Lefty Memes
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
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.
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
view the rest of the comments
Are there any actual leftist spaces on this site? This place is as filled with libs as r/leftist back on Reddit which was always cringe. Need more active anarchist pages or those site's version of latestagecapitalism to get more use.
hexbear is arguably the most trans-inclusive place in Lemmy. Most people there are either Marxist-Leninist or Anarchist, and there is very little liberalism tolerance. People are also fun and make jokes about beanis :)
may I introduce you to https://anarchist.nexus/
Thanks. I keep forgetting Piefeed is a different thing from Lemmy/Blorp so got confused why it wasn't popping up when I tried searching for it.
What the fuck is a blorp
https://blorpblorp.xyz/
It's the app I use to more easily access Lemmy on my phone.
For anyone just learning about Blorp, we also support PieFed! We also have imo the best multi account support. You can quickly switch between your Lemmy and PieFed accounts.
Like searching from the Blorp login screen (see image below)? I could probably have it figure out if you are searching for Lemmy/PieFed automatically
I think you'll find a few like-minded people there. and we have a couple good comms to take part in.
Do you want 🇷🇺 to win the 🇺🇦 war?
You seem to care so much about Ukrainians. Surely then you support the Soviet Union, which in 1991 71.5% of Ukrainians voted to uphold and whose antidemocratic dissolution led to the worst humanitarian crisis in the history of post-WW2 Europe:
Surely you support the system that kept Ukraine well-fed, industrialized and at peace with the neighboring sister region, which maintained Ukrainian presidents of the entire Union such as Khrushchev and Brezhnev, and whose dissolution led to Ukraine becoming the poorest country in Europe?
The question asked in the 1991 Soviet Union Referendum was "Do you consider necessary the preservation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics in which the rights and freedom of an individual of any ethnicity will be fully guaranteed?" It would have drastically reformed the Soviet Union if it had succeeded. And funnily enough, it was a coup by hardliners in the communist party that prevented the reforms (New Union Treaty). This coup, while not successful in seizing power, ultimately lead to the Soviet government losing influence, which in turn resulted in its dissolution. By the time the Supreme Soviet voted to formally dissolve the Soviet Union, it had de-facto already ceased to exist.
And while 71.5% of Ukrainians voted in favor of the New Union Treaty, 81.7% voted for an independent Ukraine.
From your latter referendum:
Surely then you agree that the coming Ukrainian capitalist government violated the Ukrainian popular will by allowing NATO troops to be stationed in Ukraine more than a decade ago as confirmed by Jen Stoltenberg?
You mentioned nothing about the worst humanitarian crisis in Europe, only focusing on technicalities over referenda. My question stands: do you support the regime change that led to the worst humanitarian crisis in Europe, the war in Ukraine, and which prematurely ended the lives of millions of Ukrainians purely through economic destruction? Or do you want to focus on bickering over violated referenda instead of the material living conditions of people?
I wonder if something happened to make them change their mind on neutrality
Because there's nothing to say about it other than that it was bad. And I honestly don't get what point you're trying to make. The Ukrainian people, along with ~70% of the Soviet Union, voted to reform the Soviet Union. Hardliners in the Communist Party staged a coup which stopped the New Union Treaty from being signed. Afterwards, the Soviet Union fell apart, and was then formally dissolved.
I don't give a shit, if you care so much about Ukraine pick up a gun and go fight
I suppose you don't care about Gaza either, do you?
I do actually
So, why are you indifferent to Russia committing genocide, but not to Israel?
Russia isn't committing genocide, fucking duh
So, your standard is "Imperialism is fine, as long as you're not committing genocide"? Also, Russia not committing genocide is highly questionable (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_of_Ukrainians_in_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War)
The current regime in Ukraine is the result of a coup staged by the US, it's our imperialism at work as usual. Yes Russia sucks ass, the US is still the bigger problem globally and a loss for the US proxy state is a preferable outcome. There's nothing questionable about whether it's a genocide or not, the only people claiming it is are feds pushing for more gun money and incurable fucking morons.
No, it's not.
Let's examine Russian war crimes, shall we:
Yeah, so I'm basically just going through the sections of the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Russo-Ukrainian_war_(2022%E2%80%93present)
Yes it is, anything's possible when you make shit up, Wikipedia is not a source, try harder patriot
No? The fuck kind of question is that? It's like asking if I want Israel to continue existing after everything they've done.
It's to weed out tankies.
People are using tankie for Russia supporters?
Tankies are people who identify as communist or socialist, but want a state where the ruler cannot be switched out through elections, or a comparable peaceful process. Such as the Soviet Union. In fact, the term "tankie" was first coined to describe people who supported the Soviet Union sending tanks to crush the Hungarian Revolution.
