only voting is not praxis either. just do both mutual aid, organizing labour, neighbourhoods, and show up on election day. electuon day is the easy bit.
everything social is political, everything is social, everything is political. the fact that they are elected doesnt change the fact that who they are accountable to is the people who provide the campaign funds, and the cushy fallback gigs, not to mention those who "produce jobs" in their state, not those who voted for them.
the interest of people outside the state is not accounted for, the interest of those with a criminal record arent accounted for, demographics are gerrymandered out of existence.
january 6th was political, the stunt roger moore pulled in texas was political, none of these things are voting.
organize your community and workforce, feed the homeless, strap yourselves to native land being stolen, volunteer at shelters. volunteer to knock on doors, talk to your friends and family about the issues of the day. these actions are way more impactful than what you put on the ballot, then again, doesnt mean you shouldnt drop off the ballot.
I wish I could upvote this twice. I truly hope that voters reject the far right, but I am anxious about this next election. Building community is critical for whatever bad shit happens next.
I do repro justice activism in a red state, and community engagement truly kept me going during the former administration. Even though bad stuff was everywhere, I was in the company of other people who gave a damn and were trying to make it better. That matters. A lot.
At this point, I also feel a sense of responsibility to my community. I have a lot of information on particular subjects and am known as a person to ask if someone has questions. That is both humbling and rewarding.
I feel so fortunate to know the people I do, and to help connect others with the resources they need. It helps me get out of bed in the morning.
Back to voting: check out your local elections. That's where a LOT of stuff that affects your everyday life gets decided.
Spoken like someone who's never been more involved than voting or maybe phone banking. Go check out your local soup kitchen or talk to anyone doing mutual aid and see what their politics are. If they aren't religious they're almost always leftists.
The system may be broken and you could choose not to participate in it:
A. It’s one sided, the system will still fuck you over if you decide voting is for shitlibs.
B. Condemning everyone else to right wing extremism because the other option isn’t “the revolution” is incredibly naive and absurd.
absolutely. like, is the american Democrat party perfect? fuck no. Do i prefer them over the party that literally wants me to not exist anymore? duh.
people are in legitimate immediate danger if Republicans take more power. stopping that is my priority right now, not trying to create some ideal utopia. one step at a time
If these people can’t bring themselves to vote for a slightly moderate candidate what hope do they have to actually start a revolution or do anything to truly help?
Anyone who thinks 4 more years of trump won't be a permanent catastrophe knows nothing about the courts. The Supreme Court is an unaccountable adjudicator of all American law. Trump has 3 justices he's nominated, and 2 who follow any choice, so long as it leans right. If trump gets the chance to put another 2 justices on the court, his administration won't end in 2029. It will go on for the rest of our natural lives.
And don't forget about all those Federal judges the presidents appoints. When someone gets arrested for being hispanic in tx, or gay in fl, and the case reaches federal court, who do you want that judge to have been appointed by?
See, the thing is, voting for moderate/centrist candidates isn't "one step at a time", it's at best, no step at all, and just as likely to be a step away. Now, is that still preferable to sprinting in the opposite direction? Absolutely. But framing voting for moderates as somehow a necessary first step is plainly just disingenuous.
Rights have never been won by voting. They were fought for in ink, sweat, and all too commonly, blood. Someone who refuses to vote for a liberal party, but actually *does* things, be it protesting, direct action, mutual aid, labour organisation, etc, is infinitely more useful than someone who *only* votes.
And to be clear, I'm not saying to not vote. Electoral politics is still possibly the best way to staunch the bleeding by denying power to those who would use it to cause active harm. But, that's all it really does. It slows the acceleration of a rightwards slide and buys us time. We have to actually use that time to do something meaningful, or it's as good as doing nothing.
Case in point, keeping the Republicans out of power this election might prevent Project 2025 from forcing an effective coup in the US. But what happens in 2028 when Biden can't run. Unless you think Democrats can win every election basically indefinitely, then all you are doing is delaying when that seizure of executive power happens.
And absolutely no messy power imbalances will occur with there being a smooth transition of power that will certainly not bring rise to corrupt people.
I would argue for:
C. Local-level elections can often be more important to your daily life and to those around you than a federal election, and are not always guaranteed based on party lines.
This means even if you live in Bible Fuck, Mississippi, it's not necessarily useless to vote.
Isn’t becoming an American citizen actually notoriously difficult because of their absurd ultra nationalistic pop quiz bullshit they make you do and then keep you in custody for like a month
Accelerationists' will be sitting smugly in their basements until they realize that somehow the militant and coordinated nationalist movement *didn't* in fact just go away when it got power.
kind of a strange assumption that electoralists are somehow doing more praxis than anti-electoralissts. i'm organizing my workplace for a union and i work myself ragged doing mutual aid, my opposition to electoralism is based on teh simple observable reality that the vote blue no matter who rhetoric has resulted in democrats racheting further and further right while we lose more and more rights under their watch, as their understanding is that they get more money being the 1% less bad option than providing meaningful change.
i do agree that the focus on specifcially the act of voting is a waste of time, it doens't actually matter either way, byt the critique of electoralism extends far beyond voting because there's an entire process to getting a candidate elected that is *extremely* labor intensive, that you could dedicate your entire life to, which regularly siphons activists away from effective grassroots movements and co-opts them into the DNC ghoul machine, where even if we do elect "leftists* they turn out like sinema and are immediately and obviously bought out.
if voting is convenient for you, sure whatever, but like there's al ot of raesons specifcially minorities don't vote and giving them shit over not voting as though trump winning hte next election is going to be their fault is nonsense. are you going to give muslims in the US shit for not voting for biden when biden is openly supporting the palestinian genocide? if they can't even draw *that* line in the sand, to offer even the smallest of discipline to the democrats while they wipe out an entire people in a brutal war against primarily women and children,, then what even is the value of this lesser evilism other than giving republicans even more permission to be monsters than democrats, if there's literally nothing one could put on the table that will get a constitentuency to withhold votes? they can't even *attempt* to twist biden's arm to stop a genocide?
>kind of a strange assumption that electoralists are somehow doing more praxis than anti-electoralists.
Yep this is a huge self report. I am very involved in activism and the vast majority of left wing organizers and most active members are anti-electoralists while the vast majority of electoralists I meet while organizing do next to nothing and will maybe show up to every third meeting if we're lucky.
Electoralists who act like anti-electoralists aren't doing anything are just projecting. If your biggest contribution to left wing activism is advocating for the slightly less genocidal Capitalist then you have no right to mock actual activists.
I unironically believe that some of these “dont vote” or “republicans/democrats literally the same” are psyop accounts
Like there are definitely some that are just ignorant/naïve, but some of the accounts Ive seen are like giga sus
Plus... it'd fit with a couple of other puzzle pieces we have, perhaps most notably the Russian troll farms assisting in the rise of online far-right movements dating some years back. I remember it being big news when The_Donald suddenly went reeeaal quiet during a major internet outage over there. Unfortunately, people's memories are very short.
Look at how many of 'em jump to Russia's defense, too, frothing at the mouth and shouting denials, as soon as you mention any of this kinda stuff. That Venn diagram's a fuckin' circle. Tellin' on 'emselves, far as I'm concerned.
I swear... ten years ago, I'd have said we should be trying to patch things up with Russia, but now... who pops up any damn time something sketchy happens?
I find it noteworthy that a lot of right-wing extremist accounts treat Democrats like the devil and urge to vote against them. On the other hand, a lot of left-wing extremist accounts...treat Democrats like the devil and urge not to vote for them.
Both sides appear to be pushing for actions that lead to Republican rule for some reason, hmmm
I wish.
