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.
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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" (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.
Non american leftists tend to have a more reserved take on guns.
It's hard to advocate for armed resistance against tyranny XIXth century style after 150 years of military industrial complex development have made the state's power so asymmetrically strong. Guns nowadays kill kids in schools, but won't do much against tanks, jets, drones, etc.
Paradoxically, it's liberals that like guns in my country (hunting has become a bourgeois activity).
This argument never seemed true to me. A typical uprising isn't suppressed with tanks and fighter jets. It's suppressed with police. Your uprising doesn't have bases and fortifications to bomb. An uprising isn't attempting to control territory. The military and all it's power isn't really built to supress an uprising. The US lost in Vietnam and Afghanistan despite having the most powerful military in the world because asymmetric tactics work.
A typical uprising isn’t suppressed with tanks and fighter jets…
Okay sure, give me an example of a modern uprising where the protesters used weapons to achieve their goals.
Eastern bloc collapse, arab spring, sudan, burkina faso… succeeded because the military refused to side with the state against the uprisings, not because civilians had weapons.
And you're straight up wrong (or uninformed?), modern uprisings are suppressed with tanks and jets. It took days for the Syrian military to flatten armed protesters and the entire urban areas in which they attempted their revolution. Same thing in Libya, it was a slaughter, weapons and guerrilla tactics were losing to the military, it took a NATO intervention to turn the tide. For an even more recent example, the Myanmar uprisings were met with artillery, airstrikes, scorched earth tactics on their own land, no fucks given mass executions, etc.
It’s suppressed with police…
Well it's a good thing that we haven't been militarizing the police in every country these past decades then.
The US lost in Vietnam and Afghanistan…
Vietnam and Afghanistan weren't attempts to fight against the tyranny of a state. I know imperialist media likes to portray them as proletarian resistance fighters in jungles/mountains, but both were actually an organized military fighting guerrilla warfare in perfect terrain using their own military grade weapons and equipment, with heavy logistical support from outside allies.
TL;DR: Remind me what happened to the civilians who tried to fire at the turkish police in 2016?
It took days for the Syrian military to flatten armed protesters and the entire urban areas in which they attempted their revolution.
Yeah it was a bloody mess, but after hundreds of thousands of dead and eleven years of war Bashar isn't running Syria anymore. A modern military, when it doesn't care about civilian casualties, can utterly destroy an urban uprising, but that's terrible PR and is likely to embolden the revolutionaries at hand. The Houthis also seized control of most of Yemen (by population) through an armed uprising, so there are examples of "successful" 21st century armed insurrections.
The armed uprising by the Syrian population was the 2011 insurgency, which ended in massacres of civilians. Following that, part of the Syrian army defected and formed the FSA. The civil war was an army vs army proper war, not a popular insurgency, there were no "civilians with guns" fighting, only trained military.
The Houthis are a very well organized movement with a lot of external funding and backing, it's much more than a popular uprising (although it does have the support of the population). The people fighting that civil are were trained military, not civilians with guns who decided to fire back at an oppressor. It's really a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
I'm sorry but I think you just aren't well informed enough on geopolitics to be discussing these topics. I don't mean this in an offensive way, but these topics are much more complex than "government vs the people", there's multiple sides and external third parties to all the conflicts you are describing in extremely simplistic ways, none of which look anything like a country's population using its guns to fight against its own military.
The armed uprising by the Syrian population was the 2011 insurgency, which ended in massacres of civilians. Following that, part of the Syrian army defected and formed the FSA.
It didn't "end;" the FSA formed against the backdrop of increasingly militant anti-government resistance. Hell, the first defections from the Syrian army predate the formation of the FSA by months.
The civil war was an army vs army proper war, not a popular insurgency, there were no "civilians with guns" fighting, only trained military.
I mean, yes, because "civilians with guns" is what a failed uprising looks like. If the government doesn't fold, a popular uprising's main immediate goal is to become a proper army. The Syrian civil war is what it looks like when a (particularly gruesome) uprising gets off the ground.
The Houthis are a very well organized movement with a lot of external funding and backing, it's much more than a popular uprising
Definitely, but again the organization and external funding and backing came during the years of insurgency and civil war. It's not like they spawned in 2004 with 300k armed men.
