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!
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.
Good thing we (the US) lost the war, or this lady would probably have her own team of lobbyists running their country.
If child predators get executed, I don't lose "a bit of my soul", I gain more confidence that the world is now a better place.
Oh word? Did the horrific thing they did no longer happen?
Child predators have recidivism rates of 10-35% depending on which studies you're reading. Each one of those assaults is a potentially life-altering trauma induced in a child. Exactly how many should someone be able to do before we consider they're not going to be rehabilitated?
Don't tell me what being abused as a child does to someone, thanks.
Does killing the person who did it make the assault not have happened?
It's not just about the assault that happened, it's also about the risk of considerable harm in the future. Killing someone for one act of sexual predation is going to be considered extreme by many but not all people. But what happens after the second or third times? How many is too many?
A single state murder is too many. Full stop.
Add into that how you've just given child abusers incentive to murder their victims and scared children out of informing on a family member for which the death of whom they do not wish to be responsible.
But what kind of fucked up society can only stop anti-social behavior through murdering its perpetrators?
Of course it doesn’t, that’s such a condescending question.
The obvious response is that the perpetrator has a 0% chance of reoffending if they’re executed and that does carry weight with a lot of people.