Unfortunately I've met them in person. They're all priveledged upper middle class kids who have twisted themselves into pretzels trying to identify with some minority to feel included in "the struggle". They don't see how priveledged they are to be able to sit there and remain insulated from the world they bitch so hard about.
They don't understand just how bad things can get out in the real world, and they don't realize just how bad things *will* get for minorities and non-heteronormative individuals in the march to the revolution.
for the last time, electoralism is useless to help us, but it can accelerate right wing politics. We lose literally nothing by ensuring the less shit guy gets it
I swear you guys don't know what "damage control" means. Voting is damage control. It also shouldn't be your only form of activism (and neither should arguing online).
Yeah. It's too easy to conflate "necessary" and "sufficient."
I've said it before but voting for the lesser evil is like wiping your ass. Yeah maybe there's a less unpleasant and more sanitary way of cleaning the shit off, and you're gonna want to wash your hands after, but it's far preferable to the choice of walking around with shit on you. And no, it is not the only thing you need to do to stay clean.
In other words, voting is one of many civic hygeine activities you should do. It is not sufficient but it is necessary.
[https://www.indigenousaction.org/voting-is-not-harm-reduction-an-indigenous-perspective/](https://www.indigenousaction.org/voting-is-not-harm-reduction-an-indigenous-perspective/)
I think it's worth engaging with these ideas on their merits instead of dismissing them out of hand.
The only thing a democrat as president buys us is time. Their current plan to stop the rise of fascism seems to be:
1. Never lose an election again.
2. Make sure voters accept every compromise, however grotesque, because if we don’t they lose the election.
I agree, it won’t make things worse. My concern is more medium term.
Let’s say Biden wins again this year. We’re safe until 2028. What then? Biden can’t run again, Democrats haven’t held the WH for 3 terms since Truman, and Trump or one of his sycophants still can. What’s the plan to stop them from just scratching out the dates and replacing Project 2025 with Project 2029?
The next presidential term is likely to get at least one SCOTUS seat, possibly two. Thomas and Alito aren’t exactly spring chickens and they’ll be as old as Scalia was when he kicked the bucket, and there’s always a bunch of lower court appointments to fill. A democratic win in 2024 means another four years of appointing judges who aren’t psychotic crypto-fascist ghouls and can help provide a bulwark when the GOP gets the white house again.
It also makes the fascist wing of the GOP look weak, and fascists are a lot less appealing to the average voter when they look weak. So it makes them just that little bit harder to elect in 2028.
A democratic win in 2024 means another four years of female military personal being able to get abortions without having to take unpaid leave and pay out of pocket, it means another four years of queer and GNC people being able to get passports that don’t out them, it means another four years of the justice department defending minorities against oppressive red state laws instead of supporting those states, and it means that the person in the White House isn’t ordering the military to launch missiles at Mexico.
The first three are all cabinet department policies that can be reversed with the stroke of a pen the day a GOP administration is sworn in, and the last one is a thing that a growing number of republicans are calling for.
I mean yeah, it sucks but that's the reality. Every year that goes by there will be make liberal voters (based on current trends) and we can make more progress to stop fascism but yes, that's the reality. I mean what's the alternative here exactly?
I hope so, I want you to be right, but I’m old enough to remember the early Obama years. It was easy to hope the arc would continue, that America would move past racial issues and start to steadily move forward.
As for what to do? I don’t have easy answers. Local elections are important, unions seem to help too.
My stance on this is that we're in the "last desperate gasp of backlash" part of the current queer rights movement. At the climax of every civil rights effort, there's a final backlash where conservative groups attempt to move mountains to roll back progress.
Examples:
\- "Segregation today, segregation forever!" got so intense that the army had to be deployed.
\- The absurd and often violent lengths gone to try and prevent women from voting or being elected.
\- The Civil War
I think we could seriously see the Equality Act passed by 2030. We are at the beginning of the end of this current last backlash.
Trump would do it harder and also hurt additional people at home and within... anywhere near Russia. Since he straight up said he'll encourage Putin to attack NATO members who don't give the U.S. a protection fee.
Agreed, right wing people tend to be more active and actually do things instead of just complaining, left wing people tend to just protest and do things that achieve little to nothing while using morality to crown themselves as the “correct” ones. Most modern day leftism tends to do the bare minimum at most when it comes to trying to change things while acting like they’re morally correct in every way and use morality to try and prove people wrong when morality tends to achieve little even looking at history morality doesn’t start a revolution, action wether it be moral or immoral starts a revolution instead of trying to find a peaceful solution to everything.
The same faux revolutionaries would be the first to die in one. They glamorize what essentially amounts to a civil war—the word revolution is a euphemism for civil war anyways.
The other argument is when they say “well why not engage in direct action?!?” I agree. But individuals engaging in individual attempts at direct action doesn’t create systematic change. This is the same issue with philanthropy. But I know that internet leftists don’t do direct action either—they watch Vaush quote Marx a couple times.
Its a really interesting topic. If socialism is a democratic system where workers get to vote and democratically decide how our economy works, but at the same time one can’t be bothered to vote at this moment, I can see why liberals say “socialism doesn’t work”. Its not true, but if internet socialists are representative of a left wing movement, I agree. Socialism will not work or at worse be hijacked by tankies.
# Somebody mentioned Vaush
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Seriously. "If I vote, I legitimize a corrupt power structure" like... the fuck? That's some real brainworms shit. How self-important is that? They're not gonna be like "aw, shit, Pneumatrap didn't turn out? Guess we gotta call the whole thing off, then, it's just not an election without him."
We've gotta contend with the results of this shitshow either way, so we might as well spend an hour or two every few years to try to influence it in our favor.
From what I've seen, it comes from a religious devotion to both theory and ideological purity. I've literally seen people explicitly say "Yeah, trans people will get genocided under Trump and not under Biden... *however*" and then say some shit about how voting will never bring systemic change or some such nonsense. And they wonder why I call them privileged and transphobic.
Yuuuup. Good analogy on the religious devotion.
And it's almost always the people that won't be affected who advocate for letting perfect be the enemy of good (or just somewhat less shitty, as the case may be). The entitlement kills me. Like... isn't humanitarian concern the whole point of being a leftist? These people pretend to care about the queer community the same way Republicans pretend to care about veterans. We're not props, we're people, dammit!
It is getting just a *tad* annoying seeing the constant Biden stanning.
Yes, you should vote in a way that means Donald Trump or whichever right wing ghoul doesn't become president, which inex-fucking-plicably means voting for a demented old conservative currently engaged in aiding a genocide and who has always represented the most horrifying aspects of US foreign policy.
BUT it's not exactly surprising that leftists don't want to *have* to vote for someone so completely opposed to their ideology. A man with hands thoroughly drenched in childrens blood, who probably doesn't even fucking know he's doing it. AND constantly pointing out to leftists that you should vote for this guy, usually in a way that reads like "he's great actually, line go up" is the most Hillary 2016 fucking liberal trash I've seen since all of the Hillary 2016 liberal trash.
YES YOU SHOULD FUCKING VOTE FOR THE GENOCIDE GUY, BECAUSE THE OTHER GUY IS HONESTLY PROBABLY GOING TO BE AN EVEN BIGGER GENOCIDE GUY ^(although his track record of foreign policy might actually be quite a lot less imperialistic than any other recent president). But honestly if you're pushing this shit without complete self hating distain, and actually think he's in any way a good candidate, and defend his actions because you think that's necessary to vote for him, then you're just a liberal. You're not a leftist making a hard decision, you're a liberal who, just like most americans, doesn't actually give a shit about anyone far away and not white. And you should just accept that you call yourself a leftist as an act of political vanity because you want an accessory to look good on you.
