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
Define "tankie" please
Those on the left who support the state using force to keep the people controlled.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
Y’know rolling tanks into Hungary in 1956 when leftists first started using the word.
It’s a well known leftist term and is almost 100 years old now. I have a hard time believing you didn’t already know this.
There's an ongoing campaign by the usual suspects to pretend the word doesn't have a definition beyond "epithet for The Real Left used by ignorant libtards." Usually followed by a wall of text containing circular references as citations.
The people who support mowing down civilians with tanks in an effort to protect authoritarian regimes, just because they label themselves as communist.
Almost 100% overlap with "Murica bad!", which while true in a vacuum, ignores that other countries can also be bad. This results in tankies unironically supporting the Kim family or doing some heavy revisionism around Stalin.
Any leftist and every sane person says "Amerikkka bad"
It's the worst thing to happen to humanity in the second half of the 20th century and beyond
But the same people usually praise other regimes that also abuse human rights. It's not about the humanity, it's about not being the right brand of authoritarianism (the right brand is anti-west)
I suspect once Trump goes far enough up Putin's ass and turns on its European allies, tankies will also start celebrating the USA and ignoring everything that the US is doing in... *gestures broadly everywhere*
What.
Where do you stand on the war in Palestine and where do you stand on the war in Ukraine?
🍿
I'm stealing that gif.
Highly authoritarian leftists
There is actually technically no such thing as an authoritarian leftist. Leftism is defined as more egalitarian/less hierarchical. Tankies are right wingers that have been pushed into the same spaces as leftists because they are against Western nationalism.
Authoritarian anti-capitalist then
Also, because setting up a "Left Wing" country or society doesn't mean people with a Right Wing outlook on life cease to exist. They have to candy coat their beliefs in the language of Leftism but that doesn't make it leftism.
I love how this has 80 downvotes.
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 know... I am genuinely curious how many of the votes here are purely a response to cyrillic text.
You mean in my display name? Yeah, it's a funny way of getting prejudiced responses LMAO
Interestingly, Voyager doesn’t seem to be respecting display names:

Yeah, Voyager just breaks peoples profiles/doesn't even bother displaying them properly/at all...
One of the many reasons why I switched away from it to Summit
Cyrillic name, questioning lemmy dogmatic pile-ons?
Clearly a perfidious Russki in the employ of the dark lord Putin hisself.
The war for the future is being fought in the comments of a link aggregator for weirdos. It's like hackernews except somehow more pathetic.
Made my day, thank you LMAO