stricter border controls. Being a good public servant involves listening to the public.
So, the Democrats don't listen to the majority of voters when they want free education, Medicare for All, or an arms embargo on Israel, but when it comes to stricter border controls, they're all ears for some reason.
well there's a really obvious reason for this one.
Currently the border asylum processing chain is incredibly swamped, up the point of multiple years of backlog, which is why temporary status citizens are a thing. Though not to the same degree as the UK. The whole point behind border control and immigration policy is to fix this problem, actually push the asylum cases for these people through, and get them real citizenship (or not, and get rid of them, that's how it works.)
This is arguably a human rights issue.
we have free state education, primary education only though. Republicans want to get rid of this, i don't think you'll see kamala harris saying she doesn't want it. Though free secondary education is obviously the implication here, i figure it's worth pointing out.
biden has done numerous things for healthcare in his term. Same for obama, though again, not universal socialized healthcare, so not really the implication but it's worth noting.
i'm not going to talk much about this because i keep getting banned over these topics for some reason. But idk how much popular support there is for this one, i haven't looked at polling, i wouldn't be surprised if it was a popular position though. That very well might be the case, however if you're asking why the US is supporting Israel, the answer is that it's militarily strategic. That's the unfortunate but real answer there.
Wait, yous don’t even have free secondary school? I know America has an infamously terrible tertiary education sector, but I thought high schools were publicly funded at least.
no, elementary through highschool is state provided, k-12 as it's referred to. College/university (the same thing here mostly) are not and are private institutions separate from the government.
High school is considered primary education here. (at least by me, take it with a grain of salt)
Ah, right. So, this terminology is actually pretty standardised and high school is secondary education, with primary school naturally being...primary education. Though there is a little ambiguity around the edges, for example:
It's of particular note because the phrase "tertiary education" universally refers to post-school education like university or technical colleges, and it wouldn't make sense to have tertiary education if there was no secondary.
yeah idk i consider k-12 to be primary, and then college/university to be secondary education.
It's bc the Republicans are fear mongering about the border 24/7
Great example of manufactured consent
Which polls show an "overwhelming majority" want stricter borders? Source please.
Tbh I expect that some people are more hawkish on the border now than before because the Democrats switched tacts, and not the other way around, but regardless I haven't seen any evidence that shows what you're claiming.
https://www.realclearpolling.com/stories/analysis/poll-shows-support-for-stricter-immigration-measures
Polls do show a majority is in favour of some currently proposed border measures. "Overwhelming" is a bit much, but that might refer to people in favour of a stricter border policy but not necessarily in favour of the currently proposed measures.
Source please to show they don't.
The burden of proof is on the person making the claim. I have made no particular claims about how popular or unpopular immigration is.
Source please what burden of proof is