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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The meme does not imply there weren’t thousands of deaths lol.
The reality is, Westerners would never care about a few thousand dead Iranians. They hate brown people way too much. You tell them 36k were slaughtered and suddenly the idea of invading isn’t as questionable.
If this were “quibbling about numbers” then the US wouldn’t have to make up shit like this. The actual point of the meme went over your head fella…
Iranians are about as brown as Americans, btw.
Muslim = brown for westerners. You gotta speak their language or they don’t get it.
I just love the implied racism here where America is capable of running intelligence disinformation campaigns while dirty Iranians could never be so clever. That's why every statistic that comes out of western media sources can't be trusted, but everything else can.
Beyond that obvious confirmation bias, there is almost no difference in how populations react to news of a few thousand deaths and thirty thousand deaths. Humans just don't process big numbers that well on an emotional level. Intelligence organizations know that. Thirty deaths can easily have more of an impact because we can imagine it being 30 people we know.
I sat in a room in the UK this week, with 19 other people, with love and tears and anger about what is happening in Iran.
One person in this group is Iranian and another is from Turkey, so also impacted and scared.
I strongly reject the idea that westerners hate brown people as strongly as when I reject the people who claim racism isn't a thing in the UK.
Hyperbole serves no one when it obscures Truth.
Westerners definitely hate brown people. This is literally backed by science. What the fuck are you talking about?
No it isn't. You might be able to interpret a study that way, if you choose to.
Actual science doesn't work that way, it works to exclude choice and bias.
It's very easy to find westerners who don't hate brown people and disprove the idea. There's literally thousands of them in every town in my country. The racists are a real problem, they're not even a majority and they're causing real issues.
Yeah, as a research psychologist, I always cringe so hard hearing things like this. There isn't something special about how white people from regions we lable as "the west" express bigotry. Literally, ever human is capable of creating ingroup outgroup differentiations as illustrated from social identity theory and those can be strongly or weakly oriented towars dominance (i.e. social dominance orientation). I've never seen meta analytic evidence showing any subset of the human population to be significantly more prone to social dominance. The thing that makes it so brown people are viewed negatively by "westerners" is the long history of racism pushed by the ruling class to justify atrocities for profit.
Don't be campist people, work in solidarity with each other and support your fellow man.
Whoah what the fuck? Nobody implied otherwise lol. What kind of psychologist cant even read properly? You look crazy mate 🤣
Please then provide a theoretical model backed by meta analytic evidence to show that this group somehow has a fundamentally different cognitive process for interacting with other groups then, I'll wait
You want me to prove that westerners are racist? LMFAO 🤣
No. Just admit you fell for the propaganda and this meme made you feel dumb.
You should really go outside or read something that isn't political theory or econ as you really don't have much of an understanding of how your fellow man actually functions. Insulting people who are trying to provide you with different perspectives on how you see an issue is not going to improve yourself or the working class movement. Lead with empathy, I wish you the best.
Highlighting the racism of Europeans IS leading with empathy 🤣
Muslims are PEOPLE…
What the fuck kind of logic are you trying to employ here?
I have no idea got any of that from my comment, but when you want someone to be your enemy you'll surely find one
Got what? What do you think my comment said about you? Go ahead and use your words.
It does imply that whether you intended it to or not.
If westerners hate brown people so much then why does the death total matter at all? Your statement is contradictory.
If I missed the point maybe you can explain it more clearly.