It's really a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Yes, but it didn't start as a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Anyway my point here is: A sustainable armed uprising will very quickly stop looking like an armed uprising. Of course it'll seem like popular uprisings don't work if when a popular uprising works you retroactively classify it as something else. I know that the Syrian or Yemeni civil wars don't boil down to "government vs people," but that's (sort of, with a hundred footnotes) how they started.
Actually… of all the people who argued back, you're the one who found the middle ground to agree on.
Your description of an armed uprising is indeed the ideal scenario, and does fit historical caser.
I just don't believe in its feasability against a hyper militarized modern imperial state.
give me an example of a modern uprising where the protesters used weapons to achieve their goals.
Uprising was maybe the wrong word. But off the top of my head, the Black Panthers and the IRA both used lots of weapons to achieve their goals. The Black Panthers were considered by the FBI to be the biggest threat to the US government in the 60s. They were eventually stopped with counter-intelligence, infiltration, criminalizing, and disarmament rather than military action.
You bring up good examples of uprisings that didn't use weapons and times that uprisings were suppressed with military force. I guess I would slightly walk my original claim back. However, I still think that the people having guns is better than not. I can't find an article, but during the 2020 BLM protests, there were plenty of armed counter protesters. The police were harassing the protesters and leaving the counter protesters alone. Lots of ink was spilled about how this showed which side the police were on. That's probably true. But there was also some Texas BLM protests where the protesters showed up armed and the police didn't fuck with them. They didn't need enough firepower to win a battle. They just needed enough to deter aggression.
Black Panthers / IRA
Neither the black panthers nor the IRA overthrew a state, or defended a territory against a modern army. Both movements were contained, infiltrated, and suppressed by states using overwhelming force/tactics. Their guns didn't protect them from a modern government's means of action (which is far more than just the military).
The only reason the IRA was able to last so long was the UK deliberately tolerating a small conflict in order to avoid political escalation. They thought it was preferable to have a rowdy Belfast than to flatten it like Russia flattened Chechnya, the terror attacks on the mainland did much more for the IRA than the armed resistance. The good friday agreement was the IRA giving up out of exhaustion, not a win for armed resistance at all.
guns in BLM
Well yeah, a handful of cops will be reluctant to escalate against a rowdy crowd. The same happens in France without guns, when protesters start throwing rocks the police backs away and waits for the CRS (riot police with military grade weapons) to take over.
Guns wouldn't do much to deter SWAT, the national guard, etc.
I might be wrong (non-USA perspective here), but wasn't there also a big political angle? Since BLM were protests against police brutality, it would have been really bad PR wise for the police to escalate with more police brutality, therefore they showed more restraint than usual, no? Optics of shooting back at protesters would have caused a huge nationwide mess. Wouldn't call this a case of guns working, rather of politics constraining the states' options. If the government had wanted to do Kent State 2.0, I doubt guns would have stopped them, but they chose not to.
I also don't recall guns stopping rubber bullets shot at journalists, cars rammed into crowds, entire neighborhoods being gassed, activists being kidnapped in unmarked vans, tac units being sent in Portland, doing anything to protect Rittenhouse's victims, etc…
The IRA kiiiinda did though. The map looks different than it did. It was an anti-colonial struggle, so winning looks different, but yeah, they did the thing.
And I think things like swat would be substantially deterred by going after pigs at their dens in retaliation for every act of violence. Nobody's doing this right now.
You know the continental US has like four of that perfect terrain, right?
Sure, if you ignore the rest of the phrase containing the "perfect terrain" quote your reply is perfect👍
Maybe my analysis doesn't agree with yours?
I don't actually know. I'm being high AF and posting right now.
Okay sure, give me an example of a modern uprising where the protesters used weapons to achieve their goals.
You mean... apart from DAANES in northern Syria (more commonly known as Rojava)? Or the Zapatista territories in Mexico?
That's two... I know you only asked for one.
Zapatistas were 1990s. 20th century
The 90s is modern.
But not 21st century.
I actually broadly agree with you but I must fight you over pedantry.
