this post was submitted on 31 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] -3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Was Stalin the ~~dictator~~ elected leader at the time of the betrayal and destruction of the Black Army of Ukraine? Was Stalin the one in power right after the revolution when they started killing and arresting anarchists?

Fuck Lenin.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Trotsky was in charge of the red army wrt the suppression of the Makhnovists, so your ire directed at Lenin is misplaced. Even the idea that Lenin had total dictatorial control is a slanderous myth. He was a sheer intellectual force of history, committed to revolution. The Bolsheviks were flawed and contained many bellicose elements such as Stalin; and Lenin was content if not often forced to leave many matters in the hands of Trotsky, Kamanev, Zinoviev and others. If anything, Lenin didn't have enough control over the Bolsheviks

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

I already said this in reply to your other comment, but I'll repeat it here.

Lenin appointed Trotsky as Vice-chairman, and it's believed Lenin wanted Trotsky as his successor; you can't just shift all blame from one to another and pretend Lenin lived in a different reality when he was leader of the party.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

And I'll repeat my point here as well, Trotsky didn't become General Secretary, which disproves the idea that Lenin was an absolute dictator