Americans are being asked to make a horrendous fucking choice this year, and whatever choice you make is honestly understandable. But like, you should probably vote for Biden, because I don't think that other guy's gonna let you vote in 2028, and is definitely gonna take away a lot of minority rights, and is almost definitely not gonna do anything differently than Biden in the middle east.
If you took the energy you're spending trying to bully the very tiny number of leftists who don't vote into voting, and put it into trying to do useful things like organizing workplaces or mutual aid or direct action or participating in movements/actions like No Mas Muertes or Stop Cop City or trying to bully the current leadership into stopping the actual ongoing genocide, then Trump-style fascism would be a lot less of a threat in the first place.
Did you know we can do both? If you have time to do direct action, you have time to vote. Not voting because Dems are not perfectly left leaning the way you want is like not wearing a seatbelt because there is still a chance you’d die wearing one—which is true, but why not reduce the harm?
If you believe in democracy, like leftists do, but you’re not willing to engage in the democracy we have available right now, how do you expect material conditions to change for there to be a leftward shift in the future?
I swear to fucking Christ you idiot moron centrists can't tell the difference between "democrats should be better so they actually have a chance at winning" and "voting is pointless"
Why has the DNC taken over this sub, this sucks so much shit
If democrats lose in November it will be because of their own incompetence, these condescending lectures accomplish nothing
>Voting to keep trump out of power doesnt mean i like the democrats.
I never said it did
"Democrats can help themselves out by being less shit" - this should not be a controversial statement on this subreddit. Furthermore, this is only a statement against voting if you are blinded by partisanship
During the Trump presidency, lots of democrats were radicalized and leftists were mobilized under a common goal.
After Biden won the democrats went back to brunch and leftists are extremely divided on whether Biden is worse or equal to Trump.
And the self-fulfilling prophecy of my comment commences. Hey genius, where in my comment did I tell people not to vote?
You liberals can't even handle criticism that would make it more likely for Joe Biden to win
Young progressives delivered 2020 and 2022 for Democrats. So far our rewards have been half-broken promises and condescending lectures about how the other guy is worse. No shit. But that is exactly how Gore and Clinton lost. Joe Biden **needs** to do better if he wants even a snowball's chance in hell at beating Trump
Edit: And God in Heaven I really just love the whole "actually candidates don't need to appeal to voters" attitude. How did that turn out for Hillary Clinton?
I don't know how this has fallen out of common discussion but the point of local politics is so you can harass and demand changes from your local representatives. clog their phones and mail with professional non swearing demands of what you want to change for the better and getting your peers to also do that. telling them you will be voting a different party if they keep up doing something shitty through mail or call and the key point not threatening violence despite it being so easy to want to is also needed and done often like a chore, it won't work immediately, it won't work fully but lack of hounding your representatives only leads to stagnation.
Once again let me remind you that we lost Roe vs Wade under Biden. People were lied to about student loans. People are struggling to not just stay afloat, but afford basic necessity. Ruling class becoming richer under his watch. LGBTQ+ people are barely safe and nothing is being done about it. A lot of things "can't happen" because "woah we don't have the power" but suddenly they can approve a shit ton of money being sent to kill a lot of people in another part of the world as recently as yesterday? All of these issues are being used to run them yet another campaign which they will never fulfill.
I hate the lesser of the two evil arguement; you are still picking an evil. They will lose on by their own incompetency and how fed up people are, not because some leftists online say they aren't voting. People should organise from local level; be it union or groups, and pressure from small scale all the way up. Threatening to not vote is a form of showing discontent.
So far in this comment section I have counted one person saying "don't vote" and one other person saying they personally aren't going to vote because they live in a solidly blue state
Edit: Updated the count
I completely get where libs are coming from, but smugly declaring that the reason people who don't want to vote for Biden is because they're terminally online leftists with no life, rather than not wanting to vote for someone who is facilitating a genocide, is not addressing the problem.
Rather than blaming left wing voters for any Republican victories, the Democrats should be offering some reason for left wingers to vote for them if that's what they want. Forcing someone to vote against their wishes is not democracy.
Also, the "push the democrats left once they're in power" schtick has been parroted since Obama, and is nothing more than a lie to get votes. Nobody can seriously believe this is a strategy that libs either want or can do.
"anti electoralism" discourse is trash. you should vote, but making so many posts about it as if it's going to edge us any closer to socialism is not good praxis
my view on voting is that it sucks and is a broken system and wont actually make anything get better, and im still gonna do it to stop it from getting worse faster but im gonna complain the whole time
I don't particularly feel like encouraging genocide by rewarding the candidate responsible for perpetrating one with my vote, but I also don't feel like plunging our country into the throes of right wing fascism. What exactly is the play here?
I mean both candidates will continue the genocide in gaza, only 1 will plunge us into fascism and likely start a genocide of LGBTQ folks here, the choice sucks but it seems pretty obvious
Voting is a political chess move, not some abstract representation of your principles. Not voting will not clean your hands of anything. The *only* thing you should care about when voting is the *outcome*.
Two things to note:
1; The DNC propped up trump because they thought Hillary would be able to get an easy victory.
2; After 4 excruciating years of trump the democrats have not adequately addressed their Republican counterparts responsible for 1/6, address the harmful rhetoric surrounding the southern border, address the crimes of trafficking migrants to NY and Chicago.
So leftists who don’t even believe in the democrats have been thrusted upon them, the responsibility and moral obligation to do their part to ensure the greater evil doesn’t win without zero guarantees nor assurances that they won’t find themselves in the very same position once again.
I do not and will not blame nor shame anyone for abstaining to vote. I really hope enough people do their part.
this is bad on so many levels lmao its like tee-ing up an excuse to blame the loss on other people and the premise of calling people anti-electoralists is always like "has a problem with genocide"
Ive said it a million times, dems are the harm reduction vote, but this behavior is very unbecoming of a leftist sub. Its lib shit tbh and you wouldnt frame things this way if you cared one iota about the 2 million displaced Palestinians and the 100,000 dead or injured
the democrats are objectively better for the working class, lgbtq and abortion rights than the republicans
we don't live in utopia, we can't chose to cause greater harm by not voting just because the reincarnation of karl marx isn't a presidential candidate
If this website is anything to go by, they don't believe in it... despite how many of us left-leaning folk were spurred to become full leftists in the first place by round one of this neofascist horsefuckery. Jesus, I need a drink.
If absolutely nothing else voting for the lesser evil is buying time to do more effective things. It doesnt mean you like lesser evil, its just stalling the greater evil. The amount of "leftists" ive seen not get this is alarming
You guys frame anti-electoralism as equivalent doing nothing, yet it’s a strawman when we counter by saying you only advocate for voting. Voting as panacea is just liberal nonsense. It’s far less than the bare minimum. It’s the smallest of all the things you can do. Why do we elevate it to being the most important issue? Why do our spaces get all the air sucked out for Biden’s sake every election?
I know why, because billions are spent by campaigns to make sure that we believe that voting is effective, and that it’s the only legitimate way to make change.
A lot of hidden assumptions in this. Do you actually think leftists will flip any results? Are we going to stop trump with our voteshare despite Biden doing his best to lose?
Even if our effect on the vote could flip the election (a massive assumption, most likely all these posts will do nothing at all), what will it do to ensure the exact same thing doesn’t happen in 4 years after Biden has still made things progressively worse, and the right-wing has just gone further right? Why are we wasting our time talking about “solutions” that only have a 4 year horizon and will still end with things being worse.
For the love of god, no one cares if you vote or not. That’s just consumerism, vote-with-your-dollar bullshit rebranded. Just, please, do something else, too, something that matters. Then post about that instead. That’s anti-electoralism.
This is based on the false notion that the sum total of electoralism is voting.
