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, 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!
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. 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
- ofc => OFC
- af = AF
- ok => OK
- lol => LOL
- bc => BC
- bs => BS
- iirc => IIRC
- cia => CIA
- nato => Nato (you don't spell it when talking, right?)
- usa => USA
- prc => PRC
- etc.
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" 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 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.
- 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
People who’s opinion tends to be “anything ‘the west’ does is bad and anything ‘the east’ does is good”, regardless of the specifics of what you are talking about.
You are not OP LOL
That's not how Lemmy works. It's for discussion. If you genuinely only wanted to speak to OP, DM them.
Guess what, moderation involves asking OPs for clarification in a thread so there is transparent reasoning in case of e.g. deletions 🤯🤯🤯
For some reason I didn't see your M earlier.
Nevertheless, it now seems like you wanted to publicly have an argument with OP over the use of the term, but instead of directly calling them out on it, you phrased it as a request for information, perhaps in the hopes of trapping them into betraying their prejudices or something.
Now other people started trying to answer your question, which doesn't meet the agenda you were trying to push and you're acting like people were unreasonable or silly for answering your question, but you asked it openly on an open discussion forum and in a way that didn't mention OP and just seemed to be phrased like a request for information.
Being a mod is about moderating discussion, not controlling or directing it. I don't think it's about blanket control over who speaks.
(By way of balance, some of the mod actions in this thread have been absolutely spot on, thank you.)
Hey, I was only rudely replying to the comment which was oversimplifying a lot of positions as a way to get back at them (and then kinda disingaged). I don't really take issue with the other comments, since as you said, the question was worded abiguously on purpose.
TBH I'm just tired of the whole semantic circus around muddy words like "tankie", hence my harsh reactions LOL (sowwy ~w~)
Also I have a shitposting side that's hard to turn off ^^'
Oh and thanks for the constructive feedback, positive and negative :)
I may be overly aspergic about this, I accept, but please try to say what you mean more.
Instead of "Please define tankie", why not say "@OP, tankie is a muddy and overused word, please state what you mean by it, and if you don't have a useful and valid meaning for the term, avoid it."
Instead of "You're not OP", why not say "Wow, you've certainly oversimplified a lot of positions there!".
I'm afraid I'm finding your hidden meanings constantly unsettling. I don't mind you disagreeing with people and entering firmly into the debate, and I thoroughly approve of the bans you put in place, but I'm finding the indirectness harder to come to terms with.
This is the best thing you've said. I found it properly eye-opening because it communicates something about how the word is used that wasn't as clear in my mind as it is now.
Btw, I liked this whole comment overall a lot because it was open and honest, showed me how you feel, made you human and very relatable, and clarified concepts for me. Quadruple win!
Hey I'm autistic too, but for some reason I really love sarcasm, shitposting and all that jazz. (edit: even if I sometimes don't get it myself when on the receiving end LOL)
Your point about being clearer when commenting as mod is very much valid (saved your comment above) and something I should probably keep in mind, but sometimes my fable for sarcasm and shitposting just wins over ^^'
I liked this short exchange as well ^w^
It made me happy. Thank you.