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, 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
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
view the rest of the comments
It’s definitely pro gun. It’s showing children in the USSR learning how to use them and then says “school shootings: zero” making a comparison to USA. It shows the distinction that guns themselves may not be the problem regarding Americas school shooting epidemic.
You gotta be pretty dense to not understand that lol.
It's typical campist shit. It's not pro gun, it's just "USSR good, America bad" propaganda as if we're living in the fucking 60s. Which is par for the course for tankie rhetoric ofc.
It’s pretty clearly pro-gun. Crying about it being “tankie rhetoric”, a famously pro-gun movement doesn’t really support your conclusion either.
/disengage
I thought it was being sarcastic as obviously there have been many mass shootings in Russia
School shootings? I can’t find any sources to verify that.
List of school attacks in Russia - Wikipedia https://share.google/eBqt6wipbZq0iThiM
Only 4 of those happened in the USSR, which is what the post is talking about. The majority happened in the modern Russian federation, which isn't what the post is talking about
I think I’m starting to realize it’s a lotta teenagers in this community or something
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say school shootings during the USSR era were far fewer across the entire planet. I'm not sure I understand what distinction you are trying to make about the validity of this meme.
I wasn't. I was just correcting that while this post was discussing the USSR, you linked an article which only 4 out of 53 examples were relevant, the rest didn't happen in the USSR. I wasn't talking about the rest of the world.
Doesn't seem to happen nearly as frequently as the US, but often enough for there to be a Wiki article cataloguing various instances of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_attacks_in_Russia
Edit: should clarify that there seem to be more knife attacks than anything else, too, but still a fair few shootings.
That list has 4 shootings that happened during USSR time, probably all done by psychos. Meanwhile, the USA will get 4 shootings in a week.
You realize the USSR stopped existing in 1991 right?
This is super embarrassing for you.
As long as we are being civil I think it's prudent to point out that your douche nozzle is showing. That must be embarrassing for you.
Yeah that's why I picked a later year to arbitrarily start counting from, what does it matter?
Edit: sorry, I think there's been a miscommunication, I thought the conversation had veered towards comparing modern Russia to modern USA. Ideology built on our forebears and all.
Edit 2: I don't appreciate the condescension though, you can correct me without being mean about it.