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)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Use alt text or image descriptions to allow greater accessibility
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.
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.
for someone following lefty memes for a while it saddens me greatly to see our current state. I know that the political left is notoriously bad at this. but man most of the more recent memes simply aren't that funny. How can we claim to have any sort of coherent ideology, when most of our memes aren't actually memes but infographics on why capitalism bad? (throwing in a meme for good measure)
American libshit ain’t lefty.
Less gatekeeping,more memes, more funny
The problem is that you need less words to vomit some inane bullshit than you would to say an accurate and grounded truth. As such we're always in a losing ground when it comes to memes - because memes need to be short and to-the-point, otherwise as you said they won't be funny.
You can be fairly truthful and not too inaccurate without writing an essay. Sometimes it's ok to do some simplification in order to communicate concisely. We're not getting graded on our memes.
Charlie Kirk looks weird to me now when his face isn’t photoshopped.
liberalism and conservatism doesn't exist in my country . you either a communist or nationalist in my country.
That sounds equally as shit.
Saw footage of that fucker getting off the plane in Nuuk like he owns the place and made my blood boil. Why does some youtube waste of skin have authority in the US??
Memes in general seem to be in a slump to me, though political memes aren’t usually haha funny in any political milieu
A lot of early memes in this community are really good.
lefty who makes rhetorical memes here: while i post them to lemmy and all over the internet, i don’t usually post them here because why would i preach to the choir.
i don’t know if i am alone in this experience or not but if not it might explain some of what you are expressing.
Lefty memes suck because there's not enough obscenities in them, which is an effective comedy and bonding device. Conservatives on the other hand are doing the opposite - posting the most crude, racist, xenophobic, transphobic memes that are short and to the point, no need for paragraphs, or in some cases, words.
It was the opposite in the 20th century, the left were the ones being obscene and offending stuck-up conservatives who were all about the 'traditional christian family values'. Granted, the standards of obscenity back then were much different - a show as mild as "The Simpsons" by today's standards that just showed a dysfunctional family was enough to outrage actual politicians.
Perhaps the metagame is to focus on emotion rather than the truth, make a funny that provokes people rather than explains the history of capitalism and why it's bad.
Obviously emotion should be backed by truth. But I think the reality is, that people are moved by emotion rather than by history lessons.
Keepin stuff up to standards! Good job OP
Is this fact actually true?
Yes, Lefty Memes tend to suck. Not enough paid graphic artists?
I think it's more that they're often too verbose / too preachy rather than focusing on concise communication.
Hey it's small face man
Rule 0 is a thing and if ppl reported it more often, the other mods and I would see it far quicker and act accordingly
Though often it is quite tricky since we can't rly delete posts bc we subjectively deem them of low quality. That's where the voting comes in. The community should downvote those contributions which are of low quality as memes. But popular slogans will get upvoted nonetheless
I'm a bit at fault here too tho, since I don't proactively moderate all too much for personal reasons and post even less
Maybe conservative students should study more? Idk