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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] 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
Their "houses are for living, not for speculating" slogan. China's government might be actually doing something with that... Just to by the other hand harden their mass control and mass surveillance even more; not for anything they have one of the biggest — if not the biggest — regional firewalls (maybe just behind North Korea's one) — the GFW. Then also they have "Reeducation Camps", and all that stuff that any good fascist dictatorship has. Not to forgive Xi Jingping image cult.
So yeah, at what cost? It's at the cost of their freedom. Oh, and China has other parties outside the Chinese Communist Party? To think, ladies and gentlemen.
Fair points I guess, but I'd like to point out that a lot of these were made as defensive measures against outside interference and aren't actually all that different from stuff NATO countries are doing right now. Their mass surveillance isn't driven by corporations trying to extract every last penny off of you, which is more than what any NATO country can say. You can also just get a VPN in China and access the outside internet relatively easily. And what Xi Jinping image cult? I'm pretty sure that ended with Mao. There are also other political parties in China BTW, although they only serve advisory positions to the CPC. Not saying any of this stuff is good, of course, just that it's not that much worse, or in some cases even better, than rival countries. Maybe someone more knowledgeable about China can explain this better.
Yeah, I'm not saying that NATO or the US are better, but I'm trying to push back against the polarized, totally pro-China folks who are only following a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" rhetoric, thus becoming blind to all of China's major issues.
For example, another point is that the entire economic boom in China is driven by an enormous working class that is heavily overexploited by the State yet rendered invisible for convenience, and that is barely compensated with less than the cost of a piece of candy for that labor.
I wouldn't be so sure. You need much more than that (as far as I remember, a specific form of DPI bypass, sometimes the use of multiple VPNs at once [which are hard to find and download because their sites are blocked within China's territory], sometimes even Tor or another overlay network or mixnet [such as Nym, I2P, Hyphanet, or Freenet], and a lot more stuff that I don't recall precisely because it's far beyond my current technical knowledge).
Can you name a few? I'm asking honestly, not out of malice or to be combative; I'd like to know more about that, tbh, because it's hard for me not to be skeptical about that claim.
Do you remember the whole thing with the Winnie the Pooh picture? Well, sort of that. Only a person who is egocentric, egolatrized, and narcissistic enough to instigate a cult of personality would actually ban something like that, and do it the way he did it. Also, you don't have to go that far — look at the streets and you're going to see photos and pictures of Jinping everywhere. And yeah, I know that it's quite normal for a politician to display photos of himself in public areas, but not on that scale. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about; I'm from Venezuela, and both Chávez and Maduro had (and Chávez still has) a huge cult of personality, and everything aligns with Jinping's imagery.
"at what cost" lol