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,
as well as 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.
7. 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
(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
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I like it as long as the social contract is made clear. The problem is a social contract is basically a set of rules people have consented to “explicitly or tacitly” in order to participate in society.
So while this is good in situations, like people taking offense when someone uses a racial slur in a city.
It could in theory be bad, like practicing an unpopular religion in a rural town.
It is easier than that. Rejecting violence is only possible when collectively agreed upon, since after all everyone has the capacity for violence. When someone breaks this agreement, referred to as the social contract, they incite violence upon all. Being the target of violence after causing it is natural. The hard thing is recognizing that there is such a system in place all the time, namely the state's monopoly on violence, which has to be treated with the utmost care else risk the total decimation of social structure.
Bingo!
Thats the problem with this whole "intolerate the intolerant" debacle. What are calls to violence and segregation against groups of people and what is just "shit i dont agree with"? Theres a subset of people that group both of this thogeter and use this argument to try and censor people that they dont agree with, and its specially bad when governments or companies do this.
This really shouldnt be thrown around so lightly like if it was an absolute thruth, specially since those that do just whant to push their agenda presenting both it and themselves as fundamentally correct, and taking into account that this was originally a thought experiment and not like an absolutetist declaration.
One example would be youtube taking away the downvote counter claiming they where protecting small chanels from harasment.
Edit: Youtube just used that as an excuse to protect its interests and the ones of other companies, not to protect people from harasment by censoring anyone that disagrees with any video. Its doing bad things in the name of intolerating the intolerant and silencing digresion.
Tolerance is tolerating someone doing something you don't like.
Intolerance is not allowing people to do things you don't like. Or not tolerating their existence. Basically forcing your lack of tolerance on others.
I shouldnt make this next argument because im gonna put a target on my back but its the best example i can think of that puts that into question.
So women that go into their respective bathroom shouldnt feell uncomfortable because a clearly transgender woman goes into the same bathroom?
Should the transgender woman shouldnt go into the male bathroom if she feels uncomfortable going in it but should impose herself onto women that feel uncumfortable with her prescensce in the womens bathroom?
Who is the intolerant one there?
Are women that feel uncumfortable intolerant because a trans women that was formerly a man whants to share the same intimate space as the normal women?
Is the trans woman the intolerant one because they whant to go to the bathroom they feel more comfortable with?
That is a case in my opinion where tolerance gets challenged by both sides involved because the other one is getting into the privacy of the other.
You could say that woman shouldnt interfere with the bussines of the trans woman but you could say the same thing about the trans woman. So who is the intolerant here? Both?
In cases like that some people should be excused to at the very least for being uncomfortable and against the precense of the other person because at least in this case it is in and of itself interefering with the other parties privacy.
Feeling something and not keeping other people from doing it is being tolerant. It isn't being accepting, which is better*, but it is still tolerating and not imposing those feelings ok someone else.
Bathroom bans are intolerant.
As a side note, a transgender woman is not 'imposing herself' on women who feel uncomfortable. That is like saying black men are imposing on people who fear then based on racist bullshit. Saying someone existing as who they are is not imposing on others.
This is comical in twisting someone's existence as negatively impacting someone else because of the other person's bigoted views. People will push back because your hot take is terrible and you should take some biology and sociology classes to understand how not everyone fits into male/female biologically, much less how they are perceived in society.
*acceptance means actually accepting them for who they are, what they believe in, and how they act ad long as it does not negatively impact someone else.
I knew the race thing was gonna be pulled out from this. And i do understeand why they could be seen as the same thing. But they arent.
Sexuality and gender are a very heavy isue for people, thats the reason they get all riled up when it comes to bathrooms, be it the gender conforming and nonconforming crowds. You cant and shouldnt force people that dont feel comfortable with sharing it with people with gender fluidity because it is being imposed into them and can cause them to lash out against them. Its not because of hate of bigotry, its just because they persieve the trans woman as not a woman, or a man, which isnt very progresive buy it is valid to feel uncomfortable by it, not everyone will be as progresive as they should, and their right to have their privacy respected should be... well... respected. Rape is a very heavy topic for women, and some consider it even worse than murder, and some women could feel like if they are raped in some way by having a non gender conforming person int the sanctuary of a bathroom where they feel they are the most vulnerable. But that doesnt mean that trans people should be excluded from using bathrooms. At the end they have fisiological needs like everybody else and if they dont whant to go to the mens bathroom because they feel the same discormfort as biowomen then thats fine and should be respected, but it doesnt mean that they should be imposed to biowomen.
That was my point all along, that answers arent as easy nor black and white, hell they arent even gray most of the time. Solving social isues are not as easy as just shutting people of and infringing into their right to talk (i mean some of them are like shuting up the fucking nazis) and most of the time require people that clash with them to go into a compromise by sorting outh their diferences.
