this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2024
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Lefty Memes

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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.

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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)


1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here


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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.


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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).


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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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Image ID

ID: A poster in 3 segments, 2 at the top and one bellow:

  1. The text "if we wait for the government it will be too late" above a drawing of 4 people meeting in an airconditioned building. One is Grey and is smiling and showing love to the others, saying "I love you guys!". The 3 others are red, who is smoking a cigar, green holding a bag of cash, and yellow wearing a top hat represent gas oil and coal respectively.

  2. The text "if we act as individuals it will be too little" above a drawing of a person in a small but flourishing garden, they are holding up an apple they got from one of their trees, saying " Such... beauty!" with sparkly eyes. Beyond their fence to the left is an incoming tsunami, to the right are a field and trees on fire with bellowing smoke.

  3. The text "if we act as communities it might just be enough" above a drawing of several groups of people outside. From left to right, there are 3 people standing around a produce table that has a sign above it saying "crop swap on today!", next to it is a small cabinet marked "seed library". On the ground in the centre foreground are an adult and 3 children sitting around a campfire, the kids listening intently, the adult has the Australian Aboriginal flag on their shirt. Behind them are an adult and child getting a pizza out of an outdoor oven. To the right is a stall with a sign above it saying "refugees welcome", in front of it are two adults, one is wearing a head scarf and is holding a baby. In front of the stall are 4 rows of crops growing from the ground.

Quote by Rob Hopkins in "From what is to what if"

Credit: @brenna-quinlan


top 14 comments
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

Your community won't stop global capitalism. Toppling your reactionary governments and striving for internationalist socialism, however, will.

Although community care and help is an important cornerstone of building dual power!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Nowhere is it even implied that community on its own will stop capitalism, but without it you will achieve no meaningful change.

Like, who the fuck do you think you're going to be toppling the government and doing socialism with? How the fuck do you think you get people today to understand the value of doing that? How do you gather enough human mass to enact it?

I'm all for a violent abolition of our existing establishments, but this hostility that seems to be coming out of people towards the mere suggestion of the importance of community building is really odd..

You will never get anywhere without a community.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

I just meant to add to your post, not dispute it. It just reminded of utopian solarpunk idealism that has no meaningful longterm vision except for vibes. Hence my perceived harshness

also the second part of my comment should make it clear that I think of community as being vitally important

[–] [email protected] 2 points 14 hours ago

No spoilers please but I'm currently enjoying the parable of the sower/talents by Octavia E Butler and it feels fitting for this meme and current vibes in general. I know handmaids tale, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, etc get more street cred but this has some value too with some similar uncanny predictions of a future that now feels much more plausible. It is also a very enjoyable read for other reasons!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Im not entirely sure this message works; I get the intention, but community farming on its own isnt a solution to climate change since farming isnt the only major source of greenhouse gas emissions, and since getting one's own community sustainable wont be enough unless one gets all or most outside one's community to do the same. Im also not sure that community agriculture projects like this are necessarily an efficient enough way to grow enough food on the available land space: local agriculture makes sense for reducing logistics related emissions, and for reducing one's community's dependence on long supply chains, and having farms run by locals rather than massive businesses would seem good for the locals for reasons of reducing economic exploitation, but those local farms would still benefit from being run on relatively large scales using as much of the technology developed for efficient farming as can be adapted to sustainable methods, because if you just have everyone grow their own food on their own plots, even with community cooperation to help eachother out with that like this implies, you're basically going back to something like subsistence agriculture, which likely isnt efficient enough to feed everyone (and even if it can be squeezed into doing so with effort, the increased farmland needed to compensate for that drop in efficiency will itself be ecologically disastrous). Realistically, we absolutely need government action (or even action at the international level) to deal with this, because the source of the problem is so much greater than the local level and governments represent a means to enforce rules across communities. If waiting for the government will take "too long", then what those communities really need to be doing is forcing the government to act faster.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (2 children)

That's a lot of words to say "I see no value in community" (which is all the post is suggesting, what you get defensive about and why is for you to resolve with yourself)

Edit, because obviously this isn't clear to some: without a community, and alternative communal structures to fall back on, the current structures can not be abolished and a revolution will never be successful.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

No, Im not saying that at all, youre putting words in my mouth there or misunderstanding what I am taking issue with. The picture seems to imply some very specific things about farming specifically (note the mention of seed swaps and such, which arent bad things, but when the top image showing the problem shows a city, and the lower one showing community as a solution focuses on agriculture, its hard not to take the implication from it that the creator is advocating that their idea of community involves everyone being involved in food production rather than delegating to those members of the community that specialize in it, which is something that I think makes things worse on account of less efficient land usage that this implies, but gets used in this kind of imagery a lot. In other words, I think that pictures here dont actually depict the kind of community solution they want to show, and whether through accident or misunderstanding, looks more like some sort of greenwashing.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 15 hours ago

Jesus nonexistent Christ, dude! Use paragraphs, please!

Your walls of text are reader-unfriendly to the point of almost being hostile!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

I humbly submit that communal structures are the revolution.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 19 hours ago

I would whole heartedly agree. It is the core we must build from.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

What do refugees have to do with this?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 17 hours ago

What kind of question is that?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Emm, isn't one of those right wing policy is to be anti immigrant, including refugee of another country? So yeah it has a lot to do with refugee.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

My question is what does refugees have to do with the environment. This is clearly a comic about climate change.