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this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2026
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Lefty Memes
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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] Try to use alt text or image descriptions to allow for greater accessibility
(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)
We encourage 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.
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
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
part of counterprop is not platforming fascist bullshit
Turning every leftist community into a siloed circlejerk is great if all you want is a glorified (and self-enshittifying) social club - but you're not going to be doing anything that can be called counter-propaganda with a straight face.
The latter actually requires engaging with people who will actively try and find the weak spots in your narratives while you are doing the same to theirs in a place where others can actually witness it and gain understanding through social osmosis, which, to be clear, text-based social media is really great for.
Come now, be honest... how much did you actually learn that way?
a lot actually. that social osmosis is exactly why if you want to run counterprop you have to set some boundaries about that fascist bullshit will not be tolerated. this constant molly coddling of fascists and normalizing them as "the real left" just poisons what the left actually is. social osmosis works through the same concert of presence and verbal confirmation. by giving fascist nonsense presence we shift what the outcome of social osmosis is when people encounter verbal confirmation in space. you're right that people can be influenced by reading discussion, but that discussion needs to be had in good faith and in order to have good faith discussions we need to have and respect boundaries. trolls, by their nature, do not respect these boundaries. the old age addage of "block and report. do not feed the trolls" stems from this notion
...which are already in place. This is a leftist-controlled space, is it not? And the rules there on the right gives the mods more than enough leeway to keep it that way, don't you think?
What it really comes down to, I'm beginning to think, is our willingness (or lack thereof) to engage the very people we (supposedly) want to expose to leftist thought.
That only happens when we don't engage them by siloing ourselves into circlejerks. A good counter-narrative means absolutely nothing if it has no means of leaving said silo - we're just chucking energy and time at the choir for absolutely zero gain.
No, it doesn't. You need half of the discussion to be, very obviously, in bad faith. Otherwise, there's absolutely nothing to shoot down, is there? You don't get traction from good faith discussion - you get traction from a "bad faith" narrative being demolished with a narrative the casual observer is unlikely to have encountered before. How many movies have you seen where only two protagonists spend the entire movie being nice to each other? There's a really good reason why they don't make movies like that - there'd be nothing to see.
Where's the fun in that?
the context of this entire conversation is that those rules aren't being enforced
I guess the point is moot anyway... even my (somewhat) mild comments here have proven too much for the circlejerk.