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!
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
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.
cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10508286
(Stats that show boosting ICE funding is a bipartisan policy)
Who cares why people are protesting, as long as they are it's good?
I never get the "we were doing it first" toxicity. Why should it matter why the newcomers were ignorant if they want to join the cause? Why create new enemies just to protect your "pure" reasons? That kind of separationism is exactly what keeps the ones you should focus on in power, and they want it that way. A divided resistance will fail.
Because the majority of “leftists” are exclusively online and their entire lives revolve around internet points derived from having the best and purest ideologies
Where do you think the majority of "rightists", "libertarians", and "liberals" are spending their time nowadays? The mall? Everybody is terminally online, apparently including you.
True but my political existence actually isn’t and I do stuff irl
Too many people just preach dramatic purity online and nothing else
yeah. for a lot of the attitudes i see on lemmy about how politics should work i'm like… where are you? i'm out in these streets and i don't see you. a lot of what people are calling for don't work until we have mass support and to have mass support we need people outside.
And as such, too, their idea of what leftism outside their zones becomes distorted by the propaganda mechanisms that benefit primarily their enemies
I agree with your point, however it's also frustrating how obvious it was that all the post-9/11 powers we gave the government would be abused.
The PATRIOT Act was a fucking power grab, and obviously was in place in case a crisis came into play. No way something that couldn't be read in that short a time before approval was written that fast.
Exactly
Its the cop-in-your-brain, which is of course all of the propaganda of the fascists. This is exactly what they want, and their choice rhetoric has worked its way into the leftist spaces to an extent
Yeah. As I've seen someone else put it, "we're glad you're here" is far better than "what took you so long"
Maybe I'm just mostly in lefty circles, but who the fuck wasn't mad until Renee Goode and Alex Pretti? I've been seeing constant rage against ice for a couple of years now atleast.
Completely agree, but I think with Goode and Pretti it gave our team a good hand to play. Like, "hey, all you All Lives Matter people. Where ya at?" and with Pretti specifically, it's like "Hey, all you 2A folk. Where the fuck ya at?"
I've been outraged and outspoken since the beginning, but these two incidents are really heavy hitting cards to play in order to expose hypocritical fascists. Not that it actually matters because these people are brainwashed mental gymists. But I like to think it at least puts cracks in their foundation. It's caused some amount of infighting, so that's a step in the right direction.
No, you're right, plenty were mad before too. There seems to be a new push lately on trying to make this a race issue to divide the left. I've seen a major uptick in this framing lately.
If someone favors ICE because it's a "race issue" they were never on our side to begin with.
You're right about that! But that's not what I meant.
What I mean is there's a seemingly organized effort to create infighting between those against ICE by attempting to create issues and sow discord. It distracts from the real conversation at hand. It's a common technique to fracture unity on an issue.
white middle class people, and then other middle class people. Do you not know anyone in their 40s with a family?
Yeah! You're right! They should continue not caring about it because their reason for doing so wouldn't be perfect.
Don't repost stupid shit posted by trolls on ml. The OP is a troll account.
At this point Lemmy must be 75% troll accounts then.
Starting to believe it honestly
"an entire year of people being ILLEGALLY deported or disappeared" true, state violence against anyone is only okay when it's done legally, with due process and for the good of the national people's
Tbf I was in grade school in 2003 so it's a bit much to expect me to have been on the "abolish the DHS" train for that long 😆
At the same time, for a lot of us that age it was a fundamental step into understanding "Oh. So our adults are fucking idiots" because we had so many allegedly smart people telling us "well. The PATRIOT Act can't be that bad and these are changing times. We need to be able to protect ourselves."
It wasn't until I went to college that I got good at expressing how specifically something that happened when I was in elementary school was a fundamental affront to my autonomy as a human being, and why that was a threat to everyone everywhere all the time. But it was still a seed that grew within me that we are fundamentally not seen by our government as contributors but as resources
I always held that the creation of the entire DHS was a slight overreaction to like 20 guys armed with box cutters..
It really was muddled through while Iraq was being drummed up, too. I remember working a protest in 2003 and there being this talk about DHS implementing fascism. At the time I felt the impending war was more important topic, not quite realizing how interconnected it all was.
It's good that you recognize how interconnected everything is. That's an important piece of the puzzle. These days it's that all the oligarchs are pedophiles, engaged in kidnapping immigrant children, and creating crises to justify those kidnappings. Everything is at the same time a distraction from everything else intended to keep you from uniting on what specifically should be protested, and also a genuine component of the overall mechanism by which we're all tortured
To all you libs on lemmy: If it don't apply, let it fly, as they say. If you think this post isn't about you, it isn't about you. If this post is about you, maybe consider why that's an issue.
the libs dont want to hear they may have been abused by their party.
