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Lefty Memes
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)
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,
as well as 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 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.
7. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Rape or assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
Not everyone has the luxury of knowing no one who has been brainwashed by the right-wing infosphere. A person not having anyone who has partially or fully adopted fascist ideology in their life is not something to brag about. Nor should that be the goal.
People have families. People have childhood friends they've known their whole lives. People have classmates with the same or similar schedule as them. People have adult friends in their social circles. People have co-workers at their jobs. People cannot control the political ideology of the people around them. If someone is informed enough to know exactly who in their life is currently a fascist and can disassociate exactly from those people then good for them. The majority of people will not be able to do that. Nor will doing that solve the problem.
When the response to this
is this
That's a purity test. Your argument is to sort ourselves by political ideology.
I am a Jewish, atheist, social democrat, lesbian, trans woman. I'm white and pre-transition, so I get to benefit from white male privilege for now. But if the fascists could put me in a death camp they would.
If a person is in danger from someone in their life and can dissociate from that person, then by all means dissociate from them.
The way to defeat fascism is to defeat the ideas that make up the political ideology. Isolating ourselves does nothing to forward this goal.
You're still missing the point here. I never said I keep tabs on everyone at all times just so I can pull the eject handle if they turn Nazi, just that if it does turn out somehow that someone is a Nazi, that is when I pull the eject handle.
In any case, my argument absolutely is that I'm going to sort my friends by political ideology – and no, I don't give people forms to fill out or install cameras in their homes. Doesn't mean everyone has to think exactly like me, but "no Nazis" doesn't feel like it should be a high bar. Sure, maybe this does nothing to help solve the situation but I have no interest in having to be buddies with them, let alone loving them – better people are welcome to it, but I'm done, I'd jump off a cliff if I had to listen to yet another "rational" fascist wannabe explain why my whole gender is inferior to his and then dismiss me when I get ANGY. Call it purity testing all you want, but for me and I suspect a lot of people this is self care
Not everyone in that scenario will be able to pull the ejection handle. A person cannot be expected to quit their job if they realize a co-worker is a fascist. And even if everyone could it would not solve fascism.
Pulling fascists out of their echo chambers and information silos is a job. It's a slow, linear process, where one person is helped at a time, that is outpaced by the efficiency of the righ-wing infosphere. The fascists in people's lives do in fact need love. It is unreasonable to expect everyone to do that. People should consider their own safety. What is reasonable is that we acknowledge the few solutions that we have. If a person has fascists in their life, has the know-how, and is willing to put in that work to help them then that is a good thing. edit: typo
Hey, sorry to necro-post. But now it's just you and me and all the internet tough guys have left. I appreciate your point of view and I am curious about something you said.
How can the "political ideology" of fascism every "be defeated"? Even accepting that you can "defeat" an ideology, and that fascism is even meaningfully thought of as an ideology at all (which I don't think is a helpful lens), fascism works, and it works because of elements of human psychology that we can't simply get rid of. People will always be able to enlist the support of others by throwing vulnerable people under the bus. How is that an ideology that can be defeated? Surely we have to address the conditions that allow human psychology to be exploited in such a way, to help people empower themselves and not feel the fear that makes hatred appealing in the first place.
Fascism is a collective puzzle that has to be solved collectively. Humans are not necessarily predisposed to fail or succeed this puzzle. Fascism takes advantage of human tribalism, but any person is still capable of rationalizing that fascism is not in either their self-interest or a larger collective self-interest. Fascism is self-destructive.
Fascists have to make good on their promise to eliminate the out-groups they demonize. In order to stay in power, the fascists have to keep dividing a country's population into new in-groups and out-groups. The subjective hierarchies they construct and adhere to are based on unattainable ideals. If this process is not stopped externally, the fascists eventually have to kill everyone. This includes the fascists drinking the flavor-aid.
The only way for humanity to survive fascism is to educate ourselves and each other about these self-destructive ideologies. That everyone is imperfect and everyone deserves to live no matter where they fall on subject hierarchies. Anyone who is seriously considering fascism as means of self-preservation can conclude that this ideology will lead to their own destruction and the destruction of the people they care about. Fascism logically contradicts it's own false promises of security and prosperity. Once people understand this, people will then be open to other ideologies to solve their problems that do not involve demonizing groups of people.
People of course have to be given complete information as part of their education on fascism and other self-destructive ideologies. If all a person gets is fascist propaganda, as is happening in the US, then it shouldn't be surprising when people stuck in echo chambers become fascists.
Ideologies can work as far as convincing people to adopt the ideology. However fascism does not work as far as solving the economic problems that drive people to look for solutions in the first place. No amount of genocide of a society's existing population improves a person's material conditions in that society. That kind of genocide is likely to eventually destabilize the society that is committing the genocide. The human psychology that can make us all susceptible to fascism does not prevent us from seeing it for what it is, inherently self-destructive. The human population destroys itself as part of implementing fascism.
There will always be con artists that try to demonize people to get what they want. But if people know that not no amount of demonizing can put food on the table or keep people safe they aren't going to fall for it.
Not to blow you off, but maybe create a new post to continue this discussion and send me a link if you want my thoughts specifically. This post's comment section got glowy.