this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
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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, 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,

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] 158 points 10 months ago (2 children)

School shooting in Europe: A tragedy

School shooting in America: A Tuesday

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Pssh, like we only do 1 a week

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Closer to a day. 288 this year, but school's out, so we'll just have some mall and church shootings to close out the season.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

I was in Auckland, NZ when there was an active shooter in late July and the whole city was on alert. I was expecting an American style mass shooting based on the number of sirens I heard outside. When I found out it was a disgruntled employee who shot 2 coworkers I thought "Oh, that's just a Tuesday in America"

[–] [email protected] 75 points 10 months ago (27 children)

Yeah, except the Czech Republic will probably take meaningful steps to ensure it doesn't happen again

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[–] [email protected] 72 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Coincidentally, it was in the only EU country I know of that has a right to bear arms in their constitution.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 10 months ago (11 children)

What possible correlation could there be? If only we could comprehend this complex issue.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/school-shootings-by-country

One shooting in a country is not proof that the right to bear arms is a public danger. As one might note from the equally isolated incidents in the countries without the right.

288 school shootings in a country that is hardly alone in that right is instead proof of a cultural disease.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

A cultural disease that would be inhibited by strong gun restrictions

It raises an interesting point: if the US cracked down super hard on guns but didn't address the underlying social problems, would people just turn to a different type of violence? Whst would that be? Would you suddenly get all of the would-be shooters committing acid attacks instead?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

What was that thing with "Under no pretext" I'm sure that it's not that important

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

There was a mass shooting at Uni Heidelberg last year

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

And he bought his guns in a country where they can be purchased freely.

[–] Honytawk 61 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Oh wow!

Now we have a total of 40 school shootings in Europe ... since 1900.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The States do that in like what, two weeks?

[–] Honytawk 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No, but definitely in less than one year.

I love how the Wikipedia article only lists the most horrific school shootings in the US, since it is too much work to list all of them.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

USA! USA! USA!

[–] [email protected] 34 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I had to actually read an article to make sure it wasn't Prague, Wisconsin or some nonsense.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

Prague WI definitely doesn't have a university. If I remember right Prague WI doesn't even have a gas station.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I just naturally assumed I'd misread and that it was something to do with PragerU.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

His online diary or manifesto whatever was already posted on 4chan, just on like Dec. 10 he was debating if he wanted to be a serial killer that kills one at a time or mass shooter. Long story short, he was going to do some fucked up shit no matter what.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

"Wait a minute,

They have guns in other countries?"

[–] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Guns aren't banned in any EU countries I know of. That's a strawman by American gun control opponents.
In fact, most of Europe has found a good balance of regulations regarding firearms. Where I live (Germany), getting a gun license is about as difficult and costly as getting a drivers license.
And the Czech Republic even has a right to own guns in the constitution.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

is about as difficult and costly as getting a drivers license.

Note that German driver's licenses are notoriously difficult to get by the standards of most other countries, especially the US.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

OK, but almost everyone is able to get it and no one would claim cars are banned in Germany.

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