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)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Use alt text or image descriptions to allow greater accessibility
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.
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
view the rest of the comments
I mean, why does it have to be one thing we are trying to not support? People in leftist spaces are trying to root out AI because of its myriad global problems and the way that the industry is akin to a new type of destructive bomb in the class war. Consolidating more wealth and power into the hands of the same technocrat few, poisoning the earth, destroying the livelihood of artists (and entire companies and divisions of workers across multiple industries because bosses are seeing dollar signs), stealing from the many and giving to the few in terms of creativity, it’s set to benefit the VCs…what is there to like about it?
You’re seeing a lot of talk about it because so many people thoughtlessly bought in when the more moral action would be to abstain from using it and insist on spaces that don’t welcome it. It’s not really that we are shifting energy away from more important things. It’s just that people will always say “hey, can we not use this here?” And you’re acting like we’re letting starving orphans starve so we can fight AI.
Most of those claims could be applied to factories, though, or to most technologies.
I don't like this trend because it's a conservative approach IMHO. A little primitivist even.
Think of a chair factory. It took jobs away from artisans. It allowed fewer capitalist to further exploit workers and concentrate wealth. It hurt the environment way more than artisan chair making...
But those factories and their workers are the base of the socialist movement. Giving the control of those means of production to the workers. Not destroying them.
If we are talking about destroying the means of production instead of taking control of them in my opinion we are talking about other thing, not socialism.
I worries me because it tilts the objectives that I think have the socialist movement. And it stirs towards other port that I don't know if I'm comfortable arriving.
100% agree with you - it's the very definition of reactionary. And in order to buy into the anti-AI argument you have to accept the argument that IP property rights are legitimate, so it's essentially a neo-liberal position. Property rights are the foundation of right wing politics. That's why we have copyleft.
This is also a good argument for outright banning anti-AI trolling like this instance wide. At best it's a hypocritical position, at worst it goes against our core values.