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
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Whom did he genocide according to you? And I guess you're against the worker-councils that made an incredible amount of the decisions in the RSFSR and the early USSR?
I've very much heard of the red terror, i.e. the internal response of the Bolsheviks in the RSFSR to the civil war against Tsarism and their allies. It was very restrained in numbers (nothing like the Stalinist terror), can be very well compared to the oppression within republican Spain in the Spanish civil war against fascism, both in scope and in numbers. I wonder why people never criticise the latter... Oh right, because they lost against fascists, and the only acceptable leftist movements in the west, are those that fail, like Spanish Second Republic, Mosaddegh, Salvador Allende...
What you anticommunists can't stand isn't the red terror, but the fact that for once, the leftists used the means they needed to use in order to secure a victory against fascism
Wait, you're telling me that the people from the 20th century who were on the receiving end of Tsarist oppression, when they got power and saw Tsarism rear its head in a civil war, were at times cruel against Tsarists? Wow, who would have thunk. Very easy recipe for not being tortured by the Cheka for being a fascist: don't be a fascist.
In places where leftists didn't oppress the fascists, like Chile under Salvador Allende or Spain during the Spanish Second Republic, the fascists gained control and then did tenfold the torture and murder, not just to their ideological enemies but to entire ethnicities. You don't fight fascism with flowers and votes, I hope once and for all people will understand this.