this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026
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Lefty Memes

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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!

Rules

Version without spoilers

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] Try to use alt text or image descriptions to allow for greater accessibility


(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)

We encourage 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

  • ofc => OFC
  • af = AF
  • ok => OK
  • lol => LOL
  • bc => BC
  • bs => BS
  • iirc => IIRC
  • cia => CIA
  • nato => Nato (you don't spell it when talking, right?)
  • usa => USA
  • prc => PRC
  • etc.

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.


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.


  1. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:

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[–] wpb@lemmy.world 1 points 44 minutes ago* (last edited 43 minutes ago)

Absolutely. Of course the world isn't black and white, it's not divided into good guys and bad guys, and there's degrees to things. If micronesia decides to become highly imperialist, all of a sudden, I'm not going to care as much. If, all of a sudden, China starts invading a bunch of its neighbors, then that's a huge deal to me!

If one country is responsible for 12 million deaths abroad in its imperial dealings in the past decades, and it has invaded and bombed more countries than I care to list here (I'm not sure if lemmy has a character limit, and spelling all this out is less effort and fewer characters than the actual list of countries), then I'm going to care about that country a whole bunch more than I'm going to care about a country that's invaded two countries and whose death count abroad doesn't even hit 7 digits.

Anyway my point is pick your battles, and focussing on China over America is really missing the mark. If you go by the actual numbers on imperialism, you are focussing on a country that is literal orders of magnitudes less bad. Still not great, but really silly thing to focus on.

[–] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 8 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (4 children)

Why not loathe the existence of every nation state on earth? The worst religion is nationalism, and there is stuff competition.

[–] Grainne@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 43 seconds ago

ML discovers anarchism.

[–] Jiggle_Physics@quokk.au 2 points 2 hours ago

Spending time on Chinese social media has shown me platforms that read exactly like the garbage from the right wing talking heads here on Twitter. Extreme nationalist sentiment is very, very, common. I have seen soooo many memes expressing desire to just wipe out the Philippines, and just repopulate it with mainland Chinese. Memes about their eventual control over Africa, which uses surprisingly western racist stereotypes to portray Africans. So much discussion that mirrors MAGA like behavior, in many ways, but just discussing the greatness of China, instead. So many who, at least claim, to wholeheartedly believe revisionist, extremely idealized, versions of China's past, often including things that just are not physically possible. There is a lot of open talk about what China is going to do to so many of it's neighbors when it over takes the US, and NATO recedes from the region. I stopped going on their, because it was just becoming more, and more, X-China. Then my translator stopped using social media there, expect for work, as well, and now I just can't.

Friends of mine who have spent the past 20+ years living in China are reporting seeing more, and more, of it offline too, when politics was not something Chinese would publicly really talk about, especially to foreigners. However, especially in the past 10 years, they said their open expression of xenophobia, hardline nationalist sentiments, desire to take, and punish other countries, has become almost common in certain social spaces there, and it is worrying them. These people moved to China after studying Chinese language, culture, and history, for many years, including attending Chinese universities. They loved it there. Now they are talking about how it is sounding more, and more, like the rhetoric you get from flag wavers in the US.

So I do not trust China to maintain it's non-expansionism once NATO not longer controls so many of the waters around them. Nationalism is popular their, and the idea of finally taking revenge for the century of humiliation only grows.

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[–] DudleyMason@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Funny, bcs I notice pretty much everyone who talks about "Russian Propaganda" uses that to mean "anything that contradicts the US state department and billionaire owned media narrative about US geopolitical adversaries"

[–] ddplf@szmer.info 2 points 2 hours ago

"... in favor of Russian state departament and oligarch owned media narrative"

ftfy, now fuck off

[–] nullspace@lemmy.world 22 points 7 hours ago (8 children)

"We can talk about socialized healthcare and the evils of capitalism all day, but before we go any further I need you to pass this two-factor authentication by criticizing China and Russia."

[–] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 10 points 4 hours ago

"Have you condemned Hamas today?"

[–] HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world 20 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

This comment is so real it hurts.

I just had someone trying to convince me that Russia can't be imperialist because they oppose the US, an imperialist nation.

... that's not the definition of "imperialist," my dear tankie.

Not sure if linking it so others can laugh/cry is "brigading" worthy of getting me banned off of various Lemmy communities/instances or not.

Fuck it, here's the thread:

https://lemmy.world/comment/25044062

[–] nullspace@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

irredentism doesn’t make a country imperialist

I needed a good laugh.

[–] Schmoo@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 hour ago

Never heard the word "irredentism" before, looked it up. It's literally fascist logic. Do tankies seriously not realize that the logical endpoint of irredentism is a world made up exclusively of ethnostates?

[–] HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

It's more or less exactly the content of this post here. Literal Russian propaganda, I'm sure. Couldn't confirm 100% because I don't waste my precious time checking what Russia has to say about their invasion, but I'm sure the term/topic of "irredentism" comes up and never "invasion" or "genocide."

[–] SailorMoss@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 hours ago

"We can talk about socialized healthcare and the evils of capitalism all day, but before we go any further I need you to pass this two-factor recognizing that the US's military/prison industrial complex has done more harm to the world since WWII than China Russia and Iran."

[–] drktrts@lemmy.ca 21 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

but that's not even what this post is suggesting we do. It's just recognizing that China and Russia are also imperialist states, so we should be mindfull of where the information we consume comes from, since they're all shoving propaganda down our throats and pitting us against one another, for their own imperialist intentions.

[–] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 hours ago

Bedrock based

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[–] Impractical_Island@lemmy.world -1 points 2 hours ago

Bro, I stare at goats for a living; I don't kill them, I just make them ejaculate. If you don't get the reference to the movie about how America does counterintelligence like I do for my job I think I do for the aliens, you should watch The Men Who Stare at Goats and become enlightened to the degree of the game being played. Operation Mockingbird was over fifty years ago, people. MKULTRA and Star Gate are the same program.

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