this post was submitted on 22 Aug 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, 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
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
(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
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It isn't. The fact that the argument happens in the first place is proof.
It isn't. The principle is exactly the same: a niche group defines an existing word (hierarchy/homosexual) with an implicit negative connotation (involuntary/child groomer). Homosexual child groomers are bad, but it's wrong (morally and rhetorically) to use language that generalizes all homosexuals as child groomers. Likewise, involuntary hierarchies are bad, but it's wrong (morally and rhetorically) to use language that generalizes all hierarchies as involuntary.
If it's unintelligible and inconsistent when they do it, it's unintelligible and inconsistent when you do it.
For fucks sake, stop being a semantic crybaby and learn to read and discuss in good faith. TL;DR: Don't be a "debatebro".
Edit: I understand some of your reasoning, but the form in which you put it and the way you refuse to give others leeway in a discussion is unbecoming of a good socialist or just mutual respect in general; next time you will get a rule 1 timeout.
What's wrong with my form? Was I the only one, or even the first, to refuse leeway? Have I been anything but civil in my firmness? Are accusations of bad faith and name-calling becoming of good socialists? Do you not think the threat of moderative action somewhat undermines the whole anarchic stance on authority and hierarchy? If not, doesn't that kinda prove my point?
Avoiding being a "debatebro" is much, much lower on my list of priorities than discouraging rhetorical habits that make leftists look like oblivious fools. Obviously everyone who has ever worked on any kind of group project knows that you need some kind of hierarchy and authority to accomplish anything at a scale above half a dozen people. When you say you want to abolish authority and hierarchy, your audience (who isn't already in the in-group) doesn't know that you're using a cheeky private definition of those words where you're only talking about the oppressive versions. They just know that the sentences you're building with those words, which they have common definitions for, sound like naïve nonsense.
If all you care about is circle jerking with the in-group, fine. I don't want to be a part of that anyway. But if you actually want to move the general population to the left, and that's never been more crucial than now, you need to seriously examine your rhetoric. If your platform sounds stupid to the general audience, they're not going to entertain it for a second.