this post was submitted on 02 Oct 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.
Agitprop (I.E. everything that would be more fitting on a poster than a meme) goes here.
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. 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.
When alt text is absent, a reminder will be issued. If you don't add the missing alt text within 48 hours, the post will be removed. No hard feelings.
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
- bc => BC
- 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
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 irrationally 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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We know the trouble. The solution seems to be the main point of contention.
Some people think that voting lesser evil buys us time to organize so we can take actions designed to establish a system conducive to more viable options.
Some people think that refusing to vote lesser evil will magically make things better somehow. Idk, the logic for this one is pretty pants-on-head.
the pants-on-head thinking is still believing that voting the lesser evil will buy time when decades of taking this course have proved that the time that is bought is always wasted.
Do you not see the glaring irony of that statement? We wouldn't have had those decades without the lesser evil, we'd have gotten to where we are now 20 years ago.
What exactly do you suggest? Greater evil? A wasted performative vote? A revolution made up of millions of people who don't have the organization to vote strategically, but are nonetheless willing to sacrifice their lives in violent uprising?
What's your plan?
Neither option will make things better.
Things will suck until we die and there’s nothing we can do about it.
I banish thee, doomer god. Self-defeatism is counterproductive. We can do something about it, it's merely a question of will.
We won’t. We never do. Or if we do it makes more and worse problems.
People are awful and will never not be.
Yeah, just look at how literally everything has gotten progressively and inexorably worse since the Bronze Age, where median life expectancy was 18 years of age, 90% of the world was illiterate and owned at most one complete set of clothing, women would either give birth to seven kids not counting stillbirths and see only three survive long enough to learn how to walk and talk, or else just die in childbirth and not see anything ever again, polio, measles and tuberculosis killed millions despite all the goats and witches that were sacrificed to the gods to spare us, people owned slaves, and daughters were sold into marriage at 9 years old with 50-year-old men they never met!
Oh and there was no ice cream.
Yep, we've been going downhill nonstop. You're absolutely right to be so pessimistic.
Yes but how much better was it before humans?
And I agree that we have created more and worse problems since we killed 95% of males after we developed agriculture.
Now we can kill the biosphere in multiple fun ways, and are the cause of at least one mass extinction so far.
Like I said, no ice cream.
I don’t have much of a sweet tooth anyway