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 have been fighting over land for as long as recorded history, and probably for longer. I might be misunderstanding your comment, because I don't see how you can say that there were no conflicts over land ownership until the Reconquista. Or was the Roman Empire built through a series of peaceful agreements? And private land ownership absolutely existed. Ruling classes have held private estates for millennia. Again, please let me know if I've just completely missed your point.
There is a major difference between conquering people and claiming the places they reside as part of empire versus drawing lines on a map and claiming to legally own the land itself.
When the Romans were conquering their empire in Europe, they weren't claiming land and claiming that those who resided on that land were now subject to the Roman Empire. This is however literally what Spain did during the Reconquista and what the conquistadors did in the Americas afterward. It's also how these thigs tend to go today.
The Romans, like the Aztecs, conquered groups of people and forced them to be subjects. The land they were on was less important than the people themselves being subjugated to the hegemon. If a subject city's population decided to abandon it and establish their city elsewhere within Rome's martial reach, the Romans would keep the people rather than the useless unoccupied land.
Feudal estates and fiefdoms are a kind of proto land ownership but even this was distinct to how we would consider it today. Claims were much more vague and impossible to enforce without the cartography tools we have now. Again, they were claiming ownership of the nation as a people, not a nation defined by borders and acreage.
Of course there was plenty of disagreement as to which hegemon runs which settlement. The disagreement was not that two governments had a legal claim to the same piece of defined land, but things like "God chose me to rule whatever I can reach, and I can reach you" or simply "I can beat you in war, so these people are mine."
People "owned" their homes and used whatever land around it to farm, but not as in they had a legal claim to the whole piece of property and a franchise to do with that landed property as they pleased. They owned it because they resided there and could keep up what they were using. Wealthier people had more people to manage more territory in their behalf, but even this was more about the subjects than the land they lived on, which was understood to be incidental compared to how we would see it today. Unoccupied, unused land miles away from where anyone lived was not being fought over. Wherever they lived domination of people was fought for.
Understanding this helped me understand how the Romans would tell a Germanic tribe “hey sure we’ve got some open land over in Aquitaine, just settle there and pay us taxes”. Thinking of it terms of borders as lines on a map just left me more confused.