The Posadist Dolphin (meme)
Inter-species communism
The movement reborn as irony.
Progressive PosadistOne of 729 ideologies · enter the Posadist hall →- Role
- Ironic mascot (fiction)
- From
- internet folklore
- Region
- the internet
- Social band
- Progressive
- Placement
- −92 · +28 · +70
§ Where The Posadist Dolphin (meme) stands
3 axesAs a meme, the Posadist Dolphin stands for full communism carried to absurd lengths: not just the abolition of capital on Earth but a post-scarcity economy shared with other species and civilisations. The joke rests on real Posadist doctrine, which called for the expropriation of capitalism and, in Posadas's 1968 essay, imagined socialist aliens helping humanity end poverty.
The meme inherits Posadism's revolutionary certainty, including Posadas's notorious claim in the 1960s that nuclear war would destroy capitalism and clear the way for socialism. Played as irony, that vanguard confidence becomes cheerful absurdism, but the meme still pictures liberation arriving through revolutionary upheaval led by the faithful rather than through gradual reform.
The dolphin embodies maximal utopian futurism, extending solidarity across species and planets and treating every inherited boundary as provisional. That spirit comes from Posadas himself, whose 1968 essay looked to science and the cosmos for humanity's liberated future, filtered through the playful irony of 2010s online leftism.
How close are you to The Posadist Dolphin (meme)?
Three statements, one per axis. Answer them and we’ll drop you on the compass next to them.
§ The story
FictionThe Posadist Dolphin is a creature of internet folklore rather than of any single author: an anonymous meme, spread through image macros and joke posts on leftist forums and social media in the 2010s, in which dolphins join flying saucers and red stars as emblems of Posadism. It grew out of the online rediscovery of J. Posadas, the Argentine Trotskyist whose 1968 essay on flying saucers argued that advanced alien visitors must be socialist, and it turned his small movement into a running joke about inter-species, interstellar communism.
Politically the dolphin is a piece of self-mockery by the online left, a way of laughing at sectarian splits, grand historical certainties and the pull of ever stranger utopias while keeping a fondness for them. Its success made Posadism far better known in death than it ever was in life, and the writer A. M. Gittlitz traced the movement and its ironic revival in I Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs and Apocalypse Communism (2020). It shows how memes can resurrect forgotten ideologies as shared jokes.
Notable for
- 01Posadism as internet meme
- 02Dolphins and inter-species communism
- 03Ironic revival
Key works & moments
- 1962J. Posadas breaks from the Fourth International and founds his own Posadist International.
- 1968Posadas publishes his essay on flying saucers and the socialist future of mankind.
- 1981Posadas dies, and his movement dwindles to a few small groups.
- 2010sLeftist forums and meme pages revive Posadism as a joke, with dolphins beside its UFOs.
- 2020A. M. Gittlitz's I Want to Believe chronicles Posadism and its internet afterlife.
§ Minds closest to The Posadist Dolphin (meme)
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§ Also in the Posadist hall
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§ Common questions
4 answersWhat is the Posadist Dolphin's political ideology?
The Posadist Dolphin is an ironic mascot for Posadism, the UFO-minded offshoot of Trotskyism: on the 99ideologies three-axis compass, a Progressive Posadist. Economically it sits at the collectivist extreme (−92), joking about a post-scarcity communism shared even with dolphins. On governance it leans moderately authoritarian (+28), inheriting the revolutionary certainty of a vanguard movement. Socially it is strongly progressive (+70), a maximally utopian futurism that treats every inherited boundary, even between species, as open to revision.
Is the Posadist Dolphin left-wing or right-wing?
Left-wing, and knowingly so. The meme comes from leftist online communities and celebrates, with heavy irony, a Trotskyist tendency that wanted to abolish capitalism worldwide. Much of the joke is aimed at the left itself, at its splits, sectarian names and utopian leaps, so sharing the dolphin usually signals affectionate self-mockery rather than literal belief in inter-species communism. It belongs to left-wing internet culture rather than to any organised party.
Did Posadists really believe in aliens?
Yes. J. Posadas set out the idea in a 1968 essay arguing that the flying saucers people reported must come from civilisations advanced enough to have reached socialism, and that humanity should appeal to them for help in ending poverty. His followers published the text, and it became the tendency's best-known doctrine, alongside his view that nuclear war could open the road to socialism. The internet meme exaggerates and embroiders these ideas, but the UFO theses themselves are genuine.
Which minds are closest to The Posadist Dolphin (meme)?
On the 99ideologies three-axis compass, the minds closest to The Posadist Dolphin (meme) are The Cosmic Optimist (archetype) (99% alike), J. Posadas (98% alike) and Revolutionary Vanguard (archetype) (94% alike). The furthest is Hans-Hermann Hoppe (0% alike).