this post was submitted on 13 Jul 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

Version without spoilers

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.


  1. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:

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[–] joeljoelle@piefed.blahaj.zone 224 points 1 week ago (5 children)

There is, in fact, a lot stopping people from forming communes all over the place

[–] bitjunkie@lemmy.world 94 points 1 week ago

Namely, capitalism.

[–] theparadox@lemmy.world 82 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

...and if you do, hoooooo boy. I hope you like a coup, because you are going to get a coup.... or sanctions... or a blockade... or all three.

[–] joeljoelle@piefed.blahaj.zone 40 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And don't get too big or the FBI or ATF is on their way

That's just a shitty thing to say. As if the CIA doesn't do this work, local business owners and sheriffs won't form a militia, or any of dozens of other federal agencies don't put in the work murdering people for trying to share.

[–] 0_o7@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 1 week ago

Worker unions bad, police unions enforcing corporate-aligned government rules good.

[–] ChilledPeppers@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Is there? There are hundreds of giant worker co ops here in brazil, and I know multiple people who live in amarchist communities in the wooxds. Most of them don't last very long, but they do try, and then stop on theirbown accord.

BTW, a giant worker co op named Aurora was responaible for slave like conditions in one of their many grape farms.

[–] joeljoelle@piefed.blahaj.zone 26 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I can only really speak for the US it doesn't seem to go over too well here, and uh, americans making a commune in south america doesn't have a really good track record either lol

[–] mattyroses@lemmy.today 6 points 1 week ago

Pass the KoolAid

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[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 98 points 1 week ago

"Nothing stopping you" except the government. "Which government?" Most of them.

[–] A404@lemmy.dbzer0.com 56 points 1 week ago (2 children)

To them communism is what capitalism is to us

[–] SocialistVibes01@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 week ago

to us

To all of us including them.

[–] derek@infosec.pub 9 points 1 week ago

This assigns too much legitimacy to the position. The working class are not capitalists because we have no capital with which to commit legal theft through property law or pay thugs to enforce those laws with violence.

The working class under capitalism are beholden to systems they often do not understand, cannot exercise agency within, and are actively stymied from prospering under.

Capitalism dehumanizes even those who support it. Those who support it are conditioned to reflexively demonize alternative systems. To rise above this culturally ingrained propaganda and advocate for alternatives requires seeing capitalism for what it is.

Alternative systems are to them what the bogeyman is to children.

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 51 points 1 week ago

"Nothing" is definitely an interesting way to pronounce "many things"

[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 47 points 1 week ago

Nothing stopping you. Well, except for the federal government and its military.

[–] HerbGrower@slrpnk.net 36 points 1 week ago (1 children)

"Nothing is stopping you" - actually not true, you need government permission and they will just say no.

[–] anarchy79@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Every single attempt at establishing a communist society was fought tooth and nail every step of the way by capitalists. By any means necessary.

[–] HerbGrower@slrpnk.net 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Yep. Everything is designed to force individualism. You need to buy a house, illegal to live in a tent even if you own land which is comparably cheap.

So I can legally buy an acre of woodland for under £20k, possibly £10k at a push though they usually charge more per area for small patches, depends on location. I could also build several cabins or put up multiple tents, so far all legal.

The moment someone lives there, illegal. The government can now seize the property. They have done so in the past when people have tried.

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[–] Jiggle_Physics@quokk.au 31 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Remember, the capitalists caused famine all over the place too!

[–] cecinestpasunecommunication@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Okay but they weren't communist about it, so it doesnt count. Stop whining Ireland.

[–] Jiggle_Physics@quokk.au 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

uproar from India, Bangladesh, The Congo, Kenya, and about 100 other countries

[–] cecinestpasunecommunication@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yes but they're not white so we don't have to pretend to feel guilty about the atrocities.

[–] OtakuAllTheWay@sh.itjust.works 29 points 1 week ago (1 children)

‘Member when people tried building there own communes outside the US and the CIA intervened.

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[–] fartographer@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago

Stop trying to enslave me in a world where my neighbor gets to eat! I wanna live in a world where none of us get to eat, and we work all day to maintain our poverty!

[–] TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today 21 points 1 week ago (2 children)

In Caliban and the Witch, Silvia Federici proposes that even before the 1500s as a process of primitive accumulation, proto capitalist used the witch purges in Europe to usher in the family structures required to begin capitalism, killing hundreds of thousands of women in the process.

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[–] starelfsc2@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I had an argument with a friend where he was like "capitalism is everywhere because it works!! How can you say communism is good when it doesn't survive but capitalism does!" It's like yeah bombing and invading other countries worked, that doesn't mean that it's a good thing we want to keep happening...

[–] A404@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 week ago

Thats like saying monarchy works because all republics were destroyed by monarchies

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 week ago

Hello, my name is Marc Parella and I am laughably ignorant of the entirety of human history since roughly 1880.

[–] rockerface@lemmy.cafe 12 points 1 week ago (3 children)

They teach that communism is evil where they should be teaching Soviet Union wasn't communist, they were doing the same thing the US is doing now.

[–] nibbler@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

there are people around who think Soviet Union still IS communist. (Or at least Russia, but it's all the same!)

[–] rockerface@lemmy.cafe 8 points 1 week ago

Yeah, those are usually the people who never were anywhere near either

[–] thethrilloftime69@feddit.online 6 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I don't understand this comment. The Soviet Union was a socialist project that failed to create a stateless classless moneyless society, but did plenty of things to advance the position of workers. What exactly is the US doing now that is similar to the Soviet Union?

[–] rockerface@lemmy.cafe 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] ddplf@szmer.info 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Good job, Marc, now you almost get it! You're just a bit confused.

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[–] Malyca@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Give it a try and tell me how it goes. "If you think you're free, try going into a deli and urinating on the cheese"

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The CIA would like to know your location

[–] Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

People, people, please. You'll be enslaved no matter what economic system you're under.

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[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 week ago

"But if your 'experiment' works too well..."

[–] elevenbones@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 week ago

You want to bind my wrists with the shackles of universal healthcare you monster!

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 8 points 1 week ago

People holding too much power seem to inevitably decide they need and deserve even more power. Bri'uhn wasn't the first that enslaved and genocided whole populations, nor the only during that time: Spain was arguably more violent and France was another power and riches hungry evil.

[–] WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 8 points 1 week ago

Oh yea! Exactly! Thing I should just make that community, because I think that if I keep waiting for the perfect design, and free time, I will just accumulate bans, hatters, and chronic diseases instead.

[–] Smorty@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

where do they explicitly teach that communism is bad?

that feels like - real bad.

[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 33 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I was explicitly taught as a child that communism was a self-destructive framework of ideas that threatens our future prosperity. For this reason we won’t be studying the ideology but instead study the harmful effects such as famines.

And that’s as far as I understood it for more than a decade.

[–] SparroHawc@piefed.world 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's especially ironic considering the Dustbowl Years came about due to bad farming practices (thanks to capitalism).

[–] Jiggle_Physics@quokk.au 6 points 1 week ago

Yeah capitalism has many famines of it's own to account for

[–] A404@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 1 week ago (5 children)

They didn't do that in your school? I tought that was standard practice.

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[–] Greyghoster@aussie.zone 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The Invisible Doctrine does a good job of explaining how capitalism happened and where we are today. Fairly depressing but informative.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/may/29/the-invisible-doctrine-by-george-monbiot-and-peter-hutchison-review-neoliberalisms-ascent

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