You mean… apart from DAANES in northern Syria (more commonly known as Rojava)? Or the Zapatista territories in Mexico?
Rojava is not a civilian uprising with guns, it's a militia state backed by a regular army (YPG), with US air support, US bases, US supplies. They're fighting ISIS, not overthrowing the Syrian state through street protests.
Zapatistas are actually proving my point… when they launched in 1994, they got absolutely crushed by the mexican military and had to retreat to jungles and small autonomous areas. The only reason they survive is political, it would be terrible PR for the mexican government to launch a campaign on them so they let them live in peace. They lost militarily, did not overthrow the mexican state, did not force anything at gunpoints, and don't control any major population centers. I love the zapatistas for what they're doing, did some ethnographic work with them so I've interacted with them in person: when they talk about their uprising they don't talk about victory but rather about a week of terrible bloodshed and sadness.
Paradoxically, it’s liberals that like guns in my country (hunting has become a bourgeois activity).
Here in South Africa it's the same - probably because it's only the rich (and the top rung of their pet managerial classes) that gets to legally own them. That, and the libs wouldn't dream of hurting the privatised security goon industry (ours is the third-largest in the world, believe it or not).
Yeah, I'm an American leftist and this is my take. I'm not anti-gun. I'd say I'm pro-responsible-gun-ownership. However, some people (leftists and conservatives) think they could beat the US military in a straight up fight. They can't. It doesn't matter how many guns you have.
If it comes to it it'll be won by gorilla warfare. It'll be hit-and-run tactics and explosives. If you get shot at, you're probably fucked. You'll be hiding in the woods or in caves, or potentially within the populace, and taking opportune moments, mostly just hiding and waiting —slowly wearing them down over years, maybe decades.
There is something to be said about military defectors though. If it gets to the point of civil war, some amount of military personnel will side against the government, and they'll bring equipment with them. Maybe they will sometimes fight head on, but it'll still be uncommon.
It'll be bloody and horrible, and very messy. The number of weapons you start with won't matter. Most will probably be taken from the military, and they won't be what wins the war anyway.
but won't do much against tanks, jets, drones, etc.
Not necessarily, the "conflicts" in the middle east has proven that guerilla warfare can go pretty far, even when against the military of a superpower with all the toys they want
There's a massive difference between fighting the tyranny of the state in an uprising and fighting foreign invaders in a heavily militarized proxy war with heavy outside support.
When the liberal political party in our country is dominated and run by conservatives, can you really blame us?
What gets called "conservatism" in the US is really just far-right, fundamentalist liberalism these days - no conservative from Lincoln's days would be caught dead being pro-corporate power.
What? Conservatives in Lincoln's day were pro-slavery. Republicans were the progressive party when Lincoln was around.
This but with everyone hates liberals
You can tell this is true with how fast they're willing to eat their young when cornered.
sounds reasonable...,..
I see FAR more lefty->liberal hate than liberal->lefty hate.
I also think most people's definition of liberal is wrong and they're thinking of the centrist idiots
"Can't tell leftists and liberals apart" should be in the same segment as "likes capitalism".
It can also be shorthand for apolitical. Like the kind if people with zero political knowledge or engagement beyond knowing they aren't conservative like their parents or hometowns were.
Only true if you want to form a monoculture, which is a seriously bad goal in a country as diverse and broad as the US.
But how can my ideology win, if other ideologies exist?
I sincerely hope that's a sarcastic question. If I'm taking the bait, I'll wear the dunce cap: The litnus test for whether an ideology should exist at all is whether or not it requires the extinction of all other ideologies. If a system accepts multiple viewpoints and inputs, literally that it's DEI, it is a good system. If a system exists that recognizes an ideology within itself is calling for the extermination of all others and snuffs it out, it is a great system. See Nazis.
Edit: Because you .ml types stretch every phrase, "see nazis" means see what happened to them, where other ideologies banded together against them.
If communism/1-state solutions require all other forms of belief to be expunged, it should be expunged itself.
I guess I don't fit anywhere because fuck guns.
If people would just take the time to understand the meaning of liberalism before claiming it's what they are
finally, a grand unified leftist theory
