Lefty Memes
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of "ML" (read: Dengist) influence. 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" (read: Dengists) (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
- Sexual 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
Oh you thought this was about Iran?
This is about Ukraine and how people talk about it on Lemmy (and Reddit).
I don't shy away from pointing out hypocrisy in controversial settings.
Have a nice day :)
Well, that's not really true; the people who support the Russian invasion of Ukraine are in the minority on lemmy and reddit
I'm not talking about them, I'm talking about the only tolerated stance being "send more money and weapons to Ukraine" with no end to the conflict in sight. How many more years and millions of casualties do we have to wait to actually do something to end this?
It's particularly annoying in french communities, since my govt waited and looked on for weeks at the start of the war, refused to intervene while Macron was having (useless) phone calls with Putin, and now we're meant to act all tough and pretend we have been the biggest Ukrainian supporters since day one, no slander of the glorious french nation will be tolerated!
Screw this bs, either we have a plan to intervene at some point to kick Russia's ass and end this war (which we clearly don't), either the only moral position is to ask for an end to this through peace negotiations. Enough dead proles while the bourgeoisie feasts.
Russia is a nuclear power; you can’t wage open war against them, because who knows how they might react if cornered. I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust the fascists running Russia at all. Negotiations are the only way forward, but right now it’s Putin himself who doesn’t want to negotiate; all attempts to organize a ceasefire have fallen through because of Russia. Arming the working class so they can defend themselves, as happened with the Italian and French partisans when they had to drive out the fascist, seems to me the most sensible thing to do.
Then we agree that there is no possible military intervention.
Negotiations are not friendly talks hosted by Trump, they're attempts at ball twisting hosted by parties that actually want peace. So far all I've seen has been way too friendly, obviously Putin will just say "ok give me everything" and walk out if he has nothing to lose.
I don't think more dead proles is a healthy endgame.
Putin has refused to strike deals even with European leaders; he hasn’t just been taking Trump for a ride. If we stopped supplying weapons to the Ukrainians, they would be conquered in no time, but that would be an occupation, not peace.
To negotiate, you must first prevent Russia from doing whatever it wants in Ukraine; otherwise, the only valid agreement will be Ukraine’s annexation by Russia.
My country is the third biggest purchaser of Russian fossil fuels, spending more on it than on helping Ukraine, while Macron is posturing as the one true ally of Ukraine.
I'm not so sure governments are interested in preventing Russia from doing whatever it wants. Capital makes the decisions.
We already surrendered to Putin when we let the war happen in the first place and didn't cut off Russia financially afterwards. It's been four years of pretending we haven't, how many more to go? How many millions more casualties are acceptable until we actually do something one way or the other? If waiting for Russia to Vietnam itself is the plan, put an "acceptable" number of years and of casualties on it.
In what sense are we letting Putin do whatever he wants? It was supposed to be a three-day war, but they’ve been stuck in Donbas for four years. I don’t know how much longer this will go on, but as long as there are Ukrainians resisting the invasion of a fascist state, I think it’s right to support their fight
I mean, the EU is still announcing new sanction packages (they're on their 17th package so far), which makes it seem like a lot is being done, but on the other hand why have all these sanctions not been implemented from the start? I don't hear of the EU holding back weapons anymore, but it took literal years to get to this stage. And let's not get into how reliant Europe still is on Russia gas after four years despite renewable energy being right there, or how the EU keeps supporting (or at least condoning) US imperialism that directly compromises Ukrainian defense, as is the case in Iran, or how Hungary is allowed to hold up billions in aid to Ukraine. After four years of this the EU is still pulling punches, and there's very little indication it ever intends to stop doing so. The EU's idea of supporting Ukraine is supporting Ukraine to the extent that it doesn't compromise the bourgeois status quo (edit: recent example). Either go all in and stop the Russian invasion or force a peaceful settlement/capitulation without throwing Ukrainian and Russian lives into the blender.
It should've been a three-day war in Ukraine's favor, is my point. Spending a decade grinding Russia and Ukraine to dust against each other is the worst of both worlds.
I don’t find that there is hypocrisy on this. In all recent cases, I’m firmly against the aggressor.
And so on. Everyone has the right to defend themselves, but most of the war going on today is NOT about defense.
Actually, colonized peoples have the right to militarily resist their oppressors.
I don’t think kidnapping civilians is military resistance. I agree they clearly have the right to resist.
