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!
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.
Good thing we (the US) lost the war, or this lady would probably have her own team of lobbyists running their country.
Go fact check the right where the actual misinformation is, rather than acting all smug and superior in a way that's completely undeserved.
And what exactly is "smug" about pointing out that you should source your information?
The word SHOULD is absolutely always the imposition of an external morality. that YOU subjectively believe I should do something doesn't make your moral opinion objective or applicable to me. So go should someone else to death.
But you also did the whole "I'm just a fun google guy reminding you! And I had enough time to get this picture of soup! But not enough to go do my own research!"
If you want a source ASK for one like we're equal adults in a shared space, don't come along and act like you're everyone's parent or the local cop and demand people work for you with your "should" morality. You lost case.
If you WANT to find the information yourself, you SHOULD go find it for your fucking self. Not do some friendly fire cop thing posing as some kind of thought leader/monitor or groupen fuhrer/commander then shooting into its a debate or like this is a space where there's a spread of misinformation or like that's what was happening.
So yeah, take your "should" morality and shove it up your over inflated sense of moral importance. Some of us are currently just trying to relax here, and aren't on duty.
You want to play that game go do it where it's important and needed: in mainstream right wing spaces that have Trumpist Libertarian Nazis in them, as I linked earlier. Don't try to start petty shit at random. Direct your intentions where they become: among the uncritical rightwing who are the actual threat.
That's where I do it, that's where you should do it, but P.S they don't like the shoulding parental approache either. It's a bad mode to approach most adults with.