It isn’t.
Anti-electoralism isn’t opposition to voting for the lesser of two evils, it’s opposition to devoting time, energy, and resources towards attempting to put “leftist” candidates into office (something which entails a lot more than showing up on Election Day), because this has already been demonstrated to be a strategy which requires a lot of effort for little gain, in addition to not meaningfully prefiguring a non-hierarchical and communist society.
I’m sorry, but the idea that the sum total of anti-electoralist praxis is refusing to vote and then sitting on one’s hands is an idea that can only make sense if one has only engaged with the tendency through internet dunks.
Even though you can't vote away capitalism, lots of people seem to think you can't do two things at once:
You can vote for the lesser evil to minimize harm AND work toward a revolution, they're not exclusive in practice
I'm ready for this meme to get reposted in
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Joe Biden has
-funded genocide
-let roe v wade be abolished
-conituned the internment camps down south
-his inaction resulted in my state becoming hostile towards me
-cannot stress enough that he funded genocide
But sure a republican president will be bad or. Smth
Yes do leftists online act like anything short of firebombing a walmart is neoliberialism sure. But plenty do protest or do mutual aid.
Sorry the leftists not participating in a fake election makes you upset though
You guys said the same thing 3000 years ago, the system still hasn't change, and you still have to choose between imperialists
The agenda for the next 4 tears should be attempting to reforming the electoral, more than minimum wage, more than union policy, more than taxation if enterprises, more than identity politics, more than immigration issues, more than anything, even just by a tiny bit of change it'd make a big difference for all the other issues, or else Americans would only be stuck in their own dead end
Maybe by putting pressure and saying we won't vote collectively will make them think rather than just participating in horrible shit and getting elected anyway
I always say it like this, I don't want the liberals in power I want to chose the people I fight.
Ill be in this leftist group and saying "what do we do when the gop wins and outlaws what we're doing"
"we'll just do it harder"
No you fucking can't. My sister is trans I'm not letting the people who want to genocide take power when the liberals will display the controdictions of capitalism all by themselves.
Electorialists doing absolutely nothing, and even within their own logics they cede all political power/hope of moving the dems left by agreeing to vote for them no matter the actions of said party.
Jokesters and shortsightedness.
I am a lot of things, but first and foremost I am a realist, and the realistic take is that Politics is the unending search for the least of all lesser evils.
“We’re literally just asking you to do the most basic form of civic service that takes one day of the year.“
“Yeah, but have you considered voting is cringe?”
I said this in the last thread and I'll say it here: if I were a US citizen, I wouldn't vote for people who want me (and people who look like me) dead. Genocide Joe and Genocide Don would not receive my support on the ballot.
There are prob other things on the ballot, so I'd go for that, but if they both plan to murder my extended family, I don't have a real choice.
The Democrats have said [for years](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FqRNnIMDkUY) that they don't have to listen to you because you will vote for them anyway. They catastrophize every election and scare you with talking points that *they're already doing* and you fall for it every time. They will continue bombing civilians overseas, brutalizing refugees at the border, and arming genocidal regimes and you will do nothing to stop them. They are not going to protect LGBT rights or bring abortions back. They have every incentive *not* to do these things because they're easy campaign promises to make and break and you will never, ever make them pay for it.
It should be noted that republicans were pro-abortion until christians threatened to not vote for them. Politicians can be scared into doing their jobs if they think they might not win if they don't. Voting blue no matter who just gets the lesser evil further and further removed from our interests because it shows them they'll get away with it no matter what. Like Biden, who's done fucking nothing to protect abortion and trans rights even though he easily could. If Trump wins, it's no one's fault but Biden's for being a bad candidate
Youre not more leftist because you dont do anything
You ain’t a real leftist if you engage in praxis 😤
not voting is praxis ig
only voting is not praxis either. just do both mutual aid, organizing labour, neighbourhoods, and show up on election day. electuon day is the easy bit.
Maybe we should brand it as “voting is only the first step” since terminally online Leftists seem to get confused lol
wdym voting is not all there is to politics 🫠
What do you mean basically all the insider party positions we rail against are either elected or appointed by people who are elected?
everything social is political, everything is social, everything is political. the fact that they are elected doesnt change the fact that who they are accountable to is the people who provide the campaign funds, and the cushy fallback gigs, not to mention those who "produce jobs" in their state, not those who voted for them. the interest of people outside the state is not accounted for, the interest of those with a criminal record arent accounted for, demographics are gerrymandered out of existence. january 6th was political, the stunt roger moore pulled in texas was political, none of these things are voting. organize your community and workforce, feed the homeless, strap yourselves to native land being stolen, volunteer at shelters. volunteer to knock on doors, talk to your friends and family about the issues of the day. these actions are way more impactful than what you put on the ballot, then again, doesnt mean you shouldnt drop off the ballot.
I wish I could upvote this twice. I truly hope that voters reject the far right, but I am anxious about this next election. Building community is critical for whatever bad shit happens next. I do repro justice activism in a red state, and community engagement truly kept me going during the former administration. Even though bad stuff was everywhere, I was in the company of other people who gave a damn and were trying to make it better. That matters. A lot. At this point, I also feel a sense of responsibility to my community. I have a lot of information on particular subjects and am known as a person to ask if someone has questions. That is both humbling and rewarding. I feel so fortunate to know the people I do, and to help connect others with the resources they need. It helps me get out of bed in the morning. Back to voting: check out your local elections. That's where a LOT of stuff that affects your everyday life gets decided.
Yes, agreed. Part do that will be taking over party infrastructure, like Stone and the Tea Party did
No, I vote once, then return to my four year slumber of inactivity until the following presidential election
Now you’re getting it! 😁
voting is also praxis because joe biden is a communist 😏
The less things you do the more leftist you are actually
I’m more leftist because I actively encourage violence against the fascists
The only thing lefists hate more than the problems with society, are any attempts to form a solution.
Right wing representatives flat out making problems: Left wing representatives saying they’re upset and will change things but they do nothing:
Spoken like someone who's never been more involved than voting or maybe phone banking. Go check out your local soup kitchen or talk to anyone doing mutual aid and see what their politics are. If they aren't religious they're almost always leftists.
The phrase letting perfect be the enemy of good is the creed of internet leftists.
The leftist has cute hair tho
i mean i would normally disagree with their opinion but yeah
Damn shame it's on them.
Being cute and having dumb opinions are unfortunately not mutually exclusive.
Absolutely incorrect. Pretty people are always right and I can fix them if they're not
Is that so coles “knob gobbler” weed?
Damn right miss crunchy ice "96"
Well I have cute hair too (no I don't my hair looks like an abandoned cat.)
Cats r cute :3
The system may be broken and you could choose not to participate in it: A. It’s one sided, the system will still fuck you over if you decide voting is for shitlibs. B. Condemning everyone else to right wing extremism because the other option isn’t “the revolution” is incredibly naive and absurd.
absolutely. like, is the american Democrat party perfect? fuck no. Do i prefer them over the party that literally wants me to not exist anymore? duh. people are in legitimate immediate danger if Republicans take more power. stopping that is my priority right now, not trying to create some ideal utopia. one step at a time
If these people can’t bring themselves to vote for a slightly moderate candidate what hope do they have to actually start a revolution or do anything to truly help?
It’s simple. Step 1: Do Nothing Step 2: Fascists Take Over Step 3: ??? Step 4: Revolution
Anyone who thinks 4 more years of trump won't be a permanent catastrophe knows nothing about the courts. The Supreme Court is an unaccountable adjudicator of all American law. Trump has 3 justices he's nominated, and 2 who follow any choice, so long as it leans right. If trump gets the chance to put another 2 justices on the court, his administration won't end in 2029. It will go on for the rest of our natural lives.
