this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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Lefty Memes

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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!

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)

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.

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

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"Trust us on this!" -Capitalists who would kill any of us for an extra nickel (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Turns out, when the elite of society works against their own people to enrich themselves, the (rational) people realize they owe you neither trust or allegiance. Can't have it both ways.

Nothing wrong with a little competition, amirite?

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I absolutely agree that I don't trust US social media apps and the level of overreaction here is probably a measure of how much some of the data they collect is being used for strategic purposes.

But also, don't trust Chinese social media either.

The difference in coverage is shameful, but the lesson here isn't "Chinese socials yaaaay", it's that it's all bad and messed up.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I'm on there, and one IMHO objectively good thing is the direct and hyper friendly interaction between regular Chinese peasants and regular American peasants. We're supposed to be "adversaries" according to both governments. Bridging solidarity and developing empathy between the laborers of both nations undermines both corrupt empires.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago

That is a hilarious blend of 19th and 21st century language.

Look, I am on board with cultural exchange. For whatever else social media has wrought there's at least that. I'm even more on board with that cultural exchange not being Americans forcing their grabage onto the rest of us. That's a rare occasion.

All I'm saying is don't mistake that for the non-US versions of stuff not doing at least the same crap the US versions are doing. And viceversa, which is why seeing US authorities freak out is kinda funny. But it cuts both ways and it's worth remembering that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Bridging solidarity and developing empathy between the laborers of both nations undermines both corrupt empires.

That'd be great but social media has if anything been a hindrance to building solidarity. Culture war bs has always spread faster and divided more than any class consciousness and solidarity has united. Its amplified small fissures in a broad liberal western cultural consensus, so the larger cultural differences between China and the u.s. would only make it worse.

The only way it might build solidarity is through that national adversarial relationship. Just like how on reddit the liberals and socialist mostly team up against the conservatives, but on here there is way more left/liberal infighting. The only thing that unites people is a common enemy, and as long as social media is ruled by capitalism, capitalist will never be that enemy.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The question isn't whether or not it is safe. It's whether or not it is less safe than US counterparts.

Given that US counterparts are doubling down on fascist insanity, I'd argue giving the Chinese your data is the lesser of evils at the moment.

But intrinsically: stop using corpo social media.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 weeks ago

China isn't going to do anything to me if I call Xi Whinnie the Pooh and say Tienanmen Square happened.

America could (read: would if Trump wants to) arrest me for being queer, an anarchist, atheist, autistic/mentally ill, poor, or something else.

China hurting me would make international headlines. Trump's America hurting me would make Fox News ratings sky rocket as Trump "made america great again".

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

The same folks who were found to be serving malware via ads.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

What is RedNote?

[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

A literal popular Chinese social media app similar to TikTok that has become the top App store app that TikTok users are defecting to because of the ban, bragging about handing their data to China because they no longer respect the US government, and also bragging they'd literally trust the CCP before they'd trust Zuck, Musk, or Trump.

Reveling in pettiness, yes. But reveling nonetheless. It's actually a lot of fun and refreshing to see Americans and Chinese intermingling and sharing culture, so I'm sure it'll be banned too. But it's going to be fun watching our captured government play whackamole to do what they really banned TikTok for: to control the narrative and domestic spying through Meta and X.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Ive seen people on Reddit complaining about how theyre stupid for giving their data to the CCP and the whole time I was thinking about how Google is scraping all their data for Gemini... lol

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

When the Nordic countries launch good social media platforms, I'll defect to them. In the meantime, if you're on social media that isn't instanced like this, you're on social media spawned under the umbrella of a corrupt empire with blood on its hands.

No reason not to play one off the other. No reason to have any allegiance to any of them. If anything, I think the peasants of two countries that are supposed to be "adversaries" talking to each other and realizing we're fundamentally more the same than different as is happening on Rednote can only be a positive thing.

Truly Up vs. Down. Laborers vs elite. That transcends borders.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

I agree with you. I only view Reddit through redlib so I dont have an account or anything. I only have accounts on federated foss platforms ATM, unless you count github which I submit issues on all the time

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

It’s a social media platform people are signing up in anticipation for the TicTok ban that is notably also a chinese company.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

hehehe they thought