this post was submitted on 05 Jul 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.

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Rules

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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.
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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

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  • 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 means condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.


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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" (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).


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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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[–] Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

That sort of tyranny is the defining characteristic of these primitive, tribal social structures.

This seems like you're projecting your views on hierarchies and domination, being raised in a highly hierarchical, individualistic and competitive society under capitalism, into the past. The sort of tyranny you see in class based societies is not seen in Hunter gatherer society.

I'm just going to copy paste the society section from the Wikipedia page on hunter gatherers as it refutes a lot of what you're saying:

Hunter-gatherers tend to have an egalitarian social ethos,[26][27] although settled hunter-gatherers (for example, those inhabiting the Northwest Coast of North America and the Calusa in Florida) are an exception to this rule.[28][29][30] For example, the San people or "Bushmen" of southern Africa have social customs that strongly discourage hoarding and displays of authority, and encourage economic equality via sharing of food and material goods.[31] Karl Marx defined this socio-economic system as primitive communism.[32] The egalitarianism typical of human hunters and gatherers is never total but is striking when viewed in an evolutionary context. One of humanity's two closest primate relatives, chimpanzees, are anything but egalitarian, forming themselves into hierarchies that are often dominated by an alpha male. So great is the contrast with human hunter-gatherers that it is widely argued by paleoanthropologists that resistance to being dominated was a key factor driving the evolutionary emergence of human consciousness, language, kinship and social organization.[33][34][35][36] Most anthropologists believe that hunter-gatherers do not have permanent leaders; instead, the person taking the initiative at any one time depends on the task being performed.[37][38][39]

Capitalism wants us to think domination is natural so that we'll weigh the grand tyranny of the capitalist state to the petty tyranny of tribal rule and choose it. So they'll downplay the tyranny of the state and wholly fabricate the tyranny of tribal societies to manufacture consent.

They don't want us to think anarchy/communism is possible, much less the natural state of man before agriculture.

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 0 points 4 days ago (2 children)

The sort of tyranny you see in class based societies is not seen in Hunter gatherer society.

We can see this sort of tyranny evolved not just in humans, but in a wide variety of species. What makes humanity special in this regard? Why do you think our evolutionary ancestors were immune to these sorts of behaviors?

have social customs that strongly discourage hoarding and displays of authority, and encourage economic equality via sharing of food and material goods

The sharing of food and material goods does not imply a lack of tyrannical behavior. A focus on the "carrots" does not justify ignoring the "sticks".

[–] Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 days ago

What do other species evolutionary tracks have to do with ours? Legs have evolved in a wide variety of species, but many species don't have them, including some like snakes and whales that have ancestors with legs. These species were formed by evolutionary pressures that made that trait detrimental. Above is a summary of how tyranny is detrimental in a nomadic hunter gatherer society.

Along with the disadvantages one of the key advantages of tyranny, intra group conflict resolution, is less of a draw as we have other ways of resolving conflicts, namely speech which no other species has to the same degree. Resolving conflicts with talking is way less costly to the group then resolving with violence, so a tribe that resolves there conflicts with words is going to be in better shape then one constantly fighting and injuring each other.

The sharing of food and material goods does not imply a lack of tyrannical behavior.

What is this tyrannical behavior then, and what's it in service of? Tyranny takes a lot of effort and risk to maintain, so why do it? Your not getting more resources, your not getting prestige through displays of authority.

Your not going to get a harem, polygyny was rare in Hunter gatherer civilizations and even the guys with multiple wives usually only had 2 wives. . Extreme polygyny and harems don't show up until agriculture as shown by the bottleneck in y chromosomes

So please provide some sort of ethnographic case study showing this tribal tyranny you speak of.