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, 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] 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
- 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
view the rest of the comments
This reads like someone who can't fathom that some people genuinely do like China and think it's doing a good job. It always comes back to Western chauvinism where we think that our values like liberal capitalism and bourgeois democracy are inherently superior to the values held by most people in the global south. Maybe they don't always want what we want.
Too much criticism of China is based on falsehoods and deliberate misrepresentation of certain aspects of Chinese society, culture, and politics. Case in point: the social credit system. Criticism is fine if it's fair and based on facts.
That's all well and good. The problem comes when either one tries to criticize the other. It's hypocrisy. Always resulting in whataboutism as justification.
Without press freedom or freedom of speech as well. It is impossible to say whether China or any country is doing well or right by its people. And it is an excellent metric to look at and judge the United States decline by as well. If you wouldn't trust a police department to investigate the abuse and brutality perpetrated by them. Or take Pete Haggseth at his word about those innocent fishermen he killed. But you accept the narrative of the CCP. That's willful hypocrisy.
Is what gets reported about a lot in Western-free press concerning China, sometimes false? Sure. Is it all false? Certainly not. It's just a shame there is no independent free press in China to actually get the facts out. But plenty of the CCPs verifiable abuse gets handwaved away. Concerning uhygers and other non ethnic minorities. Especially when we can point to real named victims.
Such as the case of Naomi Wu. If you have been in the maker space/3d printing over the last decade. You had likely at least heard of her if not met her. She was a wonderful window into the local culture of shenzhen. A great citizen ambassador for China. And international brand ambassador for creality. Often getting their newest products to demonstrate and display. Till that day. The day she dared put up a personal video. Discussing how she'd suffered because of the CCPs one child policy. And how she and her partner. A uhyger were managing with the restrictions placed on them as an ethnic minority. It was a great and informative video. That didn't even paint the CCP in that bad of a light. But it didn't keep representatives of the CCP from beating down her door. Threatening her livelihood and life convincingly enough that she cut off all international presence and contact. Those aren't the actions of a good or benevolent government.
It's hypocracy when I falsely say you're the same as me and then you criticize me for what I'm doing.
And don't bother trying to tell me otherwise. Because I've already rhetorically closed the doors to my mind palace: everyone is lying so the only truth is that which comes straight from my logic brain.
Now let me tell you a fantastical story with massive holes in it starting with the lie that ethnic minorities were subject to the one child policy
(Westerners are too racist and stupid to fact check so no one will ever catch me hehe)
That is quite an impressive straw man you've constructed. But there's no holes in the story. Here comes the avalanche of links.
https://www.3dprintingjournal.com/p/whatever-happened-to-naomi-sexy-cyborg
https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/1inr36d/anyone_heard_from_naomi_wu_lately/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Wu
https://ofb.biz/safari/article/1240.html
https://medium.com/@therealsexycyborg/shenzhen-tech-girl-naomi-wu-part-3-defunding-deplatforming-and-detention-140fed4b9554
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38666821
https://www.hackingbutlegal.com/p/naomi-wu-and-the-silence-that-speaks-volumes
It's really easy to find all this on Google. And bigotry is not unique to any culture. All cultures have it. Bigotry is not defined by geography or even economic model. But there's a really good chance that if you find someone who tries to claim that it is. You've found an actual bigot.
Honestly, I laugh every time this week ass sinophobia claim gets brought up anytime someone criticizes the CCP. Not the Chinese people mind you. Not people of Chinese ethnicity either. The fucking government.
Yup yup. We're somehow racist against everyone, but especially people of Chinese government descent. Derp derp derp. Literally strange parts videos in Shenzhen building his own iPhone and other misadventures. Along with Naomi Wu's content were some of the major content that got me started watching YouTube regularly for anything more than music videos. It's a fucking joke.
Wow you sure did fail to address the substantive claim and went off like no one was paying attention huh
Amazing percentage of whining making the comment look like it has substance or thought. Literally each and every sentence in all three paragraphs is just disposable in the context of this conversation.
You would have had to have made a substantive claim for me to fail to address it. Let's see what you did. Oh! You created caricatures/strawmen in order to attack the messenger. Not remotely addressing anything of substance I said. And then when clapped back, you used your superpowers of projection. Could you be any more disingenuous? Probably but that's still not a good thing.
Or you could have the average reading ability of a racist westerner arguing about the evils of the asiatics
You literally having a full shower argument with yourself featuring rapid fire redditisms demonstrates my point