My understanding, and it's basically impossible to verify this, is that the resistance was focused on military targets and taking POWs (which the israelis count the same any any civilian prisoners, and tried to make it seem like all prisoners or casualties were civilians), and a bunch of Gazan civilians independently broke out when the fences went down and grabbed a bunch of Israelis and handed them over to Hamas. Hard to say.
In any case, it would still be in line with the reciprocity and proportionality aspects of the laws of war. Israeli forces regularly kidnap Palestinians, though they call it "arresting", and hold them indefinitely in very poor conditions with no real legal process. This was going on long before October 7th.
Fyi the Israel vs Palestine thing has been back and forth for decades. Each generation only knowing of the previous attacks during their childhood. An eye for an eye has left everyone blind.
It has been going on for decades, but never "back and forth." Israel has always been the clear and undisputable aggressor; some Palestinian factions (and in earlier stages mobs) have some blood on their hands, but that was always misguided self-defense or misguided retaliation, never outright aggression.
Sure, I agree, then let's actually militarily defend Ukraine / Palestine / Venezuela / Iran / Lebanon.
Oh wait, it was all posturing and nobody's willing to actually do that.
Now let's find actually realistic solutions to those conflicts that aren't 1 000 000 more dead proles.
No you can't just expect people to base policy on something as dumb as material reality. It's all about the total, inviolable abstract moral purity I can project from the safety of my comfy couch by having the only virtuous, ethical opinion: regardless of whether they want to or not, all Ukrainians should be sent off to fight the Russians until the last man or total victory. Everything else would just encourage further aggression. ~~Peace through strength - oh wait that's the evil American line, we are better than that~~
Because arming people who hate you with heavy weapons is such a good idea. Why don't we ask Prigozhin how that worked...
The EU is willing to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian 🫡
Ukraine has two options.
Get killer or raped, or both by putin's imerialistic regime, or fight for their country.
So saying that EU somehow behind dead Ukrainians, it's like saying that woman is responsible for rape because she should not fight back and just agree to aggression.
i think you're both striking on part of the truth. Ukraine is the victim of an imperialist aggressor disrespecting their sovereignty and humanity. the western powers have also proved themselves unwilling to provide real support for Ukraine and will continue giving Ukraine not enough support to win, but just to continue to survive in this current manner. since 2023, Ukraine's main ask in their aid requests has been glass. instead they recieve only missiles. and not the kinds of missiles they ask for, or in the quantities they're asking for. so now they've developed some of the most advanced cruise missiles and attack drones, and suddenly the western powers are trying to acquire those and are negotiating with Ukraine like a real countly.
the horrying thing is who's asking Ukraine for 2.5 ton delivery mechanisms, the USA. so far Ukraine has shown zero interest in selling these missiles to the US and continues offering the US shahed defense measures at increasingly higher prices the further America gets into a war with Iran and finding over and over that Israel is not a valuable intelligence partner. the art of the deal president may eventually buy those shahed defense measures, but he will pay a HIGH price for them, a much higher price indeed than when they were offered before invading Iran.
And what should they give to Ukraine? Only thing that we can do, is to fight russia, and wait until the economy collapsed. It's not like you can send 10000000000 solders and somehow whole russia will stop the war, and putin will be hunt down and killed, and everything will be great again.
You're talking about usa, that right now is in the hands of right wing nutjobs, that are not that far from putins regime.
USA asked a lot of countries about that. Because as everyone said, you cannot win a war in Iran. Country is too big, military is ready, and they can continue the war for many years, disturbing world economy.
USA and especially Israel are imperialistic states, and we can see what are the results.
the main thing i was thinking about this morning is that Ukraine's requests for humanitarian aid are consistently ignored entirely, and their requests for military aid are usually met with a small portion of what was requested.
and overall here in your comment i'm in full agreement with you
It's posturing because the alternative is more French proles dead. You complain about proles dying yet are mad for Macron not racing to get French proles killed.
How about not arming Israel, not financing Russia through fossil fuels, not giving tax cuts to US megacorps while they fuck around the world, actially applying financial pressure on bad actors and organizing boycotts etc.
I was asking the question rhetorically, to make a point. There's other ways to wage a war. We're not even trying (or worse in the case of Palestine we're actively harming them).
Did you stop using fossil fuels?
I don't directly consume any myself, I'm not the correct person to try this gotcha on.
Although even if I wanted to, I don't get to know or control which country the fossil fuels I'd use are imported from. These are things that are handled at state level. I'm a full time activist trying to get politicians who would deal with that elected (and trying to get the state to change its stance on Israel), my words are not hollow.
Yes, those would be good policies to adopt. No dissent there.