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Why are so many Pro-Palestine (I am pro-Palestine and anti-genocide) Americans refusing to vote for Harris due to her stance on Israel?

As the title states I am confused on this matter. The way I see it, the USA has a two party system and in the next few weeks they’re either going to have Trump or Harris as president, come inauguration day. With this in mind doesn’t it make sense to vote for the person least likely to escalate the situation even more.

Giving your vote to an independent or worse not voting at all, just gives more of a chance for Trump to win the election and then who knows what crazy stuff he will allow, or encourage, Israel to get away with.

I really don’t get the logic. As sure nobody wants to vote for a party allowing these heinous crimes to be committed, but given you’re getting one of them shouldn’t you be voting for the one that will be the least horrible of the two.

Please don’t come at me with pro-Israeli rhetoric as this isn’t the post for that, I’m asking about why people would make such choices and I’m not up for debate on the Middle East, on this post, you can DM me for that.

Edit: Bedtime here now so will respond to incoming comments in the morning, love starting the day with an inbox full 😊.

Edit 2: This blew up, it’s a little overwhelming right now but I do intent on replying to everybody that took the time to comment. Just need to get in the right headspace.

576 comments

  • I’m going to tell you a secret.

    The people who say this, the leftists that threaten to withhold their votes, tend to vote strategically anyways. But threatening to withhold votes is one way to apply pressure to politicians to do things like, say, stop promoting a fucking genocide. And then liberals lose their minds for some reason and make it totally irrelevant. And then we have a genocide that lasts for 75 years and starts world war 3.

  • I voted for Harris, but I feel like it's pretty obvious why someone would vote third party instead.

    One need only reject the premise that voting should be a strategic act of harm reduction. Mind you, I'm not saying "is" here. I'm saying "should be".

    We may not take their approach, but you have to admit that there's value to it. They are embracing the world as it ought to be, whereas we are trying to work with the reality of the situation as we perceive it.

    And we could be perceiving incorrectly. For all we know, Trump could loose-cannon his way into making Netanyahu's whole party lose their next election. It may not be likely, but nothing in this world is certain.

    For all we know, the Heritage Foundation could destroy so much of the government and economy so rapidly that it weakens all of the property rights and FBI operations aimed against self-sufficient mutual aid, and communes start springing up all over the place. It's not likely without massive turmoil, starvation, and bloodshed. But however unlikely, we cannot predict the future!

    Cyncism is costly in terms of mental health and well-being. In order to choose pragmatism over principles, we must accept a reality where no good choices exist. But that's not something we can do everywhere. We can't repeatedly choose the "least miserable option" and still be able to hold ourselves together and function. It's just not possible.

    Humans need hope to survive. They need a hill they can hang onto. They need to be able to say, "on this ground, I fight for what should be rather than what is."

    Some people's hill is their ballot.

  • Three points:

    • Biden and Harris are right now with their actions physically supporting the Genocide. Trump talks about supporting the Genocide even more. Well, guess what: Trump lies shamelessly (as the Democrat propaganda here doesn't stop reminding us of in everything but, "strangely", not this subject) and isn't even competent when it comes to actual execution. So on one side we have an absolute certainty that the candidate supports the Genocide and on the other one we have a probability that its so based on the statements of a known liar. I would say the claims that Trump is worse on this are doing a lot of relying on Trump's word (on this subject alone) in order to elevate his evilness of this above that of people who are actually, right now, shamelessly and unwaveringly supporting the Genocide with actual actions.
    • If the Leadership of Democrat Party manages to whilst refusing to walk back on their active support of a Genocide, win the election with a "otherwise it's Trump" strategy, they will move even further to the Right because that confirms to them that they can do whatever they want and still keep in power. Now, keep in mind that the Democract Party leadership already supports Fascism (ethno-Fascism, even, which is the same kind as the Nazis practiced), so far only abroad (whilst Trump does support Fascism at home) so there isn't much more to the Right of that before Fascism at home. You see, for a Leftie voting Democrat now will probably be the least bad option in the short term, but it's very likely to be the worst option in the long term because it consolidates and even accelerates the move of the Democrat Party to the Right.
    • Some people simply put their moral principles above "yeah but" excuses and won't vote for people supporting the mass murder of children.

