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
view the rest of the comments
There are more than enough competent minorities to hire a couple for diversity. And hiring 10 diversity hires, out of a hundred, isn't going to meaningfully impact opportunities for competent non minorities. This is some conservative bullshit trying to sneak in the idea that minorities are dumber than white people.
Sure mate, it can't be that your "'Equality' But Different For Some Than For Others" is neoliberal cosplay of "left" rather than something genuinely left-wing AND that by preserving the differentiated treatment of people based on characteristics they were born with you're just maintaining the very same mindset as the Fascists (that people's gender/etnicity/sexual-orientation determines how they should be treated), no, no, no, it must be that it's the other person (whose history of posts is there for all to see - so feel free to prove it) is a "conservative".
By the way, when I described my conclusions of my own experience, I never said that the group who was getting "positive" discrimination was a minority. Funny how you jumped to conclusions.
Funny how you parroted conservative propaganda and continue to do so while acting concerned.
For anyone not familiar, minorities have had generations of poverty and trauma baked into them. You cannot transition directly to a complete meritocracy and magically repair that. They will remain oppressed and poverty stricken because it's a systemic cycle. Affirmative action breaks that cycle.
Funny how the new age racists trying to pass themselves as leftwing can't stop themselves from grouping people based on the genetics they were born with, just like the far-right.
No, "they" are not "all the same" and shouldn't be treated as if they were.
The way you solve baked poverty from past discrimination is by solving the problems of Poverty, baked or otherwise, which is how a true leftwinger would go after it: you go after the greatest pain and removed it, guided only in the choice of which to go after first by its intensity (as that's how you maximize the good you do) you don't go around deeming every individual with the "right" genetics worthy of support no matter how little pain that specific individual is under and every individual with the "wrong" genetics not worthy of support no matter how much pain that specific individual is under.
For example, make sure the best schools are in the poorest neighborhoods and all of the sudden all the poor kids there have the best chances, and that includes the ones whose poverty is the product of past racial discrimination - breaking the cycle of poverty for all those kids will do a lot more good than a few quotas for only people with the right genetics in places that only help the middle-class.
(By the way, this is actually one of the strongest arguments for there not to be Private Education: so that money can't buy greater life chances for the scions of those who are already better of and the State can channel more educational resources to were it's needed the most)
The only reason to not go after wealth discrimination in general in Capitalism and instead doing very limited measures for only those with the right genetics, is to protect the Wealthy and Capitalism, which is the very opposite of being a Leftie, which is why you Neoliberals love this "lets not go after wealth discrimination which is the main method to transform other kinds of discrimination into lifelong pain and instead let's do symbolic middle-class helping measures based on the genetics people are born with" shit.
You see, you're the one doing the mindless parroting of neoliberal "solutions" fashionable in middle class circles and I'm the one who has been thinking about and guided by, for decades, the core leftwing principle of "the greatest good for the greatest number" rather than adopting unquestioningly some prepackaged ideological tidbits that are popular in my social circle.
So we have to keep brutally oppressing people until we magically stop brutally oppressing people and have a utopia?
No. That's not how that works, that's not how anything works.
You fight the Discrimination by going after every situation of discrimination, punishing the individual offenders and compensating the individual victims.
What you don't do is to carry on Discriminating on the very same visible human characteristics but change the beneficiary groups and call it "positive".
By defending differentiated treatment based on people's genetics (the very same genetic traits that Racists use, no less) you're supporting the very foundation of Racism and every far-right ideology in existence including Nazism.
You're parroting shit you haven't really pondered over and doing so with maximum emotionality and minimal rationaly, in practice defending methods which de facto prolong the very thing you claim to want to stop.
Also, why exactly are you avoiding the point I made about the greatest Discrimination being Wealth Discrimination and fighting that will do a lot more to correct the baked in problems of other kinds of discrimination - what you in perfect political-parrot way mention using the 100% parroted expression "brutal oppression" - than your Descrimination-preserving method?
I'm in a leftwing political party were I live and you sound exactly like the stupid kids who swallowed the neoliberal bullshit and think they're being lefties whilst promoting the far-right way of seeing people, up to and including the raging slogan spewing when confronted with rational analysis of the very neoliberal-think-tank-invented "equality" methods they've learned without questioning.
Because we aren't talking about wealth discrimination here. We're talking about racism. And yes when someone's family was enslaved and oppressed for 500 years because of their skin color, that's going to be the metric for who needs help to repair that damage. This isn't deep, this is some white bullshit to try and justify the continued oppression of minorities. Because there is no movement on anything else you've mentioned and you want to take away the way they are being helped right now.
I don't care who you identify with, this is some Turning Point USA level shit. We can't do the thing we're doing, because we should do something that isn't happening and may never happen. So I guess white supremacists win again by default!
You can come for affirmative action after there's consistent movement on the economic issue, or after, (as one example of many) you can't point out the minority part of town anymore just by looking at a map to see what communities were cut off from services by highways.