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.
undercover cops aren't the secret police. ICE is the secret police. they operate completely immune to transparency and local control and with only secret courts to oversee their warrants
They wash the same hands and serve the same purpose. Undercover, act like a random citizen in public, being a watchful eye for the state.
ICE has secret courts, undercover agents use public courts, but the difference is just one happens in newspapers slightly more often. Either way, your life is fucked if either one wants you, even if you're innocent.
all police are fucked but not all fucked police are secret police
I was wondering why this thread was so unapologetically anti-American until I realized this is dbzer0. Good stuff.
dbzer0 is like the one major safe haven from lib bullshit that also doesn't fall into the pit traps of "well China is uncritically great".
exactly, that's why I love it here
I may not be an anarchist, but I'm not a Dengist either, so I get massive headaches on both Hexbear and grad with their unconditional support for state capitalism. There are good (or rather less worse) aspects to China when compared to the US, but dogmatically supporting it to the hilt just reeks
(not to shit on Hexbear too much, they have quite a handful of good and more or less genuinely leftist coms; I just stay clear of the more political/theoretical one's)
and even as a revolutionary Marxist (read: "non denominational" lmal) I feel welcome and think that this instance is a really nice corner of the Lemmyverse
(even with it being largely anarchist/libertarian socialist. not in the sense that I have a problem with those ideologies, more that I feel that the difference in strategy and tactics doesn't cause as much enmity as it might in other online spaces)
also the free/libre and pirate spirit makes it an even better place <3
trying to counteract the lib .world tide post by post :3
/hj
the usa has a sad legacy of disappearing activists from COINTELPRO to the BLM leader murders
From a personal musing from my discord server with friends:
I think I kinda personally hate how everyone blames everything bad on Putin/Russia, ignoring the decades of national born Americans who were fascists and laid the groundwork for this.
Steve Bannon is American. Peter Thiel is American. Bush is American. Reagan. Nixon. There are countless more rich and politicians who enabled and wanted this who are American, not any other nationality or ethnicity.
Putin is a dickhead but I don't think we can blame every small thing Republicans/conservatives have wanted and gotten since the 1960s on one man half way around the world.
It feels like deflecting blame to an "other" to ignore how liberal democracy enabled the slow rising tide of fascism because it was better for profits than treating people with dignity or rights.
"It's the fault of immigrants" and "Trump's working for Putin" are just two faces of the same "Americans good, foreigners bad" thinking: the problems in America couldn't possibly the the fault of the American power and money elites.
American Liberals are just as prone to preach prejudiced, nationalism and exceptionalism to the riff-raff in the defense of the very same American elites as American Conservatives.
well Amerikkka has been a genocidal colonial project since day 0 that hardly ever was a functioning democracy (two party state much?), de facto has an elected Monarch and it's the worst thing to happen to humanity right after the British empire and the Third Reich (in that order; Spanish, French and Portuguese ones' trail (this is my personal ranking, I'm also not perfectly versed in that part of history just fyi))
btw it also was – in same aspects – the primary inspiration for the German fascists who applauded it for it's history of slavery, racial laws and "manifestation of destiny" (that's where the concept of "Lebensraum" comes from btw: "slaughter the untermensch ~~indigenous~~ slavic population to make place for the ~~white~~ German master race")
also ye, bourgeois democracy is just a different side of the capitalist coin that flips to fascism in the instant capital feels too threatened
edit: forgot to use "Amerikkka" instead of "USA" lol
Shhh, don't you know America was the perfect bastion of freedom until out of nowhere some racists spawned into existence in 2008 and then with those vile subhuman Russians brainwashed innocent Americans in 2016 to plunge this perfectly equitable democracy immediately into fascism which was single handedly defeated by the most progressive man to exist in the last 600 years, Joe Biden, until those filthy fucking ruskies teamed up with hundreds of millions of tankies to plunge our once great nation back into fascism?‽!
The best /s comments are those that make you have a second take 😂.
And there is a non-zero% of the population that actually believe that verbatim.
They're the people on flat.world who banned anyone who said "I don't think courting Republicans is a winning strategy."
I will always cynically laugh remembering my time here on Lemmy during the 2024 Amerikkkan election lol
Basically whenever you said "genocide bad" or "maybe let's stop appropriating proto-fascist neocon rhetoric so some spineless careerist can get elected over another Wall Street represenrative", a dem-boot licking lib would come up and cry/rage about how their comfortable lives were worth more than those of Palestinians
even now their whining about "LGBT/queer/trans genocide" just makes me recoil in disgust
not that I don't detest those policies, just that the hypocrisy is unbearable... so now that you or ppl you happen to care about are affected it's a problem?!
ig foreigners and brown ppl don't matter to them as long as they can have their imperial privilege; now that it gets reduced, they whine
Never blame someone for starting to care. If they start caring about genocide when it happens to them... better late than never. As long as they care about all genocides. Even the one in the Donb... I'm joking.
Their hypocrisy is the only consistent thing about them. If Biden stayed and won in 2024, I would suspect they'd want to work with Republicans who want Project 2025 and we'd be on a slightly slower path to where we are now.
Every single time Gaza is in the news again, there's always a smug bastard going "Wow good job not voting for Harris leftists, such a strong single issue!"
Every single time something the Democrats kept around since Dubya, from Gitmo to DeJoy in the Post Office, they were somehow unable to do something about it, when the laws are more like suggestions.
At least Republicans are consistant in being fuckers and honest about how much they hate me.
the fun thing is how the dems where apparently cucking themselves the whole time with "respecting the process" and shit like that. The current rep government just breaks the speed limit by a hundred km/h and dares anyone to do anything about it
reminds of how the Roman republic was mostly held together by conventions and traditions until (iirc) two populist brothers started ignoring said things, which marked the beginning of the downfall of the Republic
(this is a very basic rundown and I might just be misremembering things or my info might just be plain wrong. like 80% of my Roman history is from Mike Duncan's Podcast 💀)
ironic when considering how much of a hard-on the "founding fathers" had for the Romans
More like "tried to follow procedure, but the establishment broke it over and over to stop them until nobody had any faith in the system left". "Storm before the storm" by Duncan is a great book covering it.
yeah it's been a while since I listened to the part about the Republic lol
I'm currently at episode 34 of "The History of Byzantium"
It's a pity he didn't carry on into Byzantine history. Though his Revolutions is also superb.
ye I actually listened to the Oktober revolution part of that podcast before switching to "The History of Rkme"
also the host of "The History of Byzantium" is doing quite a good job TOI, would recommend
though I do understand Duncan for setting the cut-off point where he did instead of the early 15th century 💀
Heh, the "Mike becomes a commie" series is his masterwork.
Pierson also does great work, I was some 200 in myself when I trailed off.
Yeah Democrats basically cucked America into fascism. It's wild how they gaslight America into thinking they're the winners as they lose elections and keep Republican polices in place for the next one to assume office. The ratchet effect is so god damn real.
as we now see reflected in the up-/downdoots ratio
or it might just be seething libs
(prob both)
comment of the day 🍷👌