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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/34884126
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this post was submitted on 18 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
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- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
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Liberalism has nothing to do with corporations. These are two totally independents axis. One one you have liberalism and authoritarianism On the other you have socialism and capitalism. You can have liberal socialist and you can have liberal capitalist. People love to conflate these things based on the popular parties in their country. But just because there are opposing parties with some specific economic/social viewpoint combination in one country, it doesn’t mean that they make a template how it works.
Dearest, no. The axis are economic left vs right (private vs public ownership) and authoritarian vs libertarian. Libertarian being “I can do whatever I want” and authoritarian being “you can only do what I say.” Libertarianism is distinct from liberalism which is a political ideology invented by John Locke which believes free market capitalism is the best economic system except that it needs to be regulated to protect consumers (think the FDA). Before Donald Trump and for most of American history, both parties were liberal parties.
I think it's spelled 'ephebophile' but close enough.
Just an FYI: this comment reads like your whole political education is based on the political compass 💀💀
I’m not sure what you’re trying to imply here. Are you saying that it’s not correct? Care to explain why?
Yes
No. I feel like it would be wasted.
Lol
Liberalism is not a libertarian ideology. Look it up - and the pairing on the axis is libertarianism and authoritarianism.
I'm saying that the political compass (the two axes you described) is for the politically illiterate; a farce that distorts political economy into delusion.
For its flaws, it sure does more service than you let on. ML folks like to make a big stink about it, same with liberals. It exposes authoritarianism and right and right-leaning ideologies for what they are.
What do tool do you prefer to visualize political ideologies?
Honestly I don’t care for kids memes from the internet about a compass. Just because there are kids creating memes, it doesn’t make it incorrect. What is more illiterate is conflating things that don’t have anything in common just because “that’s how it always is” just because that’s how it works in your country.
Also there’s actually a third very popular axis that tends to be conflated with the rest based on random thoughts, and that’s progresivism vs conservativism. People also like to say stuff like “all liberals are automatically progressive” (and vice versa) in the same way as the original post did.
Capitalism is very tied into Liberalism, private property ownership and free markets are Liberal ideas. You'd have to bend them quite out of shape to arrive at socialist liberalism.
The fact is that some individual rights have to be sacrificed for the collective good, and that includes private ownership over productive assets.
You have to oppress oppressors, you have to resist violence with violence. You have to take things away from people who took things away from those they exploited.
We have a major political party which is liberal, progressive and socialist. We also have a major political party which is liberal, progressive and capitalist. We also have a semi-major political party which is liberal, conservative and capitalist. And we also have major socalist conservative authoritarian party. No bending out of shape was necessary.
Socialism as in giving people social security is different from socialism as in socialist economy.
One is "social" "democracy", the other is the inalienable human right to food, health, housing, education, work, rest etc. through an economy owned/controlled by the working people. An economy where the parasites as a class have not only been liquidated, but are actively suppressed from reemerging.
But if being bad is bad how can you justify being bad to bad people to stop them from being bad? This is why nobody takes leftists seriously, 100+ years of communist and anarchist philosophy and you still haven't figured out that basic contradiction