this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2025
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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.
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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)
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
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- 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 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).
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The only dangerous minority is the rich.
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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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I think it's important to keep in mind that the "political strategy" aspect of it doesn't really apply since leftists didn't do it and thus had no choice in the matter.
In fact, as far as political strategy goes, the only one on the table appears to be "blame the left for all violence anyway, even blatantly falsely." Strictly from a game theory perspective, if leftists are going to suffer the negative effects anyway, they might as well commit the things they're being accused of so they at least capture the positive effects too.
Fair but I’m speaking to the people who are here saying that we should do more of this kind of thing… perhaps including you? Whether the shooter was or wasn’t a leftist isn’t relevant to that talking point.
I don’t agree with the second statement. Some fools will believe anything but a lot of fence sitters who might defend us may not if we really do what we’re being accused of.
Hoping that the "fence sitters" will ally with us if we "act right" is as perfect of a self-defeating strategem as offing right-wing talking heads all over the place, methinks.
Public opinion matters. You don’t win political struggle without allies, and that means speaking to and persuading people who are not true believers. You don’t have to like it but you are going to have to contend with it.
Or don’t and lose. The left has been great at that for the past 100 years.
Fence sitters are useless allies... at best. When you need them, you'll find them doggedly staying exactly where you found them the first time - on the fence.
At worst...
...you'll discover what the left seemingly has to rediscover over and over again every damn time - fence sitters very rarely sit on the fence because they are undecided. Or, as Malcolm X put it...
I mean fence sitter as in prospective supporters. Not people who are neutral between leftism and fascism (there are few such people).
I’m talking about people who will act as supporters sometimes and not at others. These people possess the vast majority of political power on the left.
What, because your preferred strategy of doing nothing is working so well?
Wake the fuck up.
I didn’t realize the only two options were nothing or pointless acts of impotent violence. Funny, for some reason I thought there were other possibilities but I guess I was mistaken.
You need to wake the fuck up and get serious about political strategy instead of just reacting emotionally to the news. You’re not going to assassinate your way out of this one.