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,
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:
- 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
(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
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Do german not see the effects of climate change? Why would they not vote for green party? Germany has faced such harsh weather this year with all sorts of weirdness
Yes climate change all fine and well, but have you actually seen what they want us to do? Ride one of those gay bicycles to work and eat less beef. Next thing you know they want to put up renewable energy wind turbines in my neighborhood, that ruins the pretty landscape! No, I dont want to tighten ecological protections, why do you ask?
Spray that glyphosate-pesticide right into my nostrils, gimme that sweet, sweet cancer!
Guys, is it gay to be strong and be self-reliant by transporting yourself with the power of your muscles?
Well, if you put on a skimpy outfit that emphasises those muscles and smear yourself in oil before going out and self-transport using them, it might be a little bit gay ...
You're confusing transportation with recreation. Real bike-riders wear street clothes.
True: pure Transportation can't really be gay or not be gay as it's orthogonal to the subject of sexuality.
However, nothing stops people from mixing some Recreation into their Transportation if they're willing to lose some efficiency in the latter and I was just imagining how one could possibly do it for making it somehow "gay".
PS: Should I've put an /s in my previous post?
PS: Should I’ve put an /s in my previous post?
Nah, I got it. It's just that even referencing misconceptions (e.g. that cycling is for lycra-clad wannabe-racers) derisively helps spread them, and unlike my previous comment, I couldn't think of a way to rebut this one and be funny at the same time.
In other words, it was really more of a "me" problem: promoting utility cycling is kinda my pet issue. I didn't write it, but this pretty much captures the perspective I'm coming from and how strongly I feel about it.
Well, I too am a great fan of cycling as a normal form of tranportation (and have done it for over a decade in both The Netherlands and the UK).
It's just that the challenge of "how to make cycling gay?" was too good for me to refrain from trying to come up with a "solution" for it ;)
If so I'm all in
In addition to the other comments: Germany has a lot of voters that are like 60+, some of which either don't care too much because they will die long before the worst of climate change happens, or simply don't want to change. Any policies that try to reduce carbon emissions are met with criticism by people not wanting to change their own behavior.
There is a shitton of young people voting for the braindead AfD as well.
Sadly true! It seems their TikTok marketing campaign has paid off. I'm very disappointed by that.
The green party is pretty much the neoliberal party in green paint.
Can't speak for Europe, but Canadian green parties are an uncomfortable split between true-believers that are unfortunately spending more time on identity politics than environmentalism, and hucksters looking to make money off the green movement.
...and honestly they're more of the latter.
That's what happens in liberal democracys. Even the German social democrats are neoliberals. You can also see it in Great Britain with the "labour" party.
Because voting Green would mean that the Greens could and would make decisions that would actually change stuff and therefore would force people to change things in their life and face reality (using cars/flying less, changing your diet, not using gas/oil for heating homes etc.). But people want to carry on like always even if it means they'll literally drown doing it and that's what the fascists (and would-be fascists aka "conservatives" and "liberals") are doing/promising, so that's what people are voting. It's the same as voting for conservatives / liberals after the financial crisis, literally the people who made the mess were told to carry on with it. It's so bizarre.
A coalition of the Green party and two others currently governs the country. The two bigger of those, Green party being one of them, lost a lot of votes, the small one (that's arguably the biggest issue for governing and publicity) didn't.
The green party had a huge success and increase in voters three years ago. But the way it went, the public communication and issues between the three parties, the inflation, and other energy cost increases presumably lead to voters now choosing to vote against them.
The central-right that governed for many years before received most votes. The far right, under institutional observation because of its danger to the constition/opposition to the constitution, had a big increase in voters too. Especially in the eastern states (previously eastern Germany) - traditionally more right-leaning.