this post was submitted on 19 May 2026
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Lefty Memes
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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of "ML" (read: Dengist) influence. 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, discussion and agitprop/stuff that's better fit for a poster than a meme go in c/Socialism.
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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. Please post agitprop here)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Use alt text or image descriptions to allow greater accessibility
(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)
We require alternative text (from now referred to as "alt text") to be added to all posts/comments containing media, such as images, animated GIFs, videos, audio files, and custom emojis.
EDIT: For files you share in the comments, a simple summary should be enough if they’re too complex.
We are committed to social equity and to reducing barriers of entry, including (digital) communication and culture. It takes each of us only a few moments to make a whole world of content (more) accessible to a bunch of folks.
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0.5.1 Style tip about abbreviations and short forms
When writing stuff like "lol" and "iirc", it's a good idea to try and replace those with their all caps counterpart
- ofc => OFC
- af = AF
- ok => OK
- lol => LOL
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- bs => BS
- iirc => IIRC
- cia => CIA
- nato => Nato (you don't spell it when talking, right?)
- usa => USA
- prc => PRC
- etc.
Why? Because otherwise (AFAIK), screen readers will try to read them out as actually words instead of spelling them
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That means condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
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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" (read: Dengists) (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).
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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)
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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.
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Almost alwaya. Not that anyone ever ASKED my consent.
More often than not.
The kinds of people who will actually read any sort of book probably like to either challenge themselves or want knowledge presented efficiently, if they don't just want a good grade in communism. All of those would motivate you to read something a little more exciting than 'good things good sometimes bad things bad sometimes: the book'. Challenge is not insult, fight me bitch.
They want knowledge presented efficiently, yes, and presenting knowledge efficiently means speaking to people in language that doesn't get in the way of the ideas to those who are new to them. Academic language is a skill. That skill shouldn't be presented as a barrier to learning about how the working class deserves more. Hell you can recommend people read theory that does speak to them in more common language. The Black Panthers were really good at speaking to people where they were. David Graeber also was excellent at it.
But why do people read any given text? Because they've been given a reason to want to. A podcaster got me started on my recent Graeber binge, and I excited by and enjoying the books convinced some friends to add one to their lists, as well as me talking about what I liked about and found fascinating in these books here on lemmy. Now I'm in the middle of some fiction unrelated to all of it because those friends recommended it to me.
"Go read theory" is brushing people off and cannot be expected to produce the result of them actually reading anything. "Hey, I'm not really doing my position justice in this discussion, if you'd like a much better argument read X by Y, it's where I got a lot of these ideas, I found it really illuminating" is a much more effective means of getting someone to read.
There are plenty of challenging books to read. I don't know many people who read books because they know they'll be challenging, especially as throughout this discussion challenging has both meant "ideas that challenge one's views and reshape them" and "ideas presented in a way that is challenging".
The former is generally positive. Many people can enjoy such things whether it's in a book (ideal as it can go into a level of depth other media struggle with, but also is the least easy to get people on board with because of the time investment), a discussion with someone they're comfortable listening to, a zine, a podcast, or whatever else. Hell LeGuinn was great at using fiction for it.
The latter meaning of challenging however has upsides and downsides. It may add precision and complexity at the cost of legibility. When legibility is lost many walk away. It takes more effort to get to the dang ideas in the first place. This is especially the case with academic language, which many aren't familiar and comfortable with.
Presenting old ideas in a newer and easier to access way is good. It's a role that on the left spent far too long as the domain of zines and not much else.
When people feel they're supposed to read a book because it's important they put it off indefinitely. Reading it can feel like homework. If you want people to understand theory you need to help get everything but the ideas out of the way of the ideas and get them interested in knowing more. When they want more then you can spring a book with a painfully 19th century academic title on them, then they may actually read it.