this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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Lefty Memes

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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

Version without spoilers

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.



  1. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Wait, I thought the "point of a system is what it does"..

If your choices lead to a trump presidency I don't see how your intent matters at all 🤷

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (2 children)

The timing maybe? I've been saying Biden is the worst example of a democrat since the Obama days, and got downvoted about pointing out his bullshit. His contribution to the drug war alone is atrocious. But I kept getting down voted for saying it. Suddenly now it's election time, second go round, and here comes everyone jumping on Biden. Seems sus.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (2 children)

We have lived under presidencies of both Biden and Trump.

It isn't sus to realize one is better than the other, dude

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (9 children)

The thing the libs/"moderates"/"centrists" don't seem to understand is that this vote has long been stollen from leftists by the DNC when they decided not to run a Democratic Primary.

So for lefties it's a "choose between Charles Mason and Jack The Ripper" vote: a false choice.

The only real choice for lefties in this vote is explained by Game Theory:

  • Basically what you have here is a situation with entity A and entity B, that happens in rounds. Entity A chooses how to share something between A and B get, entity B decides to "accept" - in which case they both get their shares as decided by A - or "reject" in which case none of them gets anything.
  • In simplified terms, Entity A is the DNC, Entity B are lefties, including those in the Democrat Party, rounds are the elections and what's being approprotioned is how much a presidential candidate represents each side.

What Game Theory tells us in this case, actually backed by scientific experiments carried out with actual humans, is that if Entity A divides things in a very selfish way and Entity B "accepts" rather than choose "reject", i.e. does not punish Entity A for it even at the cost of a small loss for itself, then in the next round Entity A will divide things in a just as bad or worse way for B.

It never happens that Entity A, being one that divides the cake in a very selfish way, becomes less selfish in that division after a round were Entity B chose to "accept" that division. The best you can merelly hope for as Entity B if you keep on "accepting" is that Entity A doesn't become even more selfish in the next round.

Applied to this very specific situation it means that as long as the lefties keep on accepting the choices of the DNC (who are liberals, backed by campaign contributions from very wealthy people) for who the Democrat Presidential Candidate represents the most, then for each subsequent election the choices of the DNC will be worse and worse for the lefties.

If you look at the rounds of this "game" so far - each round being an election - this is exactly what has been happenning: the only time the Democrat candidate is ever a little leftwards from the previous one is after after their votes from the left fall, which is generally when the Democrat Party loses an election.

So the correct choice for anybody on the left who wants a chance to elect a President that is more representative of their views, and that only in a future election (as the present is already lost since the DNC has already made its choice), is to "punish" by not voting (or, even better, voting a third party candidate if they find a suitable one), which does mean the DNC loses its big bet on a guy that pretty much only represents Liberals and even Zionists, even if leftis too will lose whatever tiny bit of "representation" they would get with the not-quite-as-extreme-right presidential candidate chosen by the DNC.

Do not "punish" and instead "accept" (by voting Biden) and the next round of the game (i.e. the next election) will be the same or worse.

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