An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of "ML" (read: Dengist) influence. 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, discussion and agitprop/stuff that's better fit for a poster than a meme 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. Please post agitprop here)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Use alt text or image descriptions to allow greater accessibility
(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)
We require alternative text (from now referred to as "alt text") to be added to all posts/comments containing media, such as images, animated GIFs, videos, audio files, and custom emojis.
EDIT: For files you share in the comments, a simple summary should be enough if they’re too complex.
We are committed to social equity and to reducing barriers of entry, including (digital) communication and culture. It takes each of us only a few moments to make a whole world of content (more) accessible to a bunch of folks.
When alt text is absent, a reminder will be issued. If you don't add the missing alt text within 48 hours, the post will be removed. No hard feelings.
0.5.1 Style tip about abbreviations and short forms
When writing stuff like "lol" and "iirc", it's a good idea to try and replace those with their all caps counterpart
Why? Because otherwise (AFAIK), screen readers will try to read them out as actually words instead of spelling them
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" (read: Dengists) (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 irrationally 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.
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7760707
"Death to Germany because they say their reason for existing is to support 'Israel'^[Not a joke, they call this "Staatsräson".]? That's genocidal against Germans."
Sorry, but I don't care about your colonizer fragility.
I'm genuinely baffled that you think I or other people who have said the same thing are being ironic. As others have pointed out, racism requires power structures. Anti-white "racism" isn't real because it has no power structure to enforce it.
not enough people know racism != bigotry
edit: okay, i guess i have to expain.
explanation of the difference between racism and bigotry
what most people call racism is a form of bigotry. in this case what they are talking about is discrimination, hate speech, and hate action based on the socially derived construct of race. what race has been throughout the ages has changed. but some contributing factors to race are phenotype (skin tone, bone structure, hair color, eye color, other physical attributes), national identity, language spoken, and religious practice. in our current age of scientific racism, the most common factors for discrimination on race are phenotype and familial belonging through genetics.racism is influenced by bigotry, but does not require bigotry to sustain itself. usually racism is established through bigotry and then maintained through access to capital. what racism is is structural social imbalance based on race. racism requires a power shructure that favors one group based on the socially derived construct of race at the expense of another, or multiple other, groupings.
one of the most common misconceptions is that whiteness is determined by skin tone. it is not. whiteness is access to privelege in a color-coded racist society. let's start by using the racist structure that's most familiar to me to explain. i live in the so-called united states. i have always live in majority minority neighborhoods. the fact that this is even possible, for me to have lived my entire life in majority minority neighborhoods, suggests a problem. my current neighborhood, my neighbors are all pale. they are, however, not white. they don't get to be white because the primary determinant of whiteness in the so-called united states because they have accents and dress a little bit differently. for this, the determiners of whiteness, the police, harass them. in otherwords, the police use their access to violence to maintain a racial hierarchy that my neighbors don't get to benefit from because they're not white, they're pale.
this is what is meant when people say "you can't be racist against white people." if you could, that would mean they're not white, because racism requires you having access to privelege in a racial hierarchy and whiteness is who benefits from that. you can be biggoted against white people. and in fact white people with proximity to poverty frequently endure bigotry for not performing whiteness correctly. often, because they've grown up in majority minority neighborhoods and have picked up social behaviors from people who do not get to be white, be that how they talk, how they dress, or even how the approach problem solving. if you've ever heard the term "white trash" you've heard a slur for poor white people that often the people around them take more offense to than they do.
edit 2: boo me all you like. @LeninWeave@lemmy.ml and i rarely agree, and in this case we do, and i'm gonna celebrate that for us. go read a book or something
I liked your explanation and thought it was good. I'm confused by multiple people in 2026 commenting and voting in a place called "leftymemes" not understanding such a basic concept as "racism requires privilege".
You can tell it's true even by thinking about it quickly without any deep analysis: a definition of racism based purely on prejudice would treat "cracker" and the n-slur at categorically equivalent, which is obviously ridiculous.