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.
Text from the image:
"Once more, let me remind you what fascism is. It need not wear a brown shirt or a green shirt.
Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege."
-- Tommy Douglas
The father of Canada's universal healthcare system. This guy was awesome.
The NDP and Socialist parties created every single beneficial program in Canada. Canada wouldn't be Canada without them. It would already be an American clone.
Sigh...
And now his home province is one of the hotbeds of rural reactionary populism
Pendulums of humans.
The only fix is to have a critical mass of living humans have enough historical education to see the pattern so they can learn the lesson.
Can we do that?
Two ways it happens... And one of them is bad for a large portion of currently alive people
The GOAT - Canadians credit Tommy for bringing universal healthcare to canada. And starting the NDP
And grandfathering Kiefer Sutherland!
I don't think democracy needs to exist for fascism to exist.
The ruling class enforcing the hierarchy accomplishes what Douglas describes.
He's describing a very specific situation here. It also doesn't require fashion choices like he said.
oh I was just agreeing. wear what's comfortable and makes you happy.
Instructions unclear, dick stuck in SS uniform.
OG fascism united with aristocrats, but that system was already dying by the time they came around. It needed liberal democracy to fail so it could exploit its weaknesses. Royalty would never tolerate someone as vulgar as Hitler or Trump otherwise.
C'mon! Let's get this shizz started, I've been workin' out my smoke grenade kickin' leg!
Late edit, because I got triggered, apparently: I swear this would be the dream. Like, just to see something else, at this point friggin' anything, other than what we've been seeing pretty much since humans first decided they wanted to have more than the other guy. I'm so fucking tired of seeing people stepping over other people's throats just to get an inch higher up the ladder, a ladder which is purpose-built to serve the exact opposite effect by those who already own the grand majority of us.
It's not even for us at this point, speaking of those of us who are alive on this planet. I, for one, can feel that fucking ideological corruption still clinging to my moral fibre like a rancid mold no matter how much I try to scrub myself of it. God damn it, I wanted to have kids at one point, but I sure as shit won't bring'em into this mess!
, I’ve been workin’ out my smoke grenade kickin’ leg!
Lacrosse stick might be a better idea. Might have to modify the net.
Pick up, maybe run with it, and toss it back.
Uuu, that's fiendishly clever, thank you!
Look up the concept of "Elite Panic".
They should fucking panic. They've made things nearly untenable.
The academic concept of Elite Panic is actually more about how wealthy elites view mutal aid activities (communities helping themselves to survive - people helping people outside of state assistace programs) during times if crisis.
It turns out that in multiple real world disaster examples elites see humans self-organising as a direct threat that needs to be combatted with state forces of organization - such as police and military intervention.
This is because Elite Panic is really about a kind of fear that the poorer classes are going to use disasters as an excuse to kill the nearest rich person (rather than act with any sense of shared humanity or community in mind).
In response Elites tend to demand that police/governments shoot "looters" and anyone that isn't official basically. Elites demand forms of "Command and Control" fascism in disasters because they're paranoid and fearful of poor people.
That's basically the academic concept/theory under the name "Elite Panic". They get very twtchy, demanding, and needy during disasters, projecting their paranoia and spending most of the time demanding state action like an over indulged Karen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_panic
Behind the Bastards did an episode about it:
Interesting, thank you for sharing.
Soo its all facism at this point
I'm trying to figure out JD Vance and as far as I can tell so far, he thinks he and the American people are oppressed by the oligarchy of the deep state, elite colleges, and the news media? Vance has turned this all around and thinks he is the people, that is trying to break free of their political and economic oppression, to usher in a libertarian utopia.
Just a regular people, Yale educated and launched into national politics by a billionaire patron just like you and me.
Economic democracy. What an idea.