this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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Lefty Memes

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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

Version without spoilers

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.



  1. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:

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[–] solarvector@lemmy.zip 59 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Wtf is a "vulgar sense of entitlement"? And how can that possibly apply to a government agency? This is just word salad from the conservative talking points generator.

[–] AnarchoSnowPlow@midwest.social 26 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Worse.

"Vulgar sense of entitlement" - you think you deserve more than I think you do and it is viscerally disgusting to me.

In context - "You think we shouldn't be able to coup your government/group because we don't know better what you need than you do and that viscerally disgusts me."

ETA: the "woke" bit is fun too because it adds a layer of racism to this seven layer shit salad.

[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 33 points 4 months ago (2 children)

The CIA's ability to SUCCESSFULLY coop a government has been greatly exaggerated by... the CIA. Seriously, think of how many times they failed at killing Castro.

[–] TargaryenTKE@lemmy.world 12 points 4 months ago

They definitely deserve flak for TRYING to overthrow sovereign governments, but you're right in that the vast majority of their attempts failed spectacularly

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 9 points 4 months ago (2 children)
  • Syria, 1949
  • Egypt 1952 (possibly—at the very least prior knowledge of the coup)
  • 1952 Iran
  • 1954 Guatemala
  • 1960 Laos
  • 1961 Dominic Republic
  • 1965 Indonesia
  • 1973 Chile
  • 1975 Australia (this one's the most controversial on the list because of the US's long friendly relationship with the country. If the CIA was involved, it was by encouraging the abuse of existing constitutional powers rather than a direct military coup as in most examples.)

That's just a list of successful coups I could find quickly on Wikipedia that were clearly backed by the CIA during the Cold War. There were other failed attempts, including multiple 1950s in Syria and Indonesia and, yes, Cuba. And other successful coups where the US was definitely involved but it's not clear to me from a cursory look that it was via the CIA specifically, like 1971 Bolivia and 1976 Argentina. And there have obviously been CIA actions in the time since.

I think the key fact is that in almost no cases did the CIA singlehandedly do a coup. They supported people on the ground who already wanted to do a coup to make their attempted coup more likely to succeed, and to ensure that they'd be friendly to the US afterwards if they did succeed.

[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

This is one of those topics that Wikipedia really shouldn't be used for.

The coups that the US has involved themselves with that succeed, succeed because they were supported by the people. Lazerpig goes over it in his How to kill a God. The video started as a commentary on the Putin Carlson interview, but expands into a debunking of Color Revolutions.

[–] Ghyste@sh.itjust.works 25 points 4 months ago
[–] lurch@sh.itjust.works 20 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

they like to twist good things around and make them sound bad. every normal person sees right through it.

i remember when snowflake meant unique and beautiful.

[–] SoyViking@hexbear.net 7 points 4 months ago

Why are our tools of imperial enforcement no longer working as they used to? Could it be because they are wielded by the failsons of failsons who have steeped in imperial propaganda for so long that they actually believe it?

Nah... It must be the pronouns.

[–] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 7 points 4 months ago

CIA: Assad must go

[–] fossphi@lemm.ee 2 points 4 months ago

I see this as an absolute win

[–] I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Is this referring to Bolivia? Because that was almost definitely orchestrated by the current Bolivian president for political points and had nothing to do with the CIA.

[–] dactylotheca@suppo.fi 2 points 4 months ago

Could be, the time does look approximately right since it's from 26.6.

Frankly it's hilarious how people especially on the more, er… fringe side of the leftist spectrum seem to think that the CIA is behind everything. Feels like for some people spilling their coffee means that it happened because the CIA made the floor slippery. Also every time a country like eg. Ukraine decides they'd very much like to not have a brutal Russian-controlled puppet government, or there's anything even resembling a coup in South America, it's somehow the CIA's doing.

And no, I'm not saying the CIA hasn't ever done anything nefarious or won't do so in the future; they've definitely done a lot of nasty shit in their time, but they also tended to overstate their own importance and success a lot.