this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
302 points (95.5% liked)

Lefty Memes

4263 readers
583 users here now

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:

(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
top 49 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 1 points 20 hours ago

@hamid Each time I read about a discovery of natural riches anywhere in the world I think to myself "O dear, I hope this poor country can keep the riches for itself and has not brought 'democracy (tm)' and 'freedom (tm)' by the US upon them!"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 23 hours ago

@hamid

*screams as liberal democrat pinochet throws them out of a helicopter, therefore is unable to make a sound comment*

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 days ago

"I am a black man and Obama has done nothing to help me" moment

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I hate the people who can't stop licking the boots of Stalin's corpse, but I also hate the idea that America is always good and moral. The CIA is fucking evil, end of story. If they told me the sky was blue I'd double check before I "suddenly committed suicide with 3 shots in the back of the head".

Tankies suck shit, but they are (often, not always) right about how America is fundamentally not always correct.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Tankies take it so far, they think because America is evil, if you hate America, then you are good. This is how they support people like Hitler and Stalin.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

This is how they support people like Hitler

Citation really fucking needed.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Stalin I get, but I have yet to see a revisionist (read Dengist or "ML" larper) who defends fascist Germany

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

It's kind of interesting how under an anti-CIA post, some of the first associations ppl make is "man the USA is bad but have you heard of them tankies? I hate those ppl"

Like no one even said anything about revisionists or wannabe MLs lol.
The word tankie doesn't even mean anything anymore

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

How about "selfish accelerationist asshole larping communism to advocate for imperialisms that aren't the West's"?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

this feels like it encompasses the phenomenon pretty well

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

That's one of the few good definitions tbh

However, most of the time liberals or so called social democrats/democratic socialists just say 'tankie' to everyone to the left of them

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

To be honest, I only see this in posts like oop, where it's clear that it's astroturfed. Maybe it's the circles that I am in, but every time I see the word used in a wild, it's always used more or less correctly

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

rly? From my perception it's a rare case that it's used coherently.
And as I said more often than not, just as a "someone to the left of me" or "someone I don't like"- type slur

[–] [email protected] 50 points 3 days ago (2 children)

How I feel is the CIA overthrew a left-leaning democratic government in my country because it threatened to close down a CIA base. That's not tanky.

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

Sadly america seems to have way too much power over Australia.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

As an actual anarcho communist, I know that the only difference between the CIA and your local neighborhood tankie is that the tankie has no access to power, large sums of money, or the ability to achieve violence.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Debatable, but you need to know Russian or Mandarin to find a true believer with power.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I'm an anarchist as any but I support [NATION STATE IN THE MIDDLE OF A MILITARIZED WAR FOR PROFIT]

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 days ago

I'm an anarchist but I support [THE BIGGEST NATION-STATE AND ITS ACTIONS 100% WITHOUT A SECOND THOUGHT]

It's like a parody of how hexbear thinks we are.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago

If I see anything less than five politically correct flag-emojis in your profile name, I'm not going to take you seriously.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 days ago (1 children)

He's right about one thing, the CIA (probably) isn't "as bad as tankies say"

It's (probably) MUCH worse.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 days ago

That's the thing with tankies. They're wrong about communism, but right about capitalism.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 days ago (2 children)

bro wtf did the Culinary Institute of America do?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Culturally appropriate other countries' cuisine.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

Cultural appropriation - the addition of high fructose corn syrup

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Honestly though... unironically, this is my favorite part about America lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Gordon Ramsdeeznuts.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago

I feel like a CIA wrote this.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The A in CIA stands for anarchist.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 days ago (1 children)

C is for practically Community-ist

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 days ago

The H stands for humanitarian.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago

"This comment was paid for by the Central Intelligence Agency of USA."

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

The thing is, the CIA might be as villainous as tankies think it is, but it’s far less competent. They see spooks in every shadow but many, perhaps even most CIA programs have been abject failures. Not everything wrong with the world can be attributed to the CIA, influential as they may be.

I think it the tankie mythos around them actually makes them more powerful.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago

I'm sure they would love for everyone to think they're useless failures and look away from the laundry list of fucked up yet known operations that have been successful.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

It's just that the CIA did sooo many fucking atrocities, that quite a few of them (most notably experiments and their silly stuff like trying to murder Castro) turned out to be failures.

And during the Cold War the CIA was some axis of evil shit. Any time some leftists came to power in the US's "backyard" (read the Americas and Caribbean. but tbh most of the world), you would either see a fascist coup or some either attempt to delegitimise them...

Guess who trained the mujahedeen in Afghanistan and the contras in Nicaragua, and gave money, resources and guidance to the fascist military in Chile? (just some historic examples)

Nowadays you still have the same shit but less. Especially in the US's "backyard". Like Bolivia a few yes ago bc they wanted to nationalise their resources (most notably lithium mines)

But a lot of the time the CIA just makes the preparatory work for US Invasion (Grenada, Iraq and Afghanistan to give some examples)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

the CIA is the reason the third world adopts neoliberalism thats so bad for ourselves. western imperialism is what keeps the third world fucked, we are still rich as fuck in natural resources.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 days ago

The CIA stands for Communist Insurrectionary Anarchism

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

This guy's a CIA special operative planted to fool Reddit: Kanye-No.jpg

This guy's a high school student who just aced his US History AP exam: Kanye-Yes.jpg

"America is the greatest, bestest, most amazing country in the whole world" is straight out of the course material. You don't need to be a double-secret super spy to post it.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago

Counterpoint, this isn't even an opinion. This is like magnetic poetry tiles after a dog tried to climb the fridge

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

anarchist being favorable to the CIAs regime changes is very telling.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

no real-world anarchist will do that. Unfortunately there is a bunch of online liberal larpers who just like the aesthetic

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

yeah i noticed this trend of 'anarchist' libs on lemmy.

and thats cool and all but at least read the damn books instead of assuming what it is.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago

Very telling of reddit bullshit. Anarchists I know in the real world are hiding aliens and are fully anticolonial.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Imagine trying to glow on a website with like 20 users

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Oh shit you're right, I'm dumb

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

No you're not. Be kind to yourself.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

That's about as strong an "argument" as saying that the NAZIs were socialists because their party name included the word Socialist.