And don't forget about all those Federal judges the presidents appoints. When someone gets arrested for being hispanic in tx, or gay in fl, and the case reaches federal court, who do you want that judge to have been appointed by?
See, the thing is, voting for moderate/centrist candidates isn't "one step at a time", it's at best, no step at all, and just as likely to be a step away. Now, is that still preferable to sprinting in the opposite direction? Absolutely. But framing voting for moderates as somehow a necessary first step is plainly just disingenuous. Rights have never been won by voting. They were fought for in ink, sweat, and all too commonly, blood. Someone who refuses to vote for a liberal party, but actually *does* things, be it protesting, direct action, mutual aid, labour organisation, etc, is infinitely more useful than someone who *only* votes. And to be clear, I'm not saying to not vote. Electoral politics is still possibly the best way to staunch the bleeding by denying power to those who would use it to cause active harm. But, that's all it really does. It slows the acceleration of a rightwards slide and buys us time. We have to actually use that time to do something meaningful, or it's as good as doing nothing. Case in point, keeping the Republicans out of power this election might prevent Project 2025 from forcing an effective coup in the US. But what happens in 2028 when Biden can't run. Unless you think Democrats can win every election basically indefinitely, then all you are doing is delaying when that seizure of executive power happens.
You forgot to add the "™" after "the revolution"
After the revolution everyone will be happy Except for my arbitrarily assigned enemies, they’ll all be dead
And absolutely no messy power imbalances will occur with there being a smooth transition of power that will certainly not bring rise to corrupt people.
That's the quiet part being spoken aloud by the accelerationists and the wannabe vanguards.
I would argue for: C. Local-level elections can often be more important to your daily life and to those around you than a federal election, and are not always guaranteed based on party lines. This means even if you live in Bible Fuck, Mississippi, it's not necessarily useless to vote.
Exactly! Democracy is not a one time every four year event! Vote for everything from mayor to school board council members.
Holy shit it’s shel silverstein
I'm sorry I'm not voting for joe smh(I live outside the United States and cannot vote in their elections)
Joe Biden is not my president! (I'm not an American citizen, I'm European)
Quitter mentality, you can do anything you put your mind to 😌
I did go to florida once in 2019 for 2 weeks I think i can qualify for citizenship and vote for jojo bider
Isn’t becoming an American citizen actually notoriously difficult because of their absurd ultra nationalistic pop quiz bullshit they make you do and then keep you in custody for like a month
The keep you in custody part might be made up im sleepy y and can’t be fucked to fact check but point still stands right
nah id win
Not with that attitude (an unwillingness to do voter fraud)
Commit voter fraud! (it's silly)
i'm not voting for him either (i'm not old enough to vote)
Someday American imperialism will take the entire globe and you will be a US citizen.
"Biden is just as bad" mfs when Project 2025 happens instead of a third party magically winning because they didn't vote/threw away their vote.
Accelerationists when letting the fascists win only leads to decades of victimization of LGBTQ folks and minorities instead of the revolution
"A small price to pay for communism!" The white, cis, hetero-passing accelerationist proclaimed.
"some of you may die, and that's a price I'm willing to pay"
Accelerationists' will be sitting smugly in their basements until they realize that somehow the militant and coordinated nationalist movement *didn't* in fact just go away when it got power.
Online leftists will do anything other than do praxis, quit yelling at people on twitter and support a union you doughnut
I love being a union worker. I do more praxis than most leftists simply by doing my job.
Hell yeah! Unions ftw
As another union worker, I've never really considered this but I like it.
kind of a strange assumption that electoralists are somehow doing more praxis than anti-electoralissts. i'm organizing my workplace for a union and i work myself ragged doing mutual aid, my opposition to electoralism is based on teh simple observable reality that the vote blue no matter who rhetoric has resulted in democrats racheting further and further right while we lose more and more rights under their watch, as their understanding is that they get more money being the 1% less bad option than providing meaningful change. i do agree that the focus on specifcially the act of voting is a waste of time, it doens't actually matter either way, byt the critique of electoralism extends far beyond voting because there's an entire process to getting a candidate elected that is *extremely* labor intensive, that you could dedicate your entire life to, which regularly siphons activists away from effective grassroots movements and co-opts them into the DNC ghoul machine, where even if we do elect "leftists* they turn out like sinema and are immediately and obviously bought out. if voting is convenient for you, sure whatever, but like there's al ot of raesons specifcially minorities don't vote and giving them shit over not voting as though trump winning hte next election is going to be their fault is nonsense. are you going to give muslims in the US shit for not voting for biden when biden is openly supporting the palestinian genocide? if they can't even draw *that* line in the sand, to offer even the smallest of discipline to the democrats while they wipe out an entire people in a brutal war against primarily women and children,, then what even is the value of this lesser evilism other than giving republicans even more permission to be monsters than democrats, if there's literally nothing one could put on the table that will get a constitentuency to withhold votes? they can't even *attempt* to twist biden's arm to stop a genocide?
>kind of a strange assumption that electoralists are somehow doing more praxis than anti-electoralists. Yep this is a huge self report. I am very involved in activism and the vast majority of left wing organizers and most active members are anti-electoralists while the vast majority of electoralists I meet while organizing do next to nothing and will maybe show up to every third meeting if we're lucky. Electoralists who act like anti-electoralists aren't doing anything are just projecting. If your biggest contribution to left wing activism is advocating for the slightly less genocidal Capitalist then you have no right to mock actual activists.
One can do both.
Only do both if you’re yelling helpful ways to do praxis at people on twitter
I unironically believe that some of these “dont vote” or “republicans/democrats literally the same” are psyop accounts Like there are definitely some that are just ignorant/naïve, but some of the accounts Ive seen are like giga sus
Plus... it'd fit with a couple of other puzzle pieces we have, perhaps most notably the Russian troll farms assisting in the rise of online far-right movements dating some years back. I remember it being big news when The_Donald suddenly went reeeaal quiet during a major internet outage over there. Unfortunately, people's memories are very short. Look at how many of 'em jump to Russia's defense, too, frothing at the mouth and shouting denials, as soon as you mention any of this kinda stuff. That Venn diagram's a fuckin' circle. Tellin' on 'emselves, far as I'm concerned. I swear... ten years ago, I'd have said we should be trying to patch things up with Russia, but now... who pops up any damn time something sketchy happens?
I find it noteworthy that a lot of right-wing extremist accounts treat Democrats like the devil and urge to vote against them. On the other hand, a lot of left-wing extremist accounts...treat Democrats like the devil and urge not to vote for them. Both sides appear to be pushing for actions that lead to Republican rule for some reason, hmmm
I wish. Unfortunately I've met them in person. They're all priveledged upper middle class kids who have twisted themselves into pretzels trying to identify with some minority to feel included in "the struggle". They don't see how priveledged they are to be able to sit there and remain insulated from the world they bitch so hard about. They don't understand just how bad things can get out in the real world, and they don't realize just how bad things *will* get for minorities and non-heteronormative individuals in the march to the revolution.
Yeah they’re incredibly suspicious, I doubt that so many people are that naïve
for the last time, electoralism is useless to help us, but it can accelerate right wing politics. We lose literally nothing by ensuring the less shit guy gets it
Great comments section y'all. Really super extra duper quality analysis and discourse.
The guy on the left is being funded by Joe Biden right now
trunp would give him 3 money while joe biden only gives him 2 money we live in society
I swear you guys don't know what "damage control" means. Voting is damage control. It also shouldn't be your only form of activism (and neither should arguing online).
