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
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 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
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Can you elaborate?
she's alluding to the fact that these characters — the 'soyjack' and 'gigachad' — are historically, and still actively are, alt-right charicatures. together with their friends, 'tradwife' and 'doomer (girl)': they represent misogynistic, racist, antisemitic, and white supremacist tropes.
Ah I see thanks
They represent what the meme creator intends, nothing else.
Must they continue to do so? On their own they are nothing but stand-ins for people or ideologies. If we can reclaim entire slurs, surely we can reclaim these, no?
Even on their own, the shitty alt-right ideology is still present. Notice how the chad, the guy we’re meant to agree with, is very often (not always, but often) a white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed guy?
Or how the guy with the wrong opinions we’re meant to mock is often a drooling person with a dented head?
The ableism and white supremacy of the right is still perceptible in the meme, even when it’s used to push leftist messages.
and on a more basic level, the idea of bad opinion = ugly, good opinion = beautiful is shitty and flirts with white supremacy (because what’s beautiful is very often dictated by eurocentric beauty standards), but that’s a problem in our societies as a whole, not just with this meme
None of those things necessarily need to be true, especially not
The shouting crying soyjak for depicting opinions of people who continue to hold stupid opinions despite all evidence to the contrary fits fairly well, and if you don't like the beauty standards set by the default chad, there's nothing stopping you from substituting your own, or just using any calm, levelheaded character in its place.
It is conveyed that the left should not resort to populism and simple imagery such as "wojacks" We prefer referring to nuanced 500 page essays to convey our arguments so that anyone without sufficient vocabulary and/or time will remain excluded from our circles.
Thesaurus > Wojack.