this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2025
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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, 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

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. 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.



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

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hot off the presses monkey-typewriter

in b4 leftist meme

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[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What happened to the other two quadrants?

[–] Diva@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Left those blank on purpose; IMO most people ideologically committed to being in those quadrants actually belong in the top right somewhere

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

But you've got people who are normally in the auth-left quadrant in the lib-left one. This confuses me.

[–] Diva@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Authority means different things, depending on the context. Frankly the original political compass made absolutely no sense in how it defined things, hence having an entire quadrant for ancap make-believe.

In this, positive Y axis corresponds with using authority in favor of bourgeois interests, negative Y axis corresponds with using authority in opposition to bourgeois interests.

[–] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

the main problem with the political compass is it was created by and for authoritarian capitalists to normalize the lie that as people grow older they get more conservative. there's far more axes than just two

[–] Diva@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Gotta agree, it's just a caricature of everything outside that range for the most part. Adding Z axis starts to just make it confusing too doggirl-sweat

[–] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 week ago

the real political spectrum i think has about 14 axes

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Well your labels are inaccurate in that case. And those axes are not particularly independent from one another.

While I personally agree that the traditional political compass is a flawed and subjective view of the diversity of political views, it does a fairly good job of quantifying some differences that exist within the left and right that often confuse people otherwise. And it does seem to adequately categorize the vast majority of people in the west, even if imperfectly. So I don't really get all the hate.

[–] Diva@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I should hope they're not independent, it's the same axis.

The x axis is reform vs revolution, this is independent from the question of who directs the authority, which is the y axis.

the original political compass allows for people, who are in favor of a dictatorship of capital and are opposed to changing it, to portray themselves as various degrees of 'libertarian' or even 'left'. They are anything but in my opinion.

I don't think authority can be separated from context of political economy, as it is in the original one. If anything splitting those up like they're independent variables is muddying the waters.