Yeah. It's too easy to conflate "necessary" and "sufficient." I've said it before but voting for the lesser evil is like wiping your ass. Yeah maybe there's a less unpleasant and more sanitary way of cleaning the shit off, and you're gonna want to wash your hands after, but it's far preferable to the choice of walking around with shit on you. And no, it is not the only thing you need to do to stay clean. In other words, voting is one of many civic hygeine activities you should do. It is not sufficient but it is necessary.
Hey I know a great way for Biden to get lots of damage control votes
By being better than Trump on many different issues? Yes, I would agree.
So many issues that the primary strategy is to threaten people with a Trump presidency to get votes?
[https://www.indigenousaction.org/voting-is-not-harm-reduction-an-indigenous-perspective/](https://www.indigenousaction.org/voting-is-not-harm-reduction-an-indigenous-perspective/) I think it's worth engaging with these ideas on their merits instead of dismissing them out of hand.
The only thing a democrat as president buys us is time. Their current plan to stop the rise of fascism seems to be: 1. Never lose an election again. 2. Make sure voters accept every compromise, however grotesque, because if we don’t they lose the election.
Time is still useful. As I said though, voting should never, ever be the only thing we do. It just doesn't hurt to also vote.
I agree, it won’t make things worse. My concern is more medium term. Let’s say Biden wins again this year. We’re safe until 2028. What then? Biden can’t run again, Democrats haven’t held the WH for 3 terms since Truman, and Trump or one of his sycophants still can. What’s the plan to stop them from just scratching out the dates and replacing Project 2025 with Project 2029?
The next presidential term is likely to get at least one SCOTUS seat, possibly two. Thomas and Alito aren’t exactly spring chickens and they’ll be as old as Scalia was when he kicked the bucket, and there’s always a bunch of lower court appointments to fill. A democratic win in 2024 means another four years of appointing judges who aren’t psychotic crypto-fascist ghouls and can help provide a bulwark when the GOP gets the white house again. It also makes the fascist wing of the GOP look weak, and fascists are a lot less appealing to the average voter when they look weak. So it makes them just that little bit harder to elect in 2028. A democratic win in 2024 means another four years of female military personal being able to get abortions without having to take unpaid leave and pay out of pocket, it means another four years of queer and GNC people being able to get passports that don’t out them, it means another four years of the justice department defending minorities against oppressive red state laws instead of supporting those states, and it means that the person in the White House isn’t ordering the military to launch missiles at Mexico. The first three are all cabinet department policies that can be reversed with the stroke of a pen the day a GOP administration is sworn in, and the last one is a thing that a growing number of republicans are calling for.
Good analysis, I appreciate you taking the time to give a detailed good faith answer.
For sure!
I mean yeah, it sucks but that's the reality. Every year that goes by there will be make liberal voters (based on current trends) and we can make more progress to stop fascism but yes, that's the reality. I mean what's the alternative here exactly?
I hope so, I want you to be right, but I’m old enough to remember the early Obama years. It was easy to hope the arc would continue, that America would move past racial issues and start to steadily move forward. As for what to do? I don’t have easy answers. Local elections are important, unions seem to help too.
My stance on this is that we're in the "last desperate gasp of backlash" part of the current queer rights movement. At the climax of every civil rights effort, there's a final backlash where conservative groups attempt to move mountains to roll back progress. Examples: \- "Segregation today, segregation forever!" got so intense that the army had to be deployed. \- The absurd and often violent lengths gone to try and prevent women from voting or being elected. \- The Civil War I think we could seriously see the Equality Act passed by 2030. We are at the beginning of the end of this current last backlash.
Well buying time is better then not doing that.
Yeah but trump would also do that. Have you thought about that ? Get owned liberal
Trump would do it harder and also hurt additional people at home and within... anywhere near Russia. Since he straight up said he'll encourage Putin to attack NATO members who don't give the U.S. a protection fee.
Oh people thought I was serious...
Joe Biden isn't a leftist, so that tracks
trump is better?
The democrats sure seem to think so given that they're doing everything they can to lose to him
That doesn’t answer the question, between the two who do you think is better? Edit: lol and still couldn’t answer the question
Whichever one isn't supporting a genocide, hopefully one of them will be that by November
And trump would fund seven of them for each one dark brandon funds
Oh damn, Biden better do everything in his power to look less than 1/7 as bad if he wants to win then
And Trump’s gonna fund them even harder lmao
Oh dang sounds like it would be an easy with for Biden if he simply stopped then
While leftists are busy pretending to be ideologically pure, the right wing is busy being EFFECTIVE.
Agreed, right wing people tend to be more active and actually do things instead of just complaining, left wing people tend to just protest and do things that achieve little to nothing while using morality to crown themselves as the “correct” ones. Most modern day leftism tends to do the bare minimum at most when it comes to trying to change things while acting like they’re morally correct in every way and use morality to try and prove people wrong when morality tends to achieve little even looking at history morality doesn’t start a revolution, action wether it be moral or immoral starts a revolution instead of trying to find a peaceful solution to everything.
The same faux revolutionaries would be the first to die in one. They glamorize what essentially amounts to a civil war—the word revolution is a euphemism for civil war anyways. The other argument is when they say “well why not engage in direct action?!?” I agree. But individuals engaging in individual attempts at direct action doesn’t create systematic change. This is the same issue with philanthropy. But I know that internet leftists don’t do direct action either—they watch Vaush quote Marx a couple times. Its a really interesting topic. If socialism is a democratic system where workers get to vote and democratically decide how our economy works, but at the same time one can’t be bothered to vote at this moment, I can see why liberals say “socialism doesn’t work”. Its not true, but if internet socialists are representative of a left wing movement, I agree. Socialism will not work or at worse be hijacked by tankies.
Vaush is THE person in left wing circles who is most pro Biden
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So maybe they should learn from him and start to vote.
I hate that the left winger is on the right and the right winger is on the left of the picture ☹️
If you look at it from their perspectice then they are on the correct sides
Anarchist voting discourse is among the most unbearable shit I've ever had the displeasure of being a part of
Seriously. "If I vote, I legitimize a corrupt power structure" like... the fuck? That's some real brainworms shit. How self-important is that? They're not gonna be like "aw, shit, Pneumatrap didn't turn out? Guess we gotta call the whole thing off, then, it's just not an election without him." We've gotta contend with the results of this shitshow either way, so we might as well spend an hour or two every few years to try to influence it in our favor.
From what I've seen, it comes from a religious devotion to both theory and ideological purity. I've literally seen people explicitly say "Yeah, trans people will get genocided under Trump and not under Biden... *however*" and then say some shit about how voting will never bring systemic change or some such nonsense. And they wonder why I call them privileged and transphobic.
Yuuuup. Good analogy on the religious devotion. And it's almost always the people that won't be affected who advocate for letting perfect be the enemy of good (or just somewhat less shitty, as the case may be). The entitlement kills me. Like... isn't humanitarian concern the whole point of being a leftist? These people pretend to care about the queer community the same way Republicans pretend to care about veterans. We're not props, we're people, dammit!
