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.
SOUTH AMERICAN ELECTIONS
[two different people are being portrayed side by side]
Gabriela Rosa Sympatica
Elementary school teacher
Beloved by her community
Wants to improve lives
[portrait of a smiling woman in overalls]
Diego Hitlerio de la Junta
Son of a previous dictator
Went to jail for corruption
Wants to sterilize natives
[portrait of a frowning nasty looking character in military gear]
Temporary results (98% ballots counted):
[Gabriela] 49.9999%
[Diego] 50.0001%
This meme forgot to mention that the hitler candidate probably has a million dollar campaign funded by US billionaires or even the United States government itself and that he promised that when he won he would build 2 military bases in his territory, give up all hos country's resources and infrastructure to US companies and a lot of land to zionist settlers.
I see you've heard of Milei
Hey, Latin American here! A few comments to expand:
The thing is, no matter how much of an anarchist I want to be, I can’t fully support not voting. Because it’s precisely by not voting that the Diego Hitlerios come to power and screw us all over.
Because it’s precisely by not voting that the Diego Hitlerios come to power and screw us all over.
wish more people would realise this.
(Your system is shit, I'll die on this hill).
Oh trust me, a lot of us fully agree this system is dumb as hell. Personally I'm in favor of a parliamentary system with a PM who is just a random rep from the leading party and disposing of the senate because it just artificially inflates the voting power of corn. Corn's cool and all, but I don't think corn's existence should count as like 6 Californian votes.
Because of the First Past The Post, even a Parliamentary system in the US with the current Mathematics of how Congress or the Senate representatives are allocated from votes (i.e. single winner per electoral circle) would be still be a two party system which doesn't represent most people.
Just look at Britain (which has a FPTP Parliamentary System) were the current party in Government has more than 50% of members of Parliament even though they got only 34% of votes and is arresting people as Terrorist Supporters for demonstrating against Britain's support for the Genocide in Gaza, has enacted quite extreme anti-Demonstration legislation and is passing electronic communications surveillance laws similar to those in Despotic Autocracies.
Absolutelly, Presidential systems where ONE PERSON ONLY supposedly manages the nation according to the will of millions are complete total bullshit because it's impossible that one person can reflect the preferences of millions, but Parliamentary systems with First Past The Post aren't much better because de facto they're generally equivalent to 2 sets of views rather than just 1 - theoretically multiple parliamentarians from the same party would mean multiple view, but my experience living in several such countries is that it's rare for a member of parliament not to vote the same as the rest of the party in a vote - I would estimate that dissent is in average less than 5%.
Oh, I hate FPtP too, much more of a ranked choice kinda guy. This was just me complaining about my stupid government's form.
the electoral college and a federal government made up of the states rather than of the people along with simple plurality voting sometimes and majority voting others are, mathematically, the least power you can give people while still issuing a ballot. a binary party system is just a unitary party system where the final votes for the party leadership is more visible.
"The people only have those rights which i allow them to have" — Dr DOOM
The thing is, no matter how much of an anarchist I want to be, I can’t fully support not voting. Because it’s precisely by not voting that the Diego Hitlerios come to power and screw us all over.
I'm also an Anarchist. I hate how the left has to shoot itself in the foot for the sake of purity constantly. Not voting doesn't make you more of an Anarchist, or whatever you are. It just makes it so you don't get a say in the election, and the right certainly doesn't have any of the same issues with voting. You should vote for whatever moves us toward the correct path, not avoid voting because you think you're too good for it.
Yes, elections suck. If they worked as well as we want we probably wouldn't have them (or we'd be in a very different situation and this wouldn't be an issue). However, participation takes almost no effort. The effect it has per unit of effort spent is pretty incredibly high. It's not going to change the world, but it will help some people, and it only takes you all of a few minutes usually.
To not try to at least prevent the worst outcome from happening and to not try to make the situation better at least somewhat is just stupid. Although I see myself as an anarchist I vote in every election. There is always a not so shit option on the ballot.
Just voting is still not enough and real change will most certainly not come through a election.
You need a system like Ranked Choice voting to prevent the issues that cause strategic voting and the 2 party system.
Me watching the peruvian ultraleftist who proudly showed a pic proving he voted for "Tung Tung Lenin" last week, not realizing he might end up being the reason his family and him will get disappeared in a fujimorist labor camp in a few months.
Shit like that makes me think Americans aren't that different than they're "third world" counter parts
In the US version the left side candidade would be "Identitaria Fatcatus-Loving", listed as:
At least the "third"-world places often have electable left of center candidates, not just Fascist vs Warmongering Hardcore Neoliberal.
