this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
1069 points (89.2% liked)
Lefty Memes
4407 readers
282 users here now
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
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Not voting for Biden is the same thing as voting for Trump.
Voting for Biden doesn't mean supporting him. It means preventing Trump from becoming president.
The vote I cast in 2020 was against trump and not for Biden. I feel pretty good about that decision considering what happened afterwards. I'll vote against Trump again as many times as it takes.
I never liked Biden since the Obama years and I now hate him quite a bit. Sadly voting for him at this point is simply necessary, because if I am not in a good enough state to survive then I cannot support the Palestinians nor Ukrainians.
I don't get this attitude. Obama was literally against gay marriage. Biden's policies have been so much more progressive than Obama's and yet nobody I know likes him more. I'm not a "fan" of Biden but that's because it's weird and creepy to be a "fan" of government officials. He does a lot I don't like but if you literally hate Biden I don't forsee any president ever meeting your criteria.
That's just one more reason I didn't like him.
He was a slightly better politician than Clinton so I didn't hate him, now he's still supporting Israel thus my aversion.
Tell that to all the people going to all the politicians rallies.
Bernie.
Contentment does not produce change.
This precise sentiment has gotten me told off a few times now. Usually with someone yelling the word "Genocide" over and over so I can't get a word in. People are so fucking dumb it's actually unbelievable.
Whatever my frustration, I just want us all to work together even after we get Biden a second term. The only reason, ONLY REASON, the GOP have their power is honestly because we can't stop slap fighting long enough to plant a foot in their asses. This would also work for the Democrats. We do have two feet. Whatever our perspectives and opinions, there is a single neigh universal truth we can all accept:
This life sure could be a lot better.
Exactly. This is what I cannot understand from all these "true hyper-leftist" people. You do realize that the future of the USA is at stake here, and that our system is fundamentally rigged to not allow any real alternative as a choice, right? Your brain-dead "BIDEN BAD VOTE THIRD PARTY" is just going to enable Trump and then you'll never be able to vote for anyone ever again as you are forced to participate in alt-right Trump rallies every single day and post on the Trumpernet about how much you love Trump. This isn't much of an exaggeration -- this where they want to go if Trump wins.
You're not supporting Biden. This isn't how our vote works. You're voting for the person less likely to fundamentally fuck our country up. And in case you still don't quite understand who this is, that is Biden.
The largest current of leftists aren't saying you cannot vote for Biden, and that you should vote third party, but that ultimately change comes from outside the electoral system.
Unfortunately unless a revolution falls into our laps and magically solves all our problems, the modicum of control we have over the steering of this ship is limited to voting and advocating for others to vote
Can we safely encourage Republicans to vote 3rd party?
Yes.
They’ll never accept that, because they fundamentally see nothing wrong with the system. They want to preserve the broken machine, even if it doesn’t work for them. They think changing the oil will repair it, when it was designed to break.
More like we don't want to crash our only car when we don't have another means of transportation, and oops, now we can't get to work.
It's great to say "the system is broken and must be replaced." I agree! But nobody who says that, me included, has ever had anything resembling an actual plan to replace the system or to prevent something even worse from taking over once the system is destroyed.
Everyone gave the GOP shit for screaming about how Obamacare needs to be "repealed and replaced" but never saying what it should be replaced with (though that was because the "replace" part was a lie and they just wanted to go back to the bad old days of people being trapped in a job or entirely unable to get insurance because of a preexisting condition). It's the same thing with people saying the entire system of government needs to be replaced.
There are numerous other models of government being practiced all over the world. Choose one of them (I would recommend Swiss democracy).
It's all well and good to say "choose another system of governance" but how do we implement this change? What is the mechanism under which we can replace our current system of government with Swiss democracy, without the old government just saying "lolno" and bombing it to shit? The only method I can think of is a constitutional convention, and right now we're closer to the right wing being able to call one and rewrite it to take pur rights back 200 years than we are to leftists implementing Swiss democracy.
Like... I would be thrilled if that were within the realm of possibility, but as it stands any possible options for dramatically overhauling our system of governance is more likely to lurch us straight into permanent hard-right minority rule by a bunch of fascists. That's what I mean when I say I've never seen an actual plan by leftists to overhaul the system--it's all arguing about what the sexy end goal should be, without bothering to talk about the boring minutiae of how to actually get to it. So far as I can tell, the "plan" to make all these needed changes, so far as any thought is put into it at all, is just a silent assumption of either "we lobby our politicians and they do what we tell them and nobody opposes our ideas" or "we do a violent revolution and kill all the bad guys without harming the good guys and we definitely win and accomplish our goal without someone else taking advantage of the chaos to do a fascism instead," depending on how radical the change is.
Constitutional amendments
Make sure the old government doesn't have enough votes.
Agreed, but it doesn't have to be like that.
That’s what I said.
Not the point. Trump needs to be defeated, and the way we're going to do that is voting for Biden. There's no other way. It's not going to happen. You are absolutely deluded if you think there is another way.
After we fend off the Trump bullshit, then, yes, we have to make actual change to push us much further left. I don't get how all the ultra-leftists cannot fathom this simple fact.
I'm not American dawg. I hate biden as much as I want. Let me hate.
Nah, everyone is free to hate. However, support from others on this planet against Trump is also important. To some degree we all affect one another and his rise into the seat again would directly impact a LOT of people, even outside the U.S.
BUT
I'm hoping that there is now enough anger and frustration for us to carry the momentum past the voting gates and straight into very strong pressure towards all politicians. This IS fixable. The message is there, even if it will result in violence from our militarized police force.
By that logic, not voting for Trump is the same as voting for Biden.
Your point? If you have conservative values, then not supporting Trump does indeed help Biden to win.