ID: line drawing of an upright bunny with a black bandana tied around their neck, holding a lit match in their mouth like you might a toothpick. The text says "we can't just vote fascism away, the time has come to disobey. (be brave!)"
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.
Pro-Toupee people are Russian bots, pro-third party people are Russian bots, anti-genocide people are Russian bots, anyone who wasn't enthusiastically a right-of-center Democrat is a Russian bot.
I had no idea so many people are all Russian bots!
I'm not sure they are going so hard right now, since the election is done, but the Russian trolling strategy was to sow division by pushing every side of every conflict further to the extremes.
Like say for feminism, there would be some claiming feminists are just anti-man and want to replace the patriarchy with a matriarchy, others would be pushing the message that men are evil and shouldn't be trusted, while others would be saying women belong in the kitchen to serve their husbands and sons, and yet others would be complaining that men never listen. And they'd do all of this loudly with the hope of drowning out the more reasonable and moderate positions and make it an unsolvable issue because all sides don't think there's any compromise possible.
And once you know the pattern, it's visible all over the fucking place.
Agree, trolls sowing division among society are unquestionably everywhere, operating in countless way, some more direct, some more veiled. But why is it always russian trolls? Don't you think that others have the motive and tools required to influence societal behavior in a way that aligns with their interests? And don't you see how the very dismissing of opinions differing to one's own as trolls is in itself keeping us separated?
Yeah, you're right, Russia isn't the only one with troll farms. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some based in every country in the world. Not all of them state sponsored, but it's an effective strategy to disrupt communities and keep people from working together. Edit: though I've come to see it as kinda like Kleenex, where the entire phenomenon is referred to as Russian trolling even though not all trolls are Russian brand trolls.
And you're also right about that last point. I don't know if there is an effective way to deal with them. Even if someone called out as a troll really is one, just calling them out can alienate others who resonated with what the troll said.
I'm not sure if there even is an effective counter strategy.