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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, and discussion 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)
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 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
I'm confused, are you claiming the US is a tyranny of the majority or authoritarian? Or are you saying there are tyrannies of the majority in some state or local governments?
Nationally, we're definitely neither of those things. The presidency is determined by a minority because of the electoral college. In 2020 it was just a happy coincidence that it also lined up with the popular vote.
All through 2021 and 2022 the desires of the majority were stifled by the Senate because of the minority rule that's enforced there by the 2 senators per state part of the Constitution.
Looking at the House, it's minority rule there, too. Thanks to gerrymandering by state legislatures, a lot of Republican representatives are representing 60/40 districts and a lot of Democrats are representing 90/10 districts. You can see it by adding up the total votes by party. The Democrats would have a significant majority if seats were apportioned by the popular vote.
Now maybe it's the case in some states and counties and cities that you have tyranny of the majority. That definitely sucks if they're being abusive. But it's not the only alternative to authoritarianism.
Tell that to the people this post is about. Also, as you have mentioned, the current system allows this. The majority of people could support ICE, and it would still be inequitable and oppressive. The majority may oppose returning land to tribal control, but it is still colonization and genocide.
Only ideologies like Anarchism preclude this, since they by definition oppose such hierarchies and don't rely on a glacially slow system that winks while people suffer.
It doesn't matter what the majority want. Often, the majority want to harm other people. If you don't believe me, then you haven't heard from enough American liberals who will make batshit claims such as this being the best system in the world or that they "have no other choice" but to force oppression and genocide as long as it's sanctioned by the law.
Clearly, this is not a good system. Never has been.