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, upvoting good contributions and downvoting 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.)
view the rest of the comments
There's a name for this I just can't remember what it is.
It's all about following the social contract. If you break the social contract you are no longer protected by the social contract.
So if you walk around advocating for the harm of others, you've violated the contract and your rights are forfeit.
Obviously there's nuance but the point is there.
Maybe you mean the peace treaty thing? I mentioned it in a couple of earlier comments, here's a copy-paste:
Here's a blog post on this, and a relevant quote:
Maybe that's it. Sounds about right.
Don't be a dick and you won't have to deal with the consequences of being a dick.
I've yet to see a Talk Radio personality lose rights for advocating harm to others. On the contrary, they tend to receive enormous pay packages, national syndication, and A-list celebrity status as a result.
Perhaps you're confusing the "social contract" with "karmic justice". But people very rarely get what they deserve.
They are talking about an ideal, not describing the current reality. It's a resolution of the paradox of tolerance.
The “paradox of tolerance” only exists because people think “tolerance” is a universal good.
If you don’t start with that (utterly asinine) assumption, there’s no paradox.
Tolerate a guy beating his dog to death? No that’s not what the “tolerance” aspect of a tolerance society is.
“Tolerance” as a cultural feature or a policy has never referred to the tolerance of all things. It’s tolerance for race, religion, languages, etc.
The whole time, we’ve been intolerant of murder, theft, etc. The whole paradox comes out of a sloppy willful misinterpretation of the word in the first place.
It’s like a three year old concluding that “got your nose” is a paradox because they reached up and felt their nose after mommy got their nose.
It's only a resolution if it works.
The paradox itself is more rhetorical than anything because we don't live in a perfectly tolerant society in the first place. And humans are not robots that need to strictly follow a code that contradicts itself, so even if it were law it wouldn't be a paradox.
But it does work rhetorically because the paradox comes from the contradiction between "tolerate everything" and "everything includes the intolerant" by limiting the scope from "everything" to "everything that generally tries to be tolerant".
The contradiction is between the rhetorical ideal and the practical consequence. "Intolerance of intolerance" is a cute rhetorical trick, but what it amounts to in practice is a brawl between rivals. You're suggesting the Hatfields and the McCoys have solved the paradox of tolerance by endlessly feuding with one another.
It's just a resolution of the paradox, not a recipe for Utopia. Ultimately, I don't think there is a simple way to determine what should and shouldn't be tolerated. Eg, the resolved version would suggest I'm wrong for not wanting to tolerate gender reveals that result in massive wildfires.
At the end of the day, the wisdom I take from it is, "it's stupid to tolerate those who won't tolerate you".
So the solution is to... do what? Rude gestures? Invent a new slur? Ethnic cleansing?
I don't think there's a simple solution either. It's very context-dependent.
But the rhetorical ideal has never referred to tolerating everything.
Would that mean this guy’s now outside the social contract?
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/11876784
Bro why are you working so hard to defend Nazis?
Do you really need to ask for answer?