And that whole discussion could leads us to the solution of having a third bathroom. It doesnt infringe of genderconforming women and lets trans women use a bathroom without making anybody uncomfortable, you can make a 4th bathroom for trans men too , hell you can make a 5th bathroom for absolutelly everyone that has no problem sharing a bathroom with non gender conforming people if its that big of an isue to people. Now it is not a perfect solution and you go into more problems if you include factors like costs or space.but my point is that a solution was proposed, and that doesnt happen if you censor people by casting them as intolerant.
I didnt whant to call this out but it is a bad take and you already whent ad hominem with the whole "take biology class you biggot" thing so im gonna do that ad hominem thing too. So under the intolerating the intolerant logic and by your take a man that percieves themselves as a man can go into the womans bathroom because women are being intollerant to men by not letting them into the womans bathroom, and that gives them the right of being intolerant to women and therefore using the same bathroom as them? So by that same logic anybody can get into your room without your permision because you are being intolerant to them going into your room so that gives them the right to not tolerate you and enter your room as they please? Thats just chaos at that point, and thats why there should be at least a neutral bathroom if we are to take that type of claims seriously which imo we shouldnt but it would be fair i guess to have one. Think better before you claim something as absolute.
It's like you don't know what words mean.
Nazis usually don't. Words mean whatever they need them to mean.
Same about you m8.
There’s usually a very clear difference between an attempt to remove or limit a class of people and disagreement with a class of people. It just requires a little bit of analysis.
Take the conservative Midwest and LGBT for example. For a period of time, the attitude was “while my faith says LGBT might not be great, I won’t stand in the way of equity.” More recently, the attitude has been “because my faith says LGBT might not be great, I’m going to actively remove protections for classes of people.”
I am neither a member of any faith nor LGBT. To me, it’s pretty fucking obvious the former attitude is tolerant and the latter attitude is intolerant. I am very tolerant of people of faith. I am very intolerant of faith-based government policy that strips my peers of their rights. I am going to actively censor folks that advocate for treating other human beings worse than themselves because that’s fucking dumb. Actively censoring often means having a discussion about why treating someone like shit isn’t tolerant.
At the end of the day I’m also tolerant of your opinion because you’re not advocating to demean a class of people. I just think it’s really naive to say corporations should allow hate speech and governments should be allowed to remove rights because you want to play centrist.
I wrote the complete oposite of that m8... wtf? Corporations shouldnt have a say on what is hate speech because critisisms to them or against their agendas will be gaslighted by them into being hate speech, specially in their platforms, and governments should punish calls to violence/segretation/discrimination in public forums, nothing more, nothing else. I never talked about removing anybodies rights.
This is really all that hard to answer. I mean, theoretically, it is. Practically, though? There's an well-researched connection between a group characterized as "invading pests" and political violence against that group, for example. There was an increase in violence against Asians during the coronavirus pandemic, too. And it'd be ridiculous to believe that calling it the "Wuhan flu" wasn't related to that violence.
Frankly, many calls to violence that masquerade as "shit I don't agree with". Merely calling someone "evil" is, imo, a call to violence. It least justifies it, because evil is not to be persuaded or collaborated with, but driven out and opposed militantly at every step. Especially at the national level, characterizations of evil preclude more deliberative alternatives by default.
But many people don't think that way and don't see the connection between words and violence. I also don't think many value more peaceful alternatives to violence either...but that's just my opinion.
Honestly no.
It is easy to diferentiate those things.
For example;
"I dont like that x people do z thing because it affects y people in a negative way."
This one its not calling for violence against x people. its calling out x people for affecting y people in a negative way. Now if people get violent about it its because there is no denying that there is a number of people that already hate x people and are looking for anu excuse to lash out against x people, and they are gonna end up doing just that whatever they find it or not.
"I dont like x people because they could be a negative influence in our community."
Its a hard one but it is a call to segregation because it is saying that x people dont belong on the comunity that whoever is talking belongs in, now wathever this is true or not, by saying that it is implied that taking them out of the comunity would be a positive thing. So it is a call to do bad things but very subtelly.
So should the 2nd one be banned? No imho because it is very subtle about it and could be said as a genuine mistake. But it should and will be called out by people that dont agree with it and smart people would see it as a poor argument because it calls for segregation, and while a very bad opinnion it shouldnt be outhright banned, just called out and laughed at.
Now what should be punished or banned should br saying in a very public forum in front of lots of people something like the following:
"I dont like X people, they harm the good people of our community and they should be exilled from it and punished for their crimes such as z"
This one is an obvius one, it calls for violence and segregation for x people, punishment and comes of more as rallying than a genuine argument. So yeah, bann that.
I made that frase and used it as an example because people that use the "tolerance is intolerance to the intollerant" argument usually use it because they dont tolerate someone else having diferent opinions than them and say they are being intolerant when that is not true. And censoring genuine diferent points of view that do not call for violence or segregation is in my opinion a form of discrimination/segregation. So they themselves are doing what they preach is bad.