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!
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.
ID: A scene from Legally Blonde of a conversation between Warner and Elle in the corridor at Harvard, in 4 panels:
Warner asks "What happened to the tolerant left?"
Elle replies, smiling "Who said we were tolerant?"
Warner continues "I thought you were supposed to be tolerant of all beliefs!"
Elle looks confused "Why would we tolerate bigotry, inequity, or oppression?"
So, people are just powerless to do anything but follow at the call of bigotry & disinformation, and they're witless masses totally unamenable to reason? Got it.
That's a weird example: white supremacists & KKK spoke openly and terrorized with complicit support of local & state authorities during the civil rights movement. Despite that, the civil rights movement prevailed. Without understating the difficulties, challenging reprehensible ideas is evidently possible.
No: association fallacy. Now you're being irrational. You were before, but are now, too. It merely means we disagree, same as rebutting someone who is wrong.
Unless we exterminate them or deport them (where?), I don't see how we do that. Maybe you mean suppress them from freely expressing themselves? Sacrificing any civil rights to achieve any of that is almost certainly an unjust threat to civil rights. Maybe you prioritize civil rights, too, but think sacrificing them is necessary to defend them?
No. We're merely convinced bad causes can be defeated justly, because it's been done before.
Sometimes I wonder if these types of claims discouraging the healthy, open discourse we had decades ago are disinformation designed (1) to make people think the effort is futile and (2) to inflame & harden polarization. Same with comics like this.