Lefty Memes
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of "ML" (read: Dengist) influence. 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" (read: Dengists) (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
- Sexual 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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I couldn't find English subtitles, but here's some quick rundown, it's partially from the video and partially from info I got about the topic from elsewhere. Discretion is advised, my German is getting really shitty over the years (and it was never good to begin with).
They're talking about the spiritual successor of the Nazi party in Germany, called Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Currently it got ~1/7 of the German parliament, it's specially popular in Eastern Germany (lower income people are easier to rally into supporting a fascist party by using immigrants as scapegoat for their poverty), and it's getting stronger.
Currently the party is legalised but people like those two are [IMO rightfully] trying to get it banned as anticonstitutional. And at this rate the AfD being a problem isn't just a theoretical matter, they're already threatening and killing people, right-wing violence is exploding there acc. to the video. Check the graphs around 6:40 and you'll see (Left: criminality split by political ideology; right: criminality in comparison with the share of the parliament the AfD has).
So they're gathering evidence of all that shit, and pressing politicians to ban the bloody party. There's a site gathering all this evidence, afd-verbot.de. They're also using the fact property rights are non-negotiable in Germany to rent the property facing the AfD hall and doing stuff like projecting Hitler's Young into the AfD hall, since a lot of the AfD modus operandi is to say "nooo~ we walk like ducks, quack like ducks, do salutes like ducks, but we are no ducks".
Later on they talk on how fascism's path to power goes through conservatives, so in order for the AfD to seize power it'd need a coalition with the CDU (Christian Democratic Union), and they're trying to prevent this. Then they mention a regional CDU president, Walter Lübcke (Hesse); he was strongly opposed to the AfD, and got killed by them, so they're trying to build a memorial to him etc. to warn against a conservative/fascist alliance.
Alternative für Deutschland.
It's also not the successor to the Nazi party. That would be the Deutsche Reichspartei (banned) or the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) which is now called Die Heimat (Homeland). Deeply unpopular party, but still dangerous.
AFD was originally a soft eurosceptic liberal conservative party, but more moderate members including the party's founder were forced out in 2015. Basically the party fell in the hands of far right and pro-Russian entryists around that time, and thanks to Merkel's handling of the refugee crisis it was at this point they started seeing real political success.
Not just income. That's a simplification.
Re-unification wasn't without issues. East Germans were often treated poorly. The companies they had helped build with their labour and taxes, were often sold of far too cheap, and East Germans were left with relatively little to show for it.
This resulted in a perfectly understandable scepticism of traditionally West German political parties.
Thank you for pointing out corrections and clarifications. (I fixed the party's name.)
I called it a "spiritual successor" because it's basically the same right "appeal" to the masses, but I'm aware it isn't a direct successor to the National Socialist Party. If I understood its history correctly, the process AfD went through is similar to the one of the Lega Nord, in Italy: the party starts gathering people for one cause (for AfD it was euroscepticism, for LN it was independence), but internal composition changes and so does the ideology, going further and further onto the right.
Yup, I'm aware. Or rather, a generalisation, that applies better elsewhere — the trashing of their companies is zbs rather specific to East Germany, but elsewhere you still see fascists trying to gather support from poorer demographics (e.g. rural Southerners in USA, Protestants in Brazil, etc.) I love that you went into the specifics though, this is actually important to contextualise it.
Yeah. Sorry if I came off as a pedant, but given how serious the threat AfD and similar far-right parties pose, I feel it's important to go into the specifics. You need to know and understand the enemy to stand a chance of defeating it.
No need to apologise - you didn't come off as a pedant, and the stuff you said is completely relevant.
Plus as I mentioned my German isn't exactly stellar, and I only realised there was an English audio after @HyperfocusSurfer@lemmy.dbzer0.com pointed it out. That increases the odds I got something wrong, by quite a bit.