this post was submitted on 01 Jul 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.

Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, upvoting good contributions and downvoting 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:

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

Actually that is a human right

Source?

Countries are free to ally with whatever country they want pending any previous agreements

Free to do so, for sure, I'm not claiming illegality, I'm claiming it's wrong. It leads historically to escalation, not to mitigation of tensions. Remember the missile crisis

Eastern European countries made zero promises and had zero obligation to not join NATO

Again, you're not understanding me for some reason. I'm not putting the blame on those countries, I'm putting the blame on NATO itself. It's not that these countries shouldn't want to join a pre-existing military alliance, it's that a supposedly defensive military alliance shouldn't incorporate member countries ever closer to the declared enemy of the US of A.

I wouldn't have a problem with Mexico or Canada willfully joining an alliance with China

I would have immense problems with China fostering military relations with the neighbouring countries of their geopolitical adversary, and if you don't, I think you should rethink that.

Maybe if Russia wasn't such a shitty, untrustworthy neighbor, more countries would be willing to ally with them

I don't want any countries to ally militarily with Russia. I fully understand that Russia has a fascist aggressive government and I'm glad I don't currently live next to it as a Spanish citizen. My whole point is that NATO isn't a "purely defensive military alliance of independent countries", it's an organization subservient to the interests of the USA which has shown no remorse to act on foreign countries which didn't threat military action against member states of NATO, as was the case in Libya and Yugoslavia, and unofficially in Iraq.

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

Find me the source for ANY human right.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's a declaration of human rights, not a philosophical logical demonstration of why we are endowed with rights. The person was pointing out the silliness of your original question.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They literally said "Actually it is a human right", referring to the right of a nation to join a particular military alliance. They are the ones defending that, not me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It might be a language issue. You asked for a source that nations have a right (some would argue a 'human' right) to join alliances:

Actually that is a human right

Source?

So the question asking for a source on 'human rights' is kinda nonsensical, that's why they responded the way they did. You can't provide a source for 'human rights'. That's a philosophical / metaphysical question. There is no official source for human rights hence why the question makes no sense.

On another note, are you the guy I was discussing a while back about conscription in Ukraine? Can't remember. Hope you are all right if you are.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

are you the guy I was discussing a while back about conscription in Ukraine?

No, but thanks for the good wishes anyway

So the question asking for a source on 'human rights' is kinda nonsensical, that's why they responded the way they did.

The question would be nonsensical when brought up randomly, not when brought up in the context of asking someone who claimed "joining a particular military alliance is a human right" . I wouldn't be asking that question if they didn't say "actually it is a human right to join a military alliance". When categorically affirming what is and what isn't a human right, in my opinion, it's understood that this would be the consensus of some international organization, or some resolution signed by almost every country on earth. Of course there's dissent, and discussion is good, but saying that "joining a military alliance is a human right" is extremely fringe and, frankly, the first time I've seen it, so I'd like to see where they got that from.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Yea I agree. It's a strange way to phrase it