I am sorry but I will NOT vote for Joe Biden. (I live in Italy and I'm underaged I can't do that)
It is getting just a *tad* annoying seeing the constant Biden stanning. Yes, you should vote in a way that means Donald Trump or whichever right wing ghoul doesn't become president, which inex-fucking-plicably means voting for a demented old conservative currently engaged in aiding a genocide and who has always represented the most horrifying aspects of US foreign policy. BUT it's not exactly surprising that leftists don't want to *have* to vote for someone so completely opposed to their ideology. A man with hands thoroughly drenched in childrens blood, who probably doesn't even fucking know he's doing it. AND constantly pointing out to leftists that you should vote for this guy, usually in a way that reads like "he's great actually, line go up" is the most Hillary 2016 fucking liberal trash I've seen since all of the Hillary 2016 liberal trash. YES YOU SHOULD FUCKING VOTE FOR THE GENOCIDE GUY, BECAUSE THE OTHER GUY IS HONESTLY PROBABLY GOING TO BE AN EVEN BIGGER GENOCIDE GUY ^(although his track record of foreign policy might actually be quite a lot less imperialistic than any other recent president). But honestly if you're pushing this shit without complete self hating distain, and actually think he's in any way a good candidate, and defend his actions because you think that's necessary to vote for him, then you're just a liberal. You're not a leftist making a hard decision, you're a liberal who, just like most americans, doesn't actually give a shit about anyone far away and not white. And you should just accept that you call yourself a leftist as an act of political vanity because you want an accessory to look good on you. Americans are being asked to make a horrendous fucking choice this year, and whatever choice you make is honestly understandable. But like, you should probably vote for Biden, because I don't think that other guy's gonna let you vote in 2028, and is definitely gonna take away a lot of minority rights, and is almost definitely not gonna do anything differently than Biden in the middle east.
If you took the energy you're spending trying to bully the very tiny number of leftists who don't vote into voting, and put it into trying to do useful things like organizing workplaces or mutual aid or direct action or participating in movements/actions like No Mas Muertes or Stop Cop City or trying to bully the current leadership into stopping the actual ongoing genocide, then Trump-style fascism would be a lot less of a threat in the first place.
bro they made (maybe) and posted a meme, how much energy do you genuinely think that requires?
Did you know we can do both? If you have time to do direct action, you have time to vote. Not voting because Dems are not perfectly left leaning the way you want is like not wearing a seatbelt because there is still a chance you’d die wearing one—which is true, but why not reduce the harm? If you believe in democracy, like leftists do, but you’re not willing to engage in the democracy we have available right now, how do you expect material conditions to change for there to be a leftward shift in the future?
I swear to fucking Christ you idiot moron centrists can't tell the difference between "democrats should be better so they actually have a chance at winning" and "voting is pointless" Why has the DNC taken over this sub, this sucks so much shit If democrats lose in November it will be because of their own incompetence, these condescending lectures accomplish nothing
Dude you say that like the dems are gonna learn anything if trump wins. They wont. Voting to keep trump out of power doesnt mean i like the democrats.
>Voting to keep trump out of power doesnt mean i like the democrats. I never said it did "Democrats can help themselves out by being less shit" - this should not be a controversial statement on this subreddit. Furthermore, this is only a statement against voting if you are blinded by partisanship
During the Trump presidency, lots of democrats were radicalized and leftists were mobilized under a common goal. After Biden won the democrats went back to brunch and leftists are extremely divided on whether Biden is worse or equal to Trump.
And things also got a lot fucking shittier for everyone. Especially queer and disabled people. Trumps obviously worse.
Not voting doesn't tell the democrats to do better, it tells them that progressive votes aren't worth pursuing.
And the self-fulfilling prophecy of my comment commences. Hey genius, where in my comment did I tell people not to vote? You liberals can't even handle criticism that would make it more likely for Joe Biden to win Young progressives delivered 2020 and 2022 for Democrats. So far our rewards have been half-broken promises and condescending lectures about how the other guy is worse. No shit. But that is exactly how Gore and Clinton lost. Joe Biden **needs** to do better if he wants even a snowball's chance in hell at beating Trump Edit: And God in Heaven I really just love the whole "actually candidates don't need to appeal to voters" attitude. How did that turn out for Hillary Clinton?
I don't know how this has fallen out of common discussion but the point of local politics is so you can harass and demand changes from your local representatives. clog their phones and mail with professional non swearing demands of what you want to change for the better and getting your peers to also do that. telling them you will be voting a different party if they keep up doing something shitty through mail or call and the key point not threatening violence despite it being so easy to want to is also needed and done often like a chore, it won't work immediately, it won't work fully but lack of hounding your representatives only leads to stagnation.
Once again let me remind you that we lost Roe vs Wade under Biden. People were lied to about student loans. People are struggling to not just stay afloat, but afford basic necessity. Ruling class becoming richer under his watch. LGBTQ+ people are barely safe and nothing is being done about it. A lot of things "can't happen" because "woah we don't have the power" but suddenly they can approve a shit ton of money being sent to kill a lot of people in another part of the world as recently as yesterday? All of these issues are being used to run them yet another campaign which they will never fulfill. I hate the lesser of the two evil arguement; you are still picking an evil. They will lose on by their own incompetency and how fed up people are, not because some leftists online say they aren't voting. People should organise from local level; be it union or groups, and pressure from small scale all the way up. Threatening to not vote is a form of showing discontent.
People criticizing democrats =/= telling people to not vote at all
[удалено]
So far in this comment section I have counted one person saying "don't vote" and one other person saying they personally aren't going to vote because they live in a solidly blue state Edit: Updated the count
I completely get where libs are coming from, but smugly declaring that the reason people who don't want to vote for Biden is because they're terminally online leftists with no life, rather than not wanting to vote for someone who is facilitating a genocide, is not addressing the problem. Rather than blaming left wing voters for any Republican victories, the Democrats should be offering some reason for left wingers to vote for them if that's what they want. Forcing someone to vote against their wishes is not democracy. Also, the "push the democrats left once they're in power" schtick has been parroted since Obama, and is nothing more than a lie to get votes. Nobody can seriously believe this is a strategy that libs either want or can do.
"anti electoralism" discourse is trash. you should vote, but making so many posts about it as if it's going to edge us any closer to socialism is not good praxis
The people making this posts are not socialists, they're terminally online liberals who think that this garbage counts as good outreach
sorry for not wanting my votes when my choices are facism maker or genocide funder
damn another hilarious banger from 196 /s
You can tell it's election season the way every left-of-center sub turns into r/ PoliticalHumor for 15 months, *hilarious* posts and all
weak ass propaganda post
my view on voting is that it sucks and is a broken system and wont actually make anything get better, and im still gonna do it to stop it from getting worse faster but im gonna complain the whole time
what i don’t understand when it became the electorates job to inspire themselves to vote
Well what would the Democratic party even be if they tried? The left arm of capital isn't gonna do too much to stop the right arm of capital
that’s why they’ll never be anything more than the pressure release valve for social discontent
a bit after the neoliberal fat-cat demagogues took over the DNC in the late 80s
If I made some real extreme leftist statements I would likely be banned from reddit
I don't particularly feel like encouraging genocide by rewarding the candidate responsible for perpetrating one with my vote, but I also don't feel like plunging our country into the throes of right wing fascism. What exactly is the play here?
I mean both candidates will continue the genocide in gaza, only 1 will plunge us into fascism and likely start a genocide of LGBTQ folks here, the choice sucks but it seems pretty obvious
Boy do I just love being forced to sacrifice my humanity :)))
Voting is a political chess move, not some abstract representation of your principles. Not voting will not clean your hands of anything. The *only* thing you should care about when voting is the *outcome*.
Instead of voting, I promote mutual aid (doing nothing)
Two things to note: 1; The DNC propped up trump because they thought Hillary would be able to get an easy victory. 2; After 4 excruciating years of trump the democrats have not adequately addressed their Republican counterparts responsible for 1/6, address the harmful rhetoric surrounding the southern border, address the crimes of trafficking migrants to NY and Chicago. So leftists who don’t even believe in the democrats have been thrusted upon them, the responsibility and moral obligation to do their part to ensure the greater evil doesn’t win without zero guarantees nor assurances that they won’t find themselves in the very same position once again. I do not and will not blame nor shame anyone for abstaining to vote. I really hope enough people do their part.
this is bad on so many levels lmao its like tee-ing up an excuse to blame the loss on other people and the premise of calling people anti-electoralists is always like "has a problem with genocide" Ive said it a million times, dems are the harm reduction vote, but this behavior is very unbecoming of a leftist sub. Its lib shit tbh and you wouldnt frame things this way if you cared one iota about the 2 million displaced Palestinians and the 100,000 dead or injured
I'd rather have the parasites be blue instead of red. Not because they'll change anything, no, its just easier to stomach their presence.
the democrats are objectively better for the working class, lgbtq and abortion rights than the republicans we don't live in utopia, we can't chose to cause greater harm by not voting just because the reincarnation of karl marx isn't a presidential candidate
This sub is officially dead.