    In summary:

    • Trump's Genocide support is a probability based on his word, willingness and ability to fulfill it (i.e. his competence at doing it), whilst Harris' is an actual proven fact with actions happening right now.
    • A vote for the Democrats whilst their policies are so far to the Right that they're supporting modern Nazis with the very weapons they use to mass murder civilians of the "wrong" ethnicity, if it leads to a Harris victory will consolidate this de facto Far-Right status of the party and maintain momentum in going Rightwards. Voting like that is, IMHO, a Strategically stupid choice even if the case can be made (and that's the entirety of what the Democrat propaganda here does) that Tactically it's the least bad choice.
    • Some people can't just swallow their moral principles, especially for making a choice which isn't even a "choose a good thing" but actually a "choose a lesser evil", and "Thou shall not mass murder thousands of babies" is pretty strong as moral principles go.

  • Giving your vote to an independent or worse not voting at all, just gives more of a chance for Trump to win the election

    If you don't live in one of the 7 states that matter in an election then you can vote your morality, safe in the knowledge that the EC will ignore your input, anyway

    Inb4 some dipshit mentions down ballots when we're talking about the fucking presidential election

  • I think something that contributes to people talking past each other here is a difference in belief in how necessary/desirable revolution/overthrow of the U.S government is. Like many of the people who I've talked to online, who advocate not voting and are also highly engaged, believe in revolution as the necessary alternative. Which does make sense. It's hard to believe that the system is fundamentally genocidal and not worth working within (by voting for the lesser evil) without also believing that the solution is to overthrow that system.

    And in that case, we're discussing the wrong thing. Like the question isn't whether you should vote or not . it's whether the system is worth preserving (and of course what do you do to change it. How much violence in a revolution is necessary/acceptable). Like if you believe it is worth preserving, then clearly you should vote. And if you believe it isn't, there's stronger case for not voting and instead working on a revolution.

    Does anyone here believe that revolution isn't necessary and also that voting for the lesser isn't necessary?

    The opposite is more plausible to me: believing in the necessity of revolution while also voting

    Personally I believe that revolution or its attempt is unlikely to effective and voting+activism is more effective, and also requires agreement from fewer people in order to progress on its goals. Tragically, this likely means that thousands more people will be murdered, but I don't know what can actually be effective at stopping that.

    • They can't be arsed to choose pragmatically between two bad candidates when voting and we're to believe they can do a revolution that involves several harder choices? Do these people think revolutions are easy walks in the park where you never have to make hard choices like, for example, killing your neighbors for being in the way of the revolution or how to handle POWs, etc.

      Some people assume that voting and political activism are mutually exclusive, these people are stupid and won't win a revolution. These two things are not mutually exclusive, voting doesn't stop you from protesting and being politically engaged and vice versa.

      • Voting while planning a revolution is like sealing up a broken window with plastic until you can replace it. Basic maintenance so the whole thing doesn't get worse before the replacement is ready.

  • There are many contributing factors. Part of it is russian and american oligarchs spending heaps of cash to amplify any and every message that could help trump win.

  • people dont seem to see the difference between ending up with a party for which a good chunk of their supporters think that what Israel is doing is a genocide vs ending up with a party for which all of their supporters think not only that what Israel is doing is justified but should also do the same to all middle eastern countries (together with direct USA involvement).

    I think there are two major subgroups within this group.

    First one is immigrants whose families are from the middle east/Palestine who are rightfully very angry at all the world for doing jack shit about Israel committing genocide. What they have to realize is there are unfortunately only two options going ahead: 1- as it is now, maybe somewhat better in future, or 2- much worse. There is no third option that is going to come out of these elections but one where there is potential for change (potential coming from the supporters mentioned above) vs %100 chance of things going for the worse. Note that I am not talking at all about the candidates themselves at all, just the demographic that generally votes for them.

    The second group is probably China or Russia fans who just want to see America suffer by getting Trump elected. These are very short sighted people with whom you cannot really have a coherent conversation with.

  • Sometimes, I see a quality discussion between principled people who care deeply about the issues. They both want to do what’s best, but simply disagree on what "best" is.

    Their opinions can be so far apart, though, that they’re unable to even comprehend the other position.

  • Everyone else is basically going to give you dogshit answers, here, and I'm not gonna read through the thread to confirm that because I've been in enough of these threads on lemmy to know that it's going to be the most oversimplified and horrible hand-wavy explanations you could've hoped for. I think maybe the collective effort people put into their posts on the internet is dwindling as a result of mass adoption and various social media incentive structures, to the point where even platforms like lemmy are gonna get filled with horrible dogshit and just the worst oldest facebook memes of all time. Don't listen to all those fucking morons, listen to me, I'm the only one effortposting in this removed, because I have psychosis and like to write these out as a way to take notes and review my talking points.

