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!
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
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.
Star Wars fans when they realize the movies were based on the Vietnam war, and the empire was America.
In the original Star Wars, the Empire was based on the American empire and the rebellion was based on the Vietcong according to George Lucas.
Kind of ironic that the Star Wars franchise became worse during the time the US became even more like the Empire.
Andor S2 was good though.
I'd argue that it hasn’t been truly good until Andor.
Unironically why I give a political damn. This movie was formative for my political alignment, right from my childhood.
Some of us actually got the message.
Man I can't keep the narrative straight, are western countries supposed to be responsible for most of the rebellions in the world or are they supposed to be opposed to rebellions?
Yeah, some people on the internet like to oversimplify and I get how your impression arises that those people bend the narrative how they like it.
On the other hand, it's pretty well-documented that
Also left-wing opposition inside western states is often demonized although we have similar aims as some highly-praised opposition movements in other countries.
The problem here is only blaming western governments, this is a problem of all governments and why we need to work towards a stateless system.
It's still needlessly oversimplifying to imply that all or only western governments work with authoritarian leaders who are friendly to their interests, for example. There's plenty of non-western countries happy to spread bloodshed and tyranny, and there's plenty of western countries that oppose it.
needlessly oversimplifying to imply that all or only western governments work with authoritarian leaders
What else do you call it when a multi-trillion dollar corporate enterprise sells surveillance data to every racist sheriff's office and royal secret police and aspiring military dictator from South Dakota to Siam?
I wish we were oversimplifying things.
Being a liberal must be so confusing
Can’t be more confusing than keeping track of the myriad different realities you all have to create in order to cook those edgy memes!
We lost a lot of good men on the death star. Did you guys know I was supposed to be on it, but I missed my transport. I should have died that day.
Mark Wahlberg said if he was on the Death Star it would not have gone down like that.
The last group of rebels we had in the US where scum.
The weather underground weren't great, but 'scum' seems a little harsh.
Edit: wait, were the panthers after them? Because the panthers were awesome, and if you want to assert they are scum, the world is probably better off without you.
I assumed they meant the confederates from the US civil war, but I have no idea who's sincere and who's taking the piss online sometimes.
Yeah there's been no history since the mid 1800s and nothing counts unless a white supremacist does it. It's a pretty common view of history.
Admittedly, most formal attempts at rebellion against the American government since the Confederates are historically obscure. Whether they should be is an entirely seperate debate, but they are, so assuming malice on the part of someone not knowing more recent movements feels presumptuous
Because white supremacists who we let make all our economic decisions didn't put150 years of nonstop effort into valorizing them.
Are you interested in deciphering what they meant or in maximizing correctness?
The largest civil conflict in the United States, since the Civil War, were the Coal Wars in Appalachia, and those Socialist coal miners were pretty fucking rad
Thank you for pointing this out in a friendly non wanky way.
Didn't then and don't most Americans now see the Vietnam war as wrong and hated it from the beginning? Many calling returning soldiers baby killers. I've always heard/thought that but it could just be anecdotal to my experience.
The Vietnam war was broadly supported through most of it. We tend to rewrite stuff like that to make ourselves feel better. To give you an idea of how screwed up public opinion was, on the Kent state massacre, “A Gallup poll found 58 percent blamed the Kent students for their own deaths. Only 11 percent blamed the National Guard.”
They don't see it "wrong" as much as rather a "mistake." Had they been able to subdue Vietnam, there wouldn't have been need for any introspection.
It was wrong bcs it also killed THEIR people.
And what you say is exactly the kind of 'horrible' detail what people are supposed to remember, that some people dared tocall their baby killers baby killers.
They all lick the boot.
In a few years they can do that for this kind of scum:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmudiyah_rape_and_killings
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/09/us-soldiers-afghan-civilians-fingers
most Americans
"Most"? Really?
Actually googling it, it was around 50%, and several polls show more support for ending the war and being anti-war than for continuing it.
Jeez, if our generation could protest half as much we'd get twice as much done now. But no, the latest generations of Americans are poorly educated authoritarianist lovers who don't even know what they're simping for.
Americans when they don't realize most of the West isn't American, don't speak English, and don't generally oppose rebellion against oppressors. Ireland, for example.
Unfortunately ireland is the exception not the rule and even they have their faults
Thank you!