this post was submitted on 22 Aug 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.
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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)
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.
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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
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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).
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The only dangerous minority is the rich.
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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.
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This really seems like it only makes sense in the context of contrived definitions of "authority" and "hierarchy". Expert Authority (authority deriving from an individual's expertise in a particular field) is a well-established and widely recognized concept.
"Hierarchy" does not inherently imply that the relationships are involuntary. If you want to call such structures "involuntary hierarchy", knock yourself out, I'll agree with everything you say against them. But voluntary hierarchies are still hierarchies by the actual definition of the word, and when the structure is based on expertise (judges, teachers, trades experts, administrative coordinators, etc) they are extremely effective.
Redefining words to exclusively refer to the most negative aspects of the common definition is bad rhetoric, intellectually disingenuous, and ineffective at spreading a message. Like I said, if you would like to be specific, and append an appropriate adjective to existing words to refer to a particular subset of a concept (involuntary hierarchy, arbitrary authority) you'll have much more luck convincing those who know what the base words mean.
It's the problem that occurs when a term that is being used in a narrow more academic context makes contact with people who use it in a more colloquial conversational sense. Neither definition is "wrong" really, it's just very confusing unless clarified, and becomes a problem when both sides refuse to understand that context comes into play here.
That's not really what I see happening though, these aren't academic terms, academia uses the "colloquial" definitions. This is a niche in-group co-opting words, changing their definitions, and using them as jargon.
Wrong, it's how the term is used in a lot of anarchist literature because precisely defining what they mean by "hierarchy" is important for discussions about it. So yes, it's a bit of out joint with Standard English usage of the term, that doesn't make it wrong. They aren't being obscurantists, or trying to fuck with you by using hyper specific terminology to trick you into thinking they mean something else. Also words can't be "co opt'd", different groups use them differently all the time, it's a normal feature of all languages don't be an ass about it.
Again, no. Anarchist literature is an in-group. Do you consider the conservative definition of "homosexual" meaning "homosexual child groomer" to be correct as well?
Again, "involuntary hierarchy" is a fine and accurate term. Generalizing that term to just plain "hierarchy" is in-group jargon. The fact that many anarchists use it that way doesn't make it any more correct than conservatives using "homosexual" to mean "homosexual child groomer".
This isn't an "in-group", you aren't being excluded, they aren't trying to obscure what they're talking about. They've come to an understanding that when THEY say "hierarchy" they mean something different, stop trying to assign some devious motive to it. I get why it annoys you when an anarchist SHOULD know they're talking to people unfamiliar with that usage, or act difficult and refuse to acknowledge that the term means something different in general usage. That doesn't ALL anarchist do that, or even that those that DO are trying specifically to fuck with you.
The reasons behind the specific definition is pretty complex, but you have to understand, when anarchists are talking about these systems they don't want to spend a whole page PRECISELY explaining what they mean every single time. Many writings are translated from other languages, or written in english by people who aren't native english speakers, "jargon" here is kinda necessary for ease of communication. Are you gonna get mad if you hang out with some electricians don't understand what the hell they're talking about when they start using technical terminology?