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!
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.
This is the thing I love the most about the younger generations now.
Now:
The kids are alright
Millennials are also protesting. Did you forget all the protests in the 2000s and 2010s? It's not like we stopped either.
As millenials I think the best thing we can do for the later generations is to just take a back seat. Thanks to boomers our generation has never held political power, and if we accept that and immediately pass to the younger gens instead of trying to make up for lost time I think we will leave them in a better spot.
As an almost 40 year old, nahh, we aren't skipping 2 generations to give the power to zoomers just because some rich kids are protesting.
We protested too. Don't forget that.
Definitely not - the boomers are finally on the way out. The boomers have held on way past their time, and we can't afford to let Gen X have a turn... They're the ones who need to take a back seat - they're nearing retirement age if they haven't hit that point already, millennials are in our 30s and 40s
We need to support and join together with the younger generations. We might not be as young as we used to be, but we're prime age to start taking office and organizing/enabling
We Gen x have been practicing taking a back seat our entire lives. As a generation we still don’t outnumber the boomers. Or we just crossed them on the graph. Pre covid we were supposed to finally cross around 2027. Covid might have skewed the projections. Kind of explains why we are the way we are. Never could do fuck all unless the boomers also wanted it.
And now the millennials are the largest group. Yall got the numbers. Use ‘em.
See also: "if you care so much about Palestine, why don't you go there and help out yourself?"
IDF specifically targets aid workers, journalists and healthcare workers
Transcribed accurately (thank you to [email protected] for correcting my earlier attempt):
Thembo
@OnlyAWorldAway
Liberals: oh you care about palestine? stop tweeting and do something
*people organize nation-wide protests and actions at great personal risk*
Liberals: you swine. i hope the police beat you into a fine red paste. i hope they come after your families. how dare you
why does everyone lowkey suck at transcription in here lol. ~~no hate just confused.~~ small hate? your claims that this is a “transcription” is deceptive and disingenuous to those reliant on alt text and screen readers.
actually 100% accurate transcript as follows:
Thembo
@OnlyAWorldAway
Liberals: oh you care about palestine? stop tweeting and do something
*people organize nation-wide protests and actions at great personal risk*
Liberals: you swine. i hope the police beat you into a fine red paste. i hope they come after your families. how dare you
Thank you for this, updated my comment. I totally deserve a small bit of hate here because that was a disservice to people who need alt text and screen readers, but for whatever it's worth a) learning to format things properly for screen readers is just something I still need to learn (and if you could point me towards a good resource for that I would definitely be interested), b) I was reacting to a comment that had been in here earlier (seems to have since been removed) that was claiming to be a transcription but changed the actual text of the OP, so I really just wanted to get something more accurate in here, but I should have said that was my best attempt at a transcription instead of just saying it was one.
fair lol. you had added the word “lib” in, same as the deleted comment, which was my main problem. cheers
db0 isn't holding back for the lemmy libs and I'm here for it
I have to say I've really liked this community when I've seen it pop up. Some good lefty stuff without falling into supporting tankies like certain other instances claiming to be leftist do.
I’m confused - is OP suggesting that the Conservatives will be better than Liberals??
If so, I’m in the upside-down world again
Fun fact: There are more than two sides in a two-party country.
Ah, so anyone BUT Liberals ..
Fun fact: this is bullshit.
Nope, people who are to the LEFT of liberals. You probably never heard of them in your tribal bubble.
Liberals are a pro-coroporation, big business backed left wing that is still very much an authoritarian flavor of left. When zoomed out, liberal is more like center right and the entire conversation is about how conservative we are. The fact is that there are other left wing politics and, for example, progressives would not stand for genocide. The more right wing you go the more supporting killing civilians that are literally trying to get food to survive is okay, until you get to full authoritarian which justified why it is okay to continue killing. That's where Israel is right now. That's why so many people are upset.
Hopefully that clears up any confusion.
Conservatives are liberals. Both US parties are liberal. The opposite of conservative isn't liberal, it's progressive.
The tweet does not imply that at all.
In america, liberal means "more left wing" and conservative means "more right wing". You can talk about how far left or right people are but please can we avoid another pedantic circular talk about how Americans use the labels incorrectly?
No, I won't start saying wrong things so that people who are wrong don't get confused. Saying liberal means "more left wing" implies liberalism is a leftist ideology, which it is not and is a dangerous misconception.
You're pretending you don't know the context. You went out of your way to be all "akshually" about it and it's insufferable
Yeah I'll be the guy that says right wing politicians aren't leftist akshually. Guess that's insufferable to some people.
Are you also going around correcting everyone who says "potato chip" when you think they mean "crisp"?
No but I'll correct someone if they're about to order shrimp fried rice at a McDonald's.
Right wingers are shit, be they conservatives or liberals. This has become specially clear after the Oct 7 retaliation.
“The white liberal differs from the white conservative only in one way: the liberal is more deceitful than the conservative.”
- Malcolm X
Often people like OP will suggest that liberals and conservatives differ in no way that matters. Which makes sense if you're an ignorant moron with no idea what views or actions the two sides actually hold and take.
But..but corporate money!
Yeah okay fine there's a corrupt system and a lot of Democrats aren't great. Which btw is a huge leap to "they're all the same". Also politicians are not the same as regular citizens.
No one who is actually aligned with "liberal" ideas would've ever said anything like "it's great the police beat you to a fine red paste for protesting"
Disingenuous bullshit like this post is incredibly counterproductive and even if it weren't, it is spreading lies. Fuck this piece of shit post.
I see someone is not familiar with the act of rhetorical exaggeration...
I see someone is not familiar with the act of rhetorical exaggeration...
…and I see someone trolling.
They’re right - this is disingenuous bullshit.
So you're not familiar with "trolling" either. Hint someone being sarcastic towards you is not it.
And I know they're right. The libs are indeed full of disingenuous bullshit.
So its people with a liberal mindset that oppose the protests? This is news to me.
Why would it be? Liberals love the status quo, which includes Zionism. Leftists oppose the status quo.
You're on Lefty Memes, not Righty Memes.
I think you've misunderstood something
No, I don't think they have. Socialists just disagree with liberals that liberalism is "left" or "progressive".
What do you believe I have misunderstood? That's kind of condescending, don't you think?
"Liberal" means free or freely and is an antonym of authoritism. In the US, the word liberal also means left wing and democratic. Please tell me who claims to be liberal but is arguing for police beatings. Because they only claim.
Liberalism is the philosophy of the capitalist status quo. It refers to the free flow of money and freedom from feudalism. Both the Republicans and Democrats are liberals. You tool.
read a book that isn't Harry Potter
Liberalism is the doctrine of Capitalism. It evokes individualism and Private Property Rights, may every man aspire to become a King.
Leftism opposes unjust hierarchy and supports collective ownership of the Means of Production.
Go check out WA Rep Adam Smiths (D) recent statement. Your average Democrat in politics is a wealthy right winger. Liberal democracy is the flavor of government which effectively institutes a dictatorship of the ownership class and limits the voice of the masses to a ballot box. USAs flavor of democracy is really the perfect example of the illusion of representation.
All this is true. But it does nit change the definition of liberal, liberalism, or liberty. I feel like people here are confusing liberalism with neo-liberalis or capitalism.
"Liberals" see Boogeyman don't say this ever lmfao
nobody says this strawman ass dumb bullshit
Things that were totally, totally said /s