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
If one were to take Russia at face-value, they might lighten up a bit with less NATO.
The US is one of like, what, two countries in the entirety of the UN that haven’t yet ratified ICESCR after 50+ years. So, making some more sense there, too.
I’d not see us leave the UN, though, because then we would truly be screwed. The US would officially no longer embrace human rights, not being a member-state.
But point well taken.
I’d genuinely be right there with you if he came out as 100% in favor of UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Not having that is an automatic disqualifier for me.
The US only embraces human rights of enemy states. We've got more prisoners than any other country and support the worst dictatorships.
Until we ratify the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) in the US, I’m inclined to agree.
If one were to take Russia at face-value, then one would be an idiot that would be shocked once Russia started invading countries like Georgia, Belarus, Hungary, Poland, Finland...
I’ll bite, as one would be an asshole to think one was an idiot for understanding a basic of diplomacy - engage with the opposite side in a constructive manner.
At face-value, recall, Russia is currently explicitly dedicated to being an enemy of the West. Do you want them to always be our enemy?
That's entirely due to Vladimir Putin. Neither Gorbachev nor Yeltsin were 'enemies' of the west. (OTOH, the dismantling of the USSR really could have benefited from some help from the west; the oligarchs and political elites sacked the wealth of the country, which paved the way for Putin.) Capitulating to Putin would not soften his stance; he would still believe that all of the formerly Warsaw-pact countries 'belong' to the United Soviet Socialist Republics. He still believes that sections of Finland that Russia lost in the Continuation War belong to Russia. He still believes that all the Baltic countries belong to the USSR, despite the USSR not having existed for 30-odd years.
NATO is strictly a defensive organization. The NATO agreement is that IF Russia invades any member country, that all NATO signatories will come to the defense of that country. If a signatory invades Russia, then they're on their own. The only think that NATO directly opposes is Russian aggression; all Russia has to do to avoid war with NATO is... Not invade a NATO country.
I appreciate your enthusiasm! You do make solid points, some of which I am well aware of, but as Russia is not a specific area of interest for me, I can’t match your level of enthusiasm.
However, in the interest of the spirit of brotherhood and interestimg conversation, I would ask this of you:
Having been in power for so long and with arguably a strong level of domestic support for decades, isn’t it fair to say that we ought to continue to operate as-if he did speak for the whole country?
Building on that semi-rhetorical question, and especially in regard to your concession that the West could have helped more, and in a larger, more historical perspective, might we perhaps give Russia slight leniency to make minor readjustments to borders, if (hypothetically) the local regions did legitimately vote in agreement?
Recall, being “ethnic Russian” is of key interest and, in my opinion, it might be the case that there are border towns that legitimately prefer to be part of Russia, given their local history, but were never represented properly at the fall of the USSR.
You’ve definitely piqued my interest in the specific mechanism by which the USSR was dismantled.
No argument there. Again, though, I’d ask: when exactly would we start to repair our relationship with Russia by loosening up on them a little?
At this juncture, I presume it would be a long ways away, but one never knows what can come out of diplomatic negotiations, so maybe Ukraine solves the whole thing, if we are lucky.
...That's because every time someone else comes even slightly close to having any kind of popular support, they 'commit suicide', or commit a crime that gets them sent to prison in Siberia. E.g., Alexi Navalny. Moreover, he controls all the media in the country, and has largely managed to cut off significant access to any sources of information from outside the country. So that 'strong level of domestic support' is due to a dearth of options, rather than genuine support.
No. That's like asking if Texas can choose to secede. They can not. Nor can the rest of the US vote to expel Texas without triggering a constitutional crisis. The region belongs to the country first and foremost, before it belongs to the region. Now, if an entire country votes to allow a region of their country to be annexed, then sure. Even if elections in Crimea were free and fair--and the evidence strongly suggests that most of the people voting were coerced--it would need to be all of Ukraine voting to allow the annexation.
There are a lot of "ethnic Italians", and "ethnic Irish" living in the US, and they were badly mistreated during the first part of the 20th C. That wouldn't have given Ireland or Italy the right to invade New York, because, despite their ethnicity, they were Americans. Not Irish citizens, not Italian citizens. And, bluntly, Putin claiming to be concerned about the treatment of ethnic Russians is concern trolling. It was an excuse to invade, just like his claims of de-Nazification. The real issue was that Ukraine had left the USSR when the USSR failed, he wants it back, and any excuse that people can be suckered into buying is good enough for him.
Again: no. You don't improve your relationship with a bully and a criminal by capitulating. They are the one that is acting incorrectly, so it is incumbent on them to improve their own behaviour, rather than the victim accepting a little victimizing.
Like I said, arguably. Show me some data that says that the opposition has grown above 25% (arbitrary, you may understand what I mean) and then I’ll come down on the side that he probably doesn’t speak for the majority of the country.
The only way that they can secede is if we make a constitutional amendment to allow states to secede, yes. Personally, I’d vote for letting Texas secede, if they wanted to.
Now we are seeing eye-to-eye, Helix - that’s pretty much my point. There are diplomatic avenues to solve this problem, so maybe Ukraine can solve the whole thing, in the interest of preventing future wars. I say “solve” in the sense that they may be able to negotiate a plan for how to handle this in the future for the whole old Soviet bloc.
No argument with this paragraph, I agree, in principle.
The whole thing reeks of Putin trolling the West.
Point taken, however, instead of a little victimizing (by way of that hypothetical peaceful path that we outlined earlier) they are now getting a lot of victimizing (vis a vis, death and destruction).
Again, for the sake of argument, assuming that Russia itself was victimized during the fall of the USSR, and assuming that Putin is seeking to redress that, rather than him trying to take over the whole old-bloc, then is there any other peaceful path?
if we assume that he is trying to take over the whole old-bloc, then I’d be entirely in agreement with you on this topic.
I’m just not willing to make blanket assumptions like that - I prefer the probabilistic approach.
Thanks, by the way, for taking the time to discuss this with me. I’ll keep replying if you do.
In 2020, the support for Alexi Navalni was around 20%, which, as the article notes, was despite the fact that all of the available Russian media--which is entirely controlled by the state--demonized him as a traitor to Russia. If you had a reasonably free media in Russia that was free to report on what Putin was really doing, then it seems likely that support would have been higher.
But if opposition leaders keep getting jailed, or commit suicide, every time their public support breaks out of the single digits, then yeah, duh, of course you aren't going to see opposition about 25%.
You're missing the point entirely. Sure, it's not rape if you consent. And you can stop a rape that's already happening by saying, okay, sure, I consent to this. But, really...? That's the direction you want to go here? Russia could also stop this at any time just by pulling troops out, and giving Ukraine it's own land and kidnapped people back. Russia can prevent future wars by, I dunno not invading other countries. Why should it be the responsibility of the victim to negotiate with the aggressor?
Russia was victimized by Russians. Not by the west, not by Ukraine. These are all self-inflicted wounds, not some grand conspiracy by The West. The former Soviet states didn't want to be Soviet states, because the Soviet government had always been complete dogshit. When the USSR broke up, the politically powerful and connected systematically looted the country of wealth; it wasn't western governments and companies that looted the country. So if Putin wants to fix that, he needs to fix his shit, not blame everyone else for the problems that Russia created for itself. But that's not what he's been doing; he's trying to mask internal problems by claiming that it's an external enemy.