Authoritarianism and communism are incompatible. Under communism, the means of production are publicly owned. Ownership over a thing means that either a) you control the thing, and owe no accountability to anybody. Or b) the person controlling the thing is accountable to you. If the person who claims to control the means of production as the representative of the people is not accountable to the people, then he is actually the owner of the means of production. For example, Stalin effectively owned the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union wasn't communism, it was the end state of capitalism, the complete enslavement of the working class to the owner class.
And for some reason, people who think Stalin was great like Russia, even though modern Russia doesn't even claim to be communist.
Not to be pedantic or anything, but wasn't the etymology of the word "tankie" vindicated recently when it was released by Trump that the leader of the Hungarian Freedom Fighters ended up being funded by CIA?
Regarding your point of Stalin controlling the Soviet Union and dictating whatever happened with the means of production, I actually have stuff to add: union membership was highest in the USSR than it's ever been anywhere to that point of history, with unions taking care of a lot of stuff such as guaranteeing workers access to housing and healthcare, organizing vacation, ensuring workplace safety, and obviously representing the will of workers: in every factory there was a factory newspaper where workers could submit their complaints or comments on the work organizing, and unions had the power to change the workplace director. As for sources of this, you can have a look at Pat Sloan's "Soviet Democracy", a book written by an Englishman who left the UK to go to the USSR in the Stalin era and lived there for about a decade; also Mick Costello's "Worker Participation in the Soviet Union", a book written after a series of interviews to workers all over the USSR by the author, published 1977 so a very different era, tells a lot about this. I think most of the misconception that "workers had no say in production" comes mostly from western anticommunist propaganda and isn't substantiated by any serious evidence. If you have any works contradicting what I've said above, I'd be glad to look into it.
Lastly, regarding your point of "Soviet Union being the end state of Capitalism and the enslavement of the working class to the owner class": who was said owner class?
Source for the graph above, hopefully you know Meduza well enough to know that it's not very much aligned with socialism. Wealth inequality has never been lower in any Soviet Union territories as it was during the Soviet Union, not before, not after. In fact, wealth inequality was remarkably low compared to most capitalist countries (again as you see in the graph), and the highest salaries belonged actually not to politicians as you could expect, but to highly trained intellectuals such as University professors or military researchers (my sources for this are Albert Szymanski's "Is the Red Flag Flying" and Robert C. Allen's "Farm to Factory: a Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution). If there were an "owning class vs. working class" dynamic, wouldn't we expect high wealth disparity between workers and "owners", whoever they were? Why, if workers had no say over 70 years in industrial and economic production, was wealth inequality consistently at historic minima and not growing as is the case in proven class-societies such as capitalism (Russia post-1990 per the graph) or feudalism (Russia pre-1929ish per the graph)?
eh, there's some stuff in what you said that's not quite right, but you are getting the gist of it.
Not supporting the "dictatorship of the proletariat" types, but the reason tankies support Russia isn't because they think modern Russia is Communist. It's because Russia is fighting Ukraine, which they see as a proxy war against the United States and its puppets in NATO.
In the authoritarian Communist worldview, the United States is the vanguard of capitalism and the most dangerous threat to global communism. That's why they think Communist nations need authoritarian governments and powerful militaries: to protect themselves from the United States and its client states.
So tankies support anyone fighting the United States or its allies, no matter who they are or how bad their governments are. Because they think anything that weakens the United States is good for the world.
in the end, all they've done is make another oligarchy to replace the US with.
Better than accusing me of being one simply cause I refuse to fall in line with the blue or red fascists.
Lmao this place is overrun with "Leftists" -- what are you even talking about?
yes, it is overrun with liberals cosplaying as leftists, but on the plus side the admins don't really mind too much if you shit on the libs, so long as you aren't being a bigot while you do it. so even if there is an infestation of democrats, they provide the leftists here with amusement.
You spelled "tankies" wrong
for example, we have a liberal here we can make fun of. besides being a general shitty person, he also hates minorities and has no problem with his party being filled with nazi collaborators.
Okay tankie.
Anyone you disagree with is a Tankie.
I might be offended by that, if I thought you were educated enough to know what a tankie was.
It's overrun with blue MAGA libs that attack anyone who refuses to fall in line with the Dem party. Just look at many of the comments on posts in leftymemes that are anti-drmocrat or anti-voting. Tons of these morons crawling out of the woodwork to defend them and spout their "lesser evil" BS.
First-past-the-post shoves down fascists and neoliberals down people’s throats because that electoral system is designed for 2 competitors in a horse race.
You spelled "tankies" wrong.
Chickenshit response
Garbage take.
Cry about it liberal
Okay tankie
Lemmy.dbzer0.com - Lemmy Quokk.au - PF Anarchist.nexus - PF
All 3 are anarchist/left.
Than there’s the triad if you’re into killing innocent people with tanks.