    SO, at the lowest level, you have gerrymandering. This applies to things like city council seats within cities, it applies to what gets defined as "inside" and "outside" the city and the county, it applies to districts that elect representatives at the state level, and it even, to a certain degree, applies to the states themselves. Basically, every time the electorate gets subdivided, something you would otherwise think is a good thing, as it lets people be governed more with concerns local to that subdivision, instead, those lines get drawn up most often to favor the party that is currently sitting in that seat. Being that this is instituted at pretty much every level of governance, and that people don't tend to change addresses super often, especially homeowners, this contributes to why most states are not swing states, and why most votes are very predictably "wasted", or, are used by the parties to cancel out other very predictable votes, or are used to further secure and entrench power with more overwhelming margins.

    You also have first-past-the-post voting in the vast majority of places, abbreviated as fptp voting, in which you have a single, non-transferable vote. Proponents of this system can basically only defend it on its braindead simplicity, because there's not really any reality in which it accurately represents the interests of the voters. If you think of a voting system as being a way for voters to clearly communicate their preferences, and have those preferences followed, then fptp voting only provides one bit of information: "I want this guy". It doesn't rate candidates in relation to each other, it doesn't tell anyone whether or not you would prefer one candidate over another. So, people get locked in to voting for one candidate which has proved to be consistently popular, and has a good chance of winning so they don't "waste" their vote, which as previously described, is probably already wasted, and so we get locked into a two-party system pretty much everywhere.

    Both these systems combine to severely limit the weight of anyone's vote. It effectively means that, outside a couple gerrymandered suburbs, in particular swing states, which can be figured out well in advance of elections, the rest of the votes don't matter. Most votes are just locked in a system where they are effectively being used by the sitting parties to cancel each other out.

    Most local races are funded at the local level, meaning they tend to favor older, much more well-off candidates which don't necessarily represent the majority of people's interests. This outsized power can be increased with gerrymandering. Americans also tend to favor sitting candidates over new candidates, both because of FPTP, and also because culturally FPTP has become ingrained, meaning incumbent candidates tend to be able to sit around for as long as they want. Primaries are pretty much unilaterally controlled by the parties that run them, as we have seen in this election, and they are able to pretty effectively select who it is that they want to be elected through the funding and backing of the party, within their territories, which is something that's happening at every level, and not just at the presidential level. So, economics and economic disparity has a great role to play in who is able to run for local positions, on top of obviously having a very clear role at higher levels. Less money can also have a very outsized impact in local, smaller elections, where candidates can court corporate interests and party interests and then bankroll their way into a position pretty much guaranteed. This is why you can pretty much dismiss anyone who's going to suggest that you go and run for local office, as though that's some gotcha. They wouldn't know, because they probably also haven't run for their local offices, but especially at the higher levels, those local offices tend to be controlled by elderly small business owners and a bunch of lawyers. Canvassing and commercials are pretty effective, especially when you can concentrate these on the gerrymandered fraction of the population with values already favorable to institutional powers, which is having an outsized impact.

    So, given that your vote is pretty much guaranteed to not matter, is especially guaranteed to not matter at the federal level, and is very especially not going to matter if you live anywhere with any significant population density, lots of people take that as an opportunity to piss their vote away on jill stein or whatever other scammer that's running. Of course, third parties would probably be more effective at the smaller local levels, building up larger and larger bases of support until they are more adequately able to challenge the major parties at the federal level, and even try for federal funding, but we've seen such a level of institutional capture at pretty much every level that it's sort of a fucked game to begin with.

    It's so fucked up at every level that I'm not sure I would really fault the parties that are running with like, 2% of the votes, in polling, compared to the fucking massive country-wide institutions that are actually controlling elections and messaging. Those that can even get 2% of the votes are likely to get those votes because they've been donated to by one side, the other, or, much more commonly, both, on top of business interests and foreign powers, who all believe that adding in another spoiler candidate will help their candidate get elected.

    To hopefully dissuade some idiotic criticisms before they happen:

    Q: Well, then what am I to do!?! If I can't vote on a candidate, and have my vote be effective for that candidate, then what have I done politically? What's the alternative?

