this post was submitted on 06 Dec 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, discussion and agitprop/stuff that's better fit for a poster than a meme 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. 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
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- 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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IDK, but not havig a slave is easy. Now try the same with products that are harder to live without such as food (there's a reason, why thecbros making it near impossible to opt out from AI).
Food is a great example of this meme actually. I've seen this exact argument (no ethical consumption) used many times by 'leftists' to try to justify consuming the flesh of the victims of horrific torture and suffering inflicted by the animal agriculture industry.
Yeah but this also works on a lot of vegan substitutes and staples.
Quinoa is a good example in that its popularity amongst american vegans and health food enjoyer's (myself included) caused damages to local food supplies in poorer countries. Forcing south american and I think African communities to consume shitty processed flour with little to know access to the same nutrients and proteins of quinoa.
TBH, I don't know how bad this still is, I haven't followed it for a while. But the point I think is that the industrial scale food production chain is always going to be questionable ethically.
And if you chose the local only route of going to farmers markets only you're probably limiting yourself to the point of risking malnutrition on a vegan diet (love my local FM, but they do not have beans in the quantity I eat them) and, based on my interactions with all the Kentucky Farmers I've met, you're probably financially supporting a fascism supporter.
The point of "No ethical consumption" I think has always been that things are very complicated supply chain wise and it will take a LOT of work to beat the system. I believe that was intended to make the people trying feel better when they can't possibly beat the system. But you're right, people take it to an extreme and justify not even trying.
There's a "The Good Place" moment where a guy gets sent to the Bad Place for buying flowers for his dying mom. The joke being that the flowers were harvested by slaves and flown on a plane causing un told pollution (I never actually watched the show, just saw the clip on a meme board at some point). But that's the consequences of "doing good" under capitalism. We just don't know how bad it is to do good all the time.
Adopting a mindset to reduce the amount of risky consumption is more effective than avoiding it at any cost.
I can't count how many times I've seen a 'leftist' try to shoehorn this into anarchist or Communist discussions