I genuinely wonder how many anti-electorate leftists actually remember Project 2025 exists
I wonder if Democrats themselves know Project 2025 exists, they aren't acting like it. Their only outreach has been condescending garbage like this
If this website is anything to go by, they don't believe in it... despite how many of us left-leaning folk were spurred to become full leftists in the first place by round one of this neofascist horsefuckery. Jesus, I need a drink.
Is it ok to brutalise minorities semi regularly 🥺🥺🥺
Every 4 years as a treat
If absolutely nothing else voting for the lesser evil is buying time to do more effective things. It doesnt mean you like lesser evil, its just stalling the greater evil. The amount of "leftists" ive seen not get this is alarming
You guys frame anti-electoralism as equivalent doing nothing, yet it’s a strawman when we counter by saying you only advocate for voting. Voting as panacea is just liberal nonsense. It’s far less than the bare minimum. It’s the smallest of all the things you can do. Why do we elevate it to being the most important issue? Why do our spaces get all the air sucked out for Biden’s sake every election? I know why, because billions are spent by campaigns to make sure that we believe that voting is effective, and that it’s the only legitimate way to make change.
A lot of hidden assumptions in this. Do you actually think leftists will flip any results? Are we going to stop trump with our voteshare despite Biden doing his best to lose? Even if our effect on the vote could flip the election (a massive assumption, most likely all these posts will do nothing at all), what will it do to ensure the exact same thing doesn’t happen in 4 years after Biden has still made things progressively worse, and the right-wing has just gone further right? Why are we wasting our time talking about “solutions” that only have a 4 year horizon and will still end with things being worse. For the love of god, no one cares if you vote or not. That’s just consumerism, vote-with-your-dollar bullshit rebranded. Just, please, do something else, too, something that matters. Then post about that instead. That’s anti-electoralism.
Wow such an original thought and post.
This is based on the false notion that the sum total of electoralism is voting. It isn’t. Anti-electoralism isn’t opposition to voting for the lesser of two evils, it’s opposition to devoting time, energy, and resources towards attempting to put “leftist” candidates into office (something which entails a lot more than showing up on Election Day), because this has already been demonstrated to be a strategy which requires a lot of effort for little gain, in addition to not meaningfully prefiguring a non-hierarchical and communist society. I’m sorry, but the idea that the sum total of anti-electoralist praxis is refusing to vote and then sitting on one’s hands is an idea that can only make sense if one has only engaged with the tendency through internet dunks.
Even though you can't vote away capitalism, lots of people seem to think you can't do two things at once: You can vote for the lesser evil to minimize harm AND work toward a revolution, they're not exclusive in practice
I'm ready for this meme to get reposted in 2028 and 2032 and 2036 and 2040 and 2044 and 2048 and 2052 and 2056 and 2060 and 2064 and 2068 and 2072 and 2076 and 2080 and 2084 and 2088 and 2092 and 2096 and 2100 and 2104 and 2108 and 2112 and 2116 and 2120 and 2124 and 2128 and 2132 and 2136 and 2140 and 2144 and
Yeah I don’t care I’m not voting for a person using my identity as a scapegoat to commit genocide.
Careful now, the liberals in this sub get real antsy when minorities get too uppity
Real condemning the Haitian Revolution or John Brown for killing the Slavers vibes.
Yeah and not voting brings republicans 1 step closer to committing genocide against queer people, does that mean anything to you?
Joe Biden has -funded genocide -let roe v wade be abolished -conituned the internment camps down south -his inaction resulted in my state becoming hostile towards me -cannot stress enough that he funded genocide But sure a republican president will be bad or. Smth Yes do leftists online act like anything short of firebombing a walmart is neoliberialism sure. But plenty do protest or do mutual aid. Sorry the leftists not participating in a fake election makes you upset though
You guys said the same thing 3000 years ago, the system still hasn't change, and you still have to choose between imperialists The agenda for the next 4 tears should be attempting to reforming the electoral, more than minimum wage, more than union policy, more than taxation if enterprises, more than identity politics, more than immigration issues, more than anything, even just by a tiny bit of change it'd make a big difference for all the other issues, or else Americans would only be stuck in their own dead end
You act as though liberals and leftists are one and the same. They’re not.
Maybe by putting pressure and saying we won't vote collectively will make them think rather than just participating in horrible shit and getting elected anyway
I always say it like this, I don't want the liberals in power I want to chose the people I fight. Ill be in this leftist group and saying "what do we do when the gop wins and outlaws what we're doing" "we'll just do it harder" No you fucking can't. My sister is trans I'm not letting the people who want to genocide take power when the liberals will display the controdictions of capitalism all by themselves.
HE DISNT SAY RULE YAAAA
You can't vote away capitalism. Revolution is the only solution for such violence.
Ah yes the revolution ^tm thats totally gonna happen before the fascists take power again.
So you're going to help start a revolution then right? Right?
Left-wing extremism would be more like shooting the people trying to stop those from voting
Not voting is cringe when people vote the right wing loses
Remember kids it's vote *and*... AND! Voting IS important AND you need to organize
Yikes
Joe Biden’s buddies on the left, r/196 users on the right.
Do something about it like joining [Progressive Victory ](https://www.progressivevictory.win/)
Electorialists doing absolutely nothing, and even within their own logics they cede all political power/hope of moving the dems left by agreeing to vote for them no matter the actions of said party. Jokesters and shortsightedness.
I am a lot of things, but first and foremost I am a realist, and the realistic take is that Politics is the unending search for the least of all lesser evils.
You don't rule
I hate both life and right and I believe the only thing yall are going to achieve is being miserable
Explain
Far left extremism is Stalinism and Maoism.
“We’re literally just asking you to do the most basic form of civic service that takes one day of the year.“ “Yeah, but have you considered voting is cringe?”
I said this in the last thread and I'll say it here: if I were a US citizen, I wouldn't vote for people who want me (and people who look like me) dead. Genocide Joe and Genocide Don would not receive my support on the ballot. There are prob other things on the ballot, so I'd go for that, but if they both plan to murder my extended family, I don't have a real choice.
The Democrats have said [for years](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FqRNnIMDkUY) that they don't have to listen to you because you will vote for them anyway. They catastrophize every election and scare you with talking points that *they're already doing* and you fall for it every time. They will continue bombing civilians overseas, brutalizing refugees at the border, and arming genocidal regimes and you will do nothing to stop them. They are not going to protect LGBT rights or bring abortions back. They have every incentive *not* to do these things because they're easy campaign promises to make and break and you will never, ever make them pay for it.
I like solidarity but only if it's extreme enough. Mainstream solidarity is too lame.
It should be noted that republicans were pro-abortion until christians threatened to not vote for them. Politicians can be scared into doing their jobs if they think they might not win if they don't. Voting blue no matter who just gets the lesser evil further and further removed from our interests because it shows them they'll get away with it no matter what. Like Biden, who's done fucking nothing to protect abortion and trans rights even though he easily could. If Trump wins, it's no one's fault but Biden's for being a bad candidate