It's something expected to happen in first past the post electoral systems. It's by design things like these happen
Power Duopolies are better than Power Monopolies but not by much and they certainly do not represent the true breadth of political beliefs of a population of millions of people.
In countries with such systems (at least in the ones I lived in) people get trained by the Press to expect everything boils down to "one side versus a the other side", but if you actually analyse the whole thing and think about even simple choices in groups of people (say, "we're should we go to next?" when out with friends) and it's very rare that even for just one thing there are only 2 prefered choices in a group with more than 2 people, so now imagine how many possibilities there are in all combinations of preferences for all the social and political choices in a country of millions.
Representative Democracy by necessity is a heavilly reduced and simplified reflection of the preferences in the society they mean to represent and those variants of it where the representation system is Mathematically Rigged to de facto reduce that representation to just two, is literally the second farthest political system from properly representing a population, with the farthest one being dictatorship.
Personally I don't count Power Duopolies like that real Democracies: a vote alone doesn't make something a Democracy, otherwise Russia would be a Democracy.
Yeah first pass the post system does fucky things, but the issue is the dictator being viable and shows that there's population of that country that supports their violence and oppression...
It's like watching trump win the 2024 primaries and realizing maga is still core to the Republican party
They’re the ones that made the Americas like that.
Yeah but they fall for propaganda all the same. I find hilarious and also an obligation to do counter propaganda
Sympatica is clearly a radical communist while hitlerio is a gentleman, let's see what he has to say for the next 24 hours of television
At least we're honest about it. Donald Trump stole an election in a way that looks better on the news and the USAmericans refuse to believe that it wasn't legitimate. Death to the USA
Diego Hitlerio said he would open up the nation's natural resources to American corporations so the CIA is running a smear campaign on Ms. Sympatica and will overthrow her if she still manages to get elected.
So unrealistic, the dictator would win by a way bigger margin. I'm from the Caribbean so I should know.
Do you use torrents? Because if so, gasp! Found a real one!
Almost makes you think of the recent US presidential election, where in swing states ONLY and for in-person voting ONLY (not mail-ins), statistically anomalous numbers of Trump ballots were Democrat all the rest of the way down, in numbers just high enough for him to win but just low enough not to trigger mandatory recounts, in places where voting machines received software updates just before and just after the election.
i remember this theory - there were a few issues, if i remember right:
the most obvious being there isn't actually a way to know how many people vote red or blue down-ballot (for the very obvious reason that nobody knows how specific people's ballots look) so the guy was making some wild assumptions,
which isn't shocking considering this same guy had run to the news crying wolf about a previous election (which it isn't as popular to be conspiritorial about) with similarly massaged logic,
and the very short list of districts which "inexplicably" voted as a block against democrats, if you literally just look at the election history, usually vote as a block and sometimes for republicans - claims it was statistically impossible or whatever really don't hold up to basic scrutiny,
genuinely i get it, it would be really comforting (in a way) to explain away trump getting elected again as the result of clandestine actors literally flipping bits or whatever, but they didn't appear to have done that so please stop credulously believing things like this without taking a few minutes to look into it and check if it actually holds water.
the dnc annointed deeply unpopular biden to run again and let him make a fool of himself long after it was clear he wasn't up to it and didn't have popular support, replaced him with his vp who wasn't willing to distinguish herself from him on policy and who sought republican votes at the cost of building enthusiastic support from the whole big tent of democrats, literally refused to even record feedback they received specifically about voters being fed up with the genocide of palestinians when canvassing and conducting surveys, etc. and on the republican side they have engaged in very loud very public voter suppression increasingly for a long time - we don't need to look for hidden (especially trivially disprovable) insight into what happened when there were such obvious reasons
These are getting progressively less bad.
Somehow still doing a better job than the largest country in NA
Not really, latin america is pretty fucked up man. It's a large part because of that largest country, but no, latin america is by and large a shit show. Even moreso than the US, for the moment, give it some time the US is falling fast.
it's not latin america's fault latin america is a mess. latin america was much more stable before european colonization destroyed the social structures and societal infrastructure that had developed there for milenia. the fact we even call it "latin" "america" when those are both european constructs from the peninsula of italy should tell you something
One backed by propaganda & propped up by the CIA, and one who worked through their community.
one who worked through their community.
Which miraculously didn't die by CIA hands
That only happens if there's a chance of them winning, silly
Makes me think of Tropico (I was the Diego Hitlerio)
Tropico 7 gets released this year. I wonder if they'll have weird interactions with the US, and have an orange president you have to deal with in the modern age or something