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.
[a water pipe is delivering water directly in the mouth of a huge character sitting on a chair, gorging on the water, below a label]
Evil proletarian getting all the unemployment benefits
[a few little droplets are falling from the water pipe into the mouth of a thin character in a suit, next to the label]
Poor billionaire trying to buy their 7th yacht
I mean, it's true. Billionaires are basically unemployed, yet when is the last time you saw a billionaire getting unemployment benefits? Justice for billionaires!
The last time I recall Billionaires getting unemployment is Covid. 2008. Even the Silicon valley bank collapse Biden bailed out the banks that didn't pay into the fdic.
Because we can't allow rich people to lose money, apparently. Better to tax working people, while the rich pay lower rates if not nothing, and use that money to subsidize the rich's business and bail them out from crashing markets.
They get subsidized, bailed out, we get unforgiving laws enforced by an aristocracy reared to have nothing but contempt and caprice towards us. They are elected positions too, and we don't even field candidates in all but a few districts for prosecutors, or judges for that matter. Two of the most powerful positions in the country, and both parties being lousy is never more true than it is with country judges and prosecutors.
s/foreigner/benefit claimant/ works too.
That is the (fake) populism of the right in a picture. Except that pile of cookies is so much bigger than that now. A billion is such a large amount, a thousand millions, a thousand thousand thousandes. They have up to hundreds of thousands ^3.
Thanks for using this template instead of the one which uses antisemitic imagery - it always hurts seeing the other version depicting the character which looks like he comes straight from an nazi pamphlet (the ugly banker with hooked nose which gets fat while the others starve)
If you want to reuse it instead of the antisemitic one, I've uploaded a blank and more neutral version on my templates page ;)
Now this is the kind of content generation I was hoping to find when I came to Lemmy!
🫡
Thanks mate, bookmarked!
The artist of that image, Ercan Baysal, is a left-wing Turkish cartoonist. The nose doesn't look particularly different than most other characters he draws. I don't see any evidence that it's intended to be antisemitic in any way.
Semites include arabs. So it's used quite incorrectly and misleadingly. Both in false accusations conflating criticism of nazis running a country pursuing a final solution to their others after decades of abusing them and forcing them into ghettos they control, and also in using anti semitism as a term to refer to anti jewishness. As I said, Arabs are a semetic people. Descended from the Phoencians in part, and carthaginians, both semetic also.
As if the purveyors of bad faith bigotry accusations to crush resistance to unspeakable atrocities give a shit they don't. Still though there is no reason we should repeat their terms without question when they are clearly wrong factually, any more than we should accept their bad faith justifications, or their blackmailing of our ruling class with video evidence of them fucking children garnered through epstein for that matter.
Yes, Arabs are also semites, but the word "antisemitic" means bigotry towards Jewish people specifically regardless of what race they are. It is a misnomer, but that's how language goes.
Now, Zionists redefining the word as being opposed to the government of Israel is another matter. That's a bullshit definition.
Those child labourers make me sick to my stomach with how greedy they are.
They should have half rations so long as the worlds resources are not controlled by three mega corporations.