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
view the rest of the comments
This might or might not be true and overall I think your comment is a good point (the empire will keep doing damage as it dies).
However, I think the perspective of people from outside the US, especially in the Global South has to be considered. For them, AmeriKKKan "wars, bloody conflicts, authoritarian crackdowns" are already the reality and have been for a long time. America dying is purely beneficial to them, the slow death and thrashing from their perspective will just be the same thing America has always been, but less and less effective over time.
The "authoritarian crackdowns" are not entirely an American byproduct... It's a product of capitalism. The billionaires aren't moving to Honduras. So long as the global economy is either euro or asiatic-centric (aka where the money/power lives), the global south will continue to be the capitalists' playground.
The Europeans have much less capability to intervene in the Third World than America, though they do do so on a smaller scale. I'll entertain arguments about Asian countries when any of them are actually doing anything that even approaches the things America does. It's very clear to anyone looking that the largest and most influential imperial power in the world right now is America by far, with the Europeans a distant second.
That is only because the US has outsourced it for them. Europe basically invented third world intervention and only back to back world wars stopped it. If power flips back to Europe and China, don't think that means the global south will suddenly be interference free. Ask China's neighbors and any country with fishable ocean how non-expansionist and non-interference they are.
Europe invented third world intervention, and after the US took that over from them most of Europe lost most of its ability to do it independantly. Most third world intervention today is done by the US, if the US collapses it won't be replaced immediately by Europeans who can all of a sudden magically project power into Latin America.
Don't compare what the US empire does to anything happening in the South China Sea, that's a ridiculous thing to say. Even the very bad things China has done so far (for example, war with Vietnam) don't come close to things the US does on a regular basis.
The US collapsing would create a huge imperialist power vacuum that would at least take time to fill, if that filling ever happened. I'll quote my original comment you were replying to here.
What you're saying in response to this is, at best, pointless doomerism based on vague hypotheticals. I'm talking about the reality of the world today, which is that America is the only country with both a significant ability to carry out these interventions worldwide and a significant history of doing so.
My only point was that I think you are being incredibly optimistic on how long it takes to fill an imperialist power vacuum, or that the US is definitely currently worse than whatever would replace it. I would say that I am extrapolating from basically all of human history rather than doomerism, but I suppose that is a matter of perspective.
Chinese fishing fleets have been documentedly invading fisheries all over the world and not just the South China Sea. Latin America might experience more lag time on foreign influence due to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, but exploitation in Africa is not primarily being done by the US currently so I wouldn't expect to see massive shakeups there.
Debatable, the US is involved a lot in Africa. So are the Europeans, of course, as well as "Israel" and the gulf monarchies, but all of these are propped up to varying degrees by the American world order (except perhaps the French, but their empire is fading as we speak).
I'm not sure if you meant to imply that China was the primary exploiter of Africa (and I don't want to assume you were saying that), but if so I disagree with the assertion that any degree of Chinese exploitation which might exist compares with what I've described in my previous paragraph (these countries routinely openly topple governments and start/support wars and genocides in Africa for their own benefit - in Sudan being the most well-known current example but not even close to the only one).
I think "all of human history" is a bit of a thought-terminating cliche in this case. Many things throughout history have been aesthetically similar (and in some ways functionally similar), but the material basis and therefore specific mechanisms were different. Imperialism in the financial capital sense (as in Lenin's description) is a very recent thing, historically speaking (perhaps the past few centuries, approximately).
You are correct, I do not want to imply that China is the primary exploiter in Africa, nor is the belt and road as it currently exists nearly as bad as historical colonization in the region. My concern is that in a global crisis like the complete collapse of the US, China and others would take the opportunity to expand in a similar fashion.
I would argue that there is not a substantive material difference between imperialism since the 1900s and Rome. Each replacement empire brings new spins on the same formulas. The US empire isn't much different at this point than feudal empires of the past, just with monopolies instead of aristocracy.
The problem I see is that there has never been a significant lag time between empires and is more a passing of the baton as additional empires either rise from the remains or are subsumed by another empire.
I personally think this is largely a hypothetical at this point. As you say, the BRI isn't really the same as the historical colonialism/imperialism we're discussing and I haven't really seen anything from China that indicates that they have a desire to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. If anything, they're often (rightfully, sometimes) accused of not interfering enough internationally against US influence.
I would argue there are substantial important differences. Imperialism is different in both form and function than colonialism and neither are the same as the Roman empire. A notable thing about (Western) Rome as an example, though, is that its collapse did not immediately lead to a different empire taking over all its territories. I guess it can be argued that the "barbarian kingdoms" tried, but they failed. The Western Roman Empire faded away and was never unified again.
I think you're right and we just have a disagreement on the inevitability of empire and the speed at which it would happen. Thank you for discussing, though! /genuine