    A: None of that really contradicts any of what I'm currently saying, it's not a valid counterargument. I've told you the reality of the system, if you have a problem with how your current strategy is not effective in that reality, then take it up with reality, not me. I would probably say that organizations outside of the system, organizations owned by a majority of the people within them, organizations that can wield political power, those would probably be useful. Organizations that can punch above their weight class economically would be most useful. We've seen a recent, very minor rise in unionization and union activity, after decades of downturn as a result of government policies, which has been good, but I am concerned again about many of these unions, and especially the older ones, being subject to institutional capture at the highest levels as a result of ill-thought out internal structures and a desire to "keep out the raffle", from elitism, classism, or racism. If I had thoughts of reformism, then I would aim there, and I would probably also aim to create a lot more interconnections between these smaller unions which are more individually vulnerable. One big union, would be a good idea suited to the moment, and I haven't seen it taken up a lot.

    And sure, go out and vote, right, but, don't harbor any illusions about what you're doing when you go out and vote. Focus more on your local candidates and your obscure, idiotic local laws and regulations which are probably going to be explained poorly in some half-baked blogpost or news article, if you're even afforded that dignity rather than just having to read shit straight from the charters and laws themselves. Don't just get invested every 4 years when you get threatened with a new form of fascism by corporate media. If you're falling for that shit, then you're probably running around like a chicken with their head cut off, doing worse than nothing. If you're not willing to put in an hour or two of concentrated reading and research in the right places, then you would be better off, at that point, just ignoring all those anxieties, not voting, and eating jalapeno poppers at chili's or whatever else.

    Q: This shit is too long, I can't read it all!

    A: Tl;dr GOTO 10

    • Informative. Well written. Seems like the short version of my Intro to American Politics class at Uni. I classified myself as a social democrat back then. I was told I would get more conservative when I was older. Now I classify myself as an anarchist. Not sure what went wrong.

      I am grateful local debates are posted online. Instead of listening to music at work I listened to the debates. Living in a one party state is unfortunate. The opposition tends to have similar political convictions to the incumbent.

      • Seems like the short version of my Intro to American Politics class at Uni.

        What's insane is that's something you have to go to university to be taught. In this society, where it is purported that democracy is part of the fundamental fabric, most people understand absolutely nothing. If they even get taught about relatively basic things like what I've described, which is to say nothing of the legalese-reading abilities you might need to verify that, say, a ballot measure is what it says it is, they apparently don't end up remembering any of it. So instead we get doomed to listen to the same conversations, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, every election cycle. They're like cicadas, waking up every couple years, chirping, and then immediately going back to sleep as soon as it's over.

        I dunno. I find legitimate political debates to be interesting, informative, at least sometimes when I can tolerate the cringe levels at work there. I've been unfortunately forced to take a crash course, kick start education on every political conflict that's been started as a result of israel, which also includes like, political context surrounding every country they fuck with, and every country that supports those countries that israel fucks with. I find that, if heartbreaking, to be a good opportunity for me to learn, because at least I get somewhere with that. But I dunno, I feel like the tendency of the average commenter is just to scroll past, or read whatever the top line I've posted is and then try to get me to spoonfeed them on that basis, which is obviously never going to work because they can just spin the conversation whatever direction they want, where they'll probably end up learning less than nothing, they'll probably just use me as another vector to reinforce their own beliefs.

        So, I dunno. It all seems totally hopeless to me. I remembered forums being a much more useful vector for talking to people, but more and more often it seems like it's less worthwhile, and I just end up retreating to my own bubble, using whatever outlet I find to post like I'm posting to a personal blog that I know nobody is going to read. It's worthless. If I were to optimize this paragraph I've written, with citations, much clearer language, and make it more succinct, and then post that under all these types of posts, or, propagate that as copypasta, then despite it being more well thought out and ultimately much less spammy than the idiotic bad faith trolling that most people tend to engage in, it would probably, maybe rightly, get banned on the basis of being spam. More and more, this place, every place online, reveals itself to just be another horrible vector for the propaganda of whatever interested parties decide to manipulate the levers and pulleys controlling the tubes.

        Now I classify myself as an anarchist. Not sure what went wrong.

        And, see, I never even got that far. I'm still just some guy that want everyone to have healthcare and good public infrastructure, and wants wars and genocides to not be happening constantly. I don't even know what political system is supposed to make that work, and I don't really give a fuck which one it takes, I just want that to be the case.

    • Did someone say "One Big Union"? Sounds like the IWW would be right up your alley. It's coming back to life again - definitely check if you have a local branch!

      https://www.iww.org/

      The IWW is an explicitly radical militant union devoted to overthrowing the tyranny of the wage system and settling the class war through full worker control of all enterprises. It's an entirely different animal than the bloated business unions who settle for a "fair share" of the profits. The IWW asserts that all of the value produced by the labor of workers should go to workers, and the bosses can just become workers like the rest of us.

576 comments