Hi, Peter here to explain!

Who are Hegel and Marx?
Hegel was an influential German philosopher from 1770-1831, who is known for his Phenomenology of the Spirit*, and Science of Logic**. After his death, followers of his philosophy split into Right and Left Hegelian camps. The Right camps focused on religion whereas Left camps increasingly turned atheist and used dialectics. Heinrich Leo was part of the former, whereas Karl Marx was part of the latter.

Karl Marx was the founder of modern socialism and communism, together with Friedrich Engels. They wrote their Communist Manifesto and The Capital. These gave rise to many later modern ideologies such as social democracy, anarchist communism, democratic socialism, trotskyism, and so on.

“Don’t worry, he’s just a nerd”
Initially, the Leftists were ignored or ridiculed (“don’t worry, he’s just a nerd”), but as time went on, the division between the two grew, and before long, the Leftists got suppressed by the Prussian government (ironically, spearheading the core of the Leftists to further their efforts). Why were they repressed?

Many a state were conservative and employed the concepts of religion and divine right as a tool to repress people. With secularism, they would lose their raison d’être, and legitimacy would be lost, thus furthering rebellion. Thus, they repressed the Left Hegelians.

That’s it, I’m creating trans people
With the repression, Left Hegelians were disbanded where possible by the State, but Marx and a group tried their efforts elsewhere, and strengthened their resolve.

With Marx’s criticism of divine right and liberal democracy, as well as religion, as repressing the marginalised, came a social awakening that it was necessary to break free from these chains, in order to dismantle the repressive and often (quasi-)theocratic and capitalist state, so that man could be freed.

The liberation of women, queers, the disabled, and impoverished, thus would help in dismantling state absolutism and repression.

* an incredibly terse and hard to read work, concerning religion, ethics, metaphysics, and consciousness. Communism, fascism, historic nihilism, death of God theology, etc. have been influenced by it.
** Also terse and hard to read, discusses dialectics, as well that thought and being are one.

Peter checking out!

Don’t worry, nobody gets Hegel

Okay, actually I did need to look this up because it was going to bug me and I wouldn’t be able to sleep. For those wondering, the guy on the left is Hegel. He’s a philosopher who spoke on a bunch of things I’m wildly unqualified to describe here.

Guy on the right is Marx, another philosopher who came after Hegel, and led more leftists interpretations of Hegel’s ideas (as opposed to the right Hegelian interpreters), and whose work (again I’m wildly unqualified to describe) influenced a ton of subsequent ideas including queer/gender theory.

The meme itself is a reference to the Yakub meme, which is a joke about the Nation of Islam which purportedly believes that white people were created with an evil nature by an ancient scientist as (according to the meme) a punishment for black people exiling him.

It’s a meme made from the format of a meme which itself was a rework of an old sexist/racist caricature (the original/base image).