Lefty Memes
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
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,
as well as 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.
7. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Rape or assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
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My guess is its Kremlin propaganda, the same divisive stuff they pushed during the George Floyd riots
No man, there is plenty of organic distrust of the police here. The whole legal industry is fucked.
Sure, that's how they work. They find a crack and use a wedge.
It's not a crack. This is a grand canyon scale chasm. The decline of the opinion of the police closely follows the release, and reporting, of crimes, and other unethical behaviors, of police. When BWC first started, it was a boon to the reputation of police. However, as the general public has been more able to record police themselves, which strips the police's control of the who, when, how, and editing, of the recordings the public sees, the opposite effect started to happen. Now the police are working, furiously, to prevent people from recording them, from publicly releasing recordings of police for various reasons, making it harder, if not impossible, to attain BWC footage, and straight-up stopping the use of BWC. A lot more than that is going on. There has been a deluge of leaks of internal communications, amongst authorities, across the country, that are clearly stating that the cops should continue using unconstitutional practices, and that the government, at least locally, would have their backs. Then there is the leaking of footage from some of the most popular training regimes, and conferences, for police that are way out of line, showing they are clearly being trained to view the entire public as the enemy, and that it is fine to kill people, because the cop going home at the end of the shift, is the most important thing there is. This is just the tip of the iceberg of reasons why the police are losing favor.
The police, the courts, the legislature, are who is responsible for the public outcry against the police. Not Russia, not China, not any foreign power.
No, you're ignorant.
I'm not an idiot, but you are an asshole.
You'd have to be a real dumb piece of shit to be a cop. They enforce unjust laws on people for a paycheck and brainwash themselves into thinking the general public is the enemy. They do nothing but ruin people's lives. I'd rather they go after employers and landlords who rob people blind. I'd rather have free access to healthcare than their "protection" I'd rather fend for myself than give up all of my rights in exchange for a false sense of security.
Yeah, I agree a lot of them are kind of dumb, many of them are power tripping assholes. Doesn't mean people should be ADVOCATING FOR THEIR FUCKING MURDER.
Complete horseshit. If you actually think that maybe you're the one who's real dumb.
They always add additional charges and upgraded charges on people when they arrest them. Destroy property, inflict pain, some places your landlord is required to evict you if you get charged with certain crimes even if you're later find not guilty or plead down to what you actually did. Getting arrested will quite literally ruin your life and that's their literal job.
I wish. There was that one cop was put away for defending a woman from SA a year after snitching on his fellow officers. His laywer said never heard of jail time for 1st time misdominer. They literally put him in a cell with a known cop killer. Who said naa this is one of the good ones.
This one time a bad thing happened so now its OK to advocate murder
Sure, all the police violence incidents are "individual outliers". /s
Can you think in anything more nuanced than anecdotes and sweeping generalizations? Got anything better than a strawman to respond with?
Why would I think of something better than a strawman when replying to a strawman?
As I said in another post: Cops protect the bourgeois, white-supremacist, colonialist, patriarchal state by enacting violence on the ruled class. That's not a judgement: it's their purpose in the system.
Individuals with bully-like personalities self-select into that job, while decent people are actively shunned. Because group cohesion is more important than "doing the right thing".
Why do you defend cops so much?