“I Am Done Voting for the Lesser of Two Evils. I Will Not Vote for Joe Biden in 2024.”
“I Am Done Voting for the Lesser of Two Evils. I Will Not Vote for Joe Biden in 2024.”
Unless Biden drastically reverses course on Palestine, Muslims will not turn out for him on Election Day—critical voters in key swing states—and Democrats only have themselves to blame.
Former democratic party activists are organizing Muslims and Arab-Americans in Swing states to vote against Biden with the demand that he support a ceasefire in Gaza.
I'll allow them a little bit of electoralism this time.
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Good lord, so the plan is to vote for Trump? The guy who has a pattern of simping for right wing authoritarian fuckheads like Nettanyahu?
Honestly, their efforts would be much better spent trying to get election reform like ranked choice voting up as local election issues in order to break the two party system's kneecaps.
did you miss last week where Biden/Dems were "simping for rightwing authoritarian fuckheads like Nettanyahu?"
the plan is not to vote at all.
I'm failing to understand this POV. Even if you think neither outcome is good why wouldn't you do what minimal thing you can to keep the worse option from happening?
If neither party represents your interests, what's your vote doing? Making sure that they can both ignore your interests even more?
The US two-party system is a complete and abject failure of democracy.
If a fascist finds it important to vote, I intend my vote to counteract theirs.
It's less important that someone "represents my interests" than it is that overall suffrage and equity is reduced at a slower rate. It's sad, but that's what it seems we're up against in the modern republican party.
The two party system IS a failure, and I have a laundry list(*) of electoral changes I want throughout the country, some of which are already in place in a few voting districts including my own. How is not voting going to improve any of that?
(* If you're interested I can add them tomorrow when I'm more sober and at a keyboard)
If you're forced to vote for a party to avoid the collapse of your democracy, that's no longer a democracy. That's a one-party state with a few more steps.
That's a fair point - in that event, is it still not an improvement to keep that bare-bones separation from a one-party state rather than run headlong into it? Worded differently- if there is ostensibly a revolution brewing, would the revolutionaries benefit from the additional time granted by the dysfunction of the almost-one-party ? Or are we talking accelerationism?
I guess I'll also ask, at what point of a democracy-in-decline is it "ok" to vote for a person or party en masse to turn that decline around? As an analogy I'm thinking of like, a car teetering on a cliff. This sounds like sitting in the car with arms crossed saying "you're just a few steps from falling to your death, no point in getting out of the car now". Sorry if that's hyperbolic; I'm trying to give a clear example and that's the first thing that came to mind.
Or are we talking accelerationism?
This is, in my view, the real issue. Statistically, anti-electoralism is in no way functionally different than accelerationism. Both have the exact same outcomes as right-wingers, especially the far-right vote consistently and toe the line.
I've not seen an ounce of evidence that accelerationism actually works to achieve its stated goal, which on some level makes me suspect that the whole lot of anti-electoralism and accelerationism is encouraged by authoritarians on the far-right to further disenfranchise any ideas left of center from having representation. That and there's real harm to LGBTQ+ folks, indigenous peoples, minorities, and their allies caused by empowering the far-right more.
Might that lead to an actual revolution at some point? Maybe. There's not yet any evidence to say that it will that I've seen in historical data, however. And I cannot ethically agree with "end justifies the means" thinking as it nearly always results in increased suffering for workers and "common" people to whom I owe my allegiance.
Now to wait for my anarchist self to be flamed as a "shitlib". (I hope not because this is supposed to be a leftist unity instance but, it's happened to me before over misunderstandings).
Look if Genocide Joe wants my vote, he could try doing something to earn it instead of just saying "I'm not Trump".
I can agree Joe is a genocider and still vote for him instead of trump*.
Trump is happy to apply his genocidal ideals to his own countrymen. Biden, less so - mostly directed outward/foreign. If my vote has influence on this matter, even slightly, who am I going to choose?
Moreover, I'm not pretending my vote is some sacred gift I can only give to the most perfect candidate. Rather, I am happy if my trash vote can negate a even more-trash vote.
* I predict being the_dunk_tank material and I accept my fate.
Also I want to say, I am really trying to understand this. even if I say wierd/bad faith/something stuff it's an accident and I want to understand the point of view of "anti electoralism" -- if that's the right term.
I can agree Joe is a genocider and still vote for him instead of trump
I can't. It should be an easy red line to have
Maybe this is what's hard for me to understand about the anti-electoral stance. From what I've gathered in this thread, my vote is simultaneously completely worthless and inffective, yet also the most precious thing I should only give to the most worthy.
I'm having a hard time figuring out how to word this comment to sound less snarky, but I am legitimately interested in your thoughts on this dichotomy. Or if you think this is not a good interpretation of your+other commenter's comments, I'll be happy to be corrected. Thanks.
It's pretty simple, if your vote is for a 'lesser evil' that is a negative choice proposition, hardly worthy of the word 'choice' or 'democracy'. Two bad choices are still two bad choices, even if one is marketed as slightly less bad. The entire Dem strategy for like decades now has been this prisoners dilemma proposition. They never provide federal protection enshrined in law because that would take away the leverage of this strategy. The only way to break out of this pattern is to really threaten it directly by not acquiescing to it like good little liberals. That is why you have cognitive dissonance over this topic. The social pressure of 'lesser evil' is so deeply embedded in the liberal worldview that any questioning of it is adjacent to being a terrible right-winger.
The cultural war divide benefits Dems, so they do everything to perpetuate it instead of reconciling it. You need to comprehend this to have a realistic understanding of US political economy.
I can acknowledge all of that, and understand it intellectually, and still see that a vote can reduce the speed of encroaching facism.
Trump lost Georgia by 11k votes, Bush won Florida by 537 votes -- sometimes meaningful things do happen with relatively tiny margins and if they can be swayed in a preferred direction, I'll take it.
threaten it directly by not acquiescing to it
How is this a threat? This is, I think, core to my failure to understand your position. To me that sounds like giving up and giving free rein to continue rolling back abortion rights, lgbtq protections, etc. This sounds completely irrational to me so if I've misunderstood you (or others, or this position in general) I am happy to be corrected on my assumptions. Thanks!
giving up and giving free rein to continue rolling back abortion rights, lgbtq protections, etc
show me where any of this has stopped or slowed under Biden please. that is the issue.
give your vote away to a party that does not fight for these things but only uses them to receive your vote because you have no other option. that is the problem with continuing to vote for them without any real commitments or guarantees that they will do anything material to make things better or even stop the rightward momentum. if you can't understand that, then you should really learn more about political history.
The USA is not a victim of encroaching fascism. The USA was fascist before it was even founded. Everything you can be that is "fascistic" was done by white European settler colonists before the Third Reich did it. Gas chambers, concentration camps, eugenics, wars of extermination, etc.
The Democrats aren't against this stuff. Ruth Bader Ginsberg relied on and reinforced the reliance on the Doctrine of Discovery for the legal basis of the USA. The Doctrine of Discovery is part and parcel of the religious decrees that demanded European settlers murder, rape, enslave, and break every non-European they came across.
The USA is the reservoir of fascism. In Mein Kampf, Hitler explicitly details how the program of the USA was what he wanted to emulate and apply to the Slavs. His entire leadership team studied the USA to base their program on it, everything from apartheid to propaganda.
The USA ruling class supported the ride of fascism in both Italy and Germany. When the USA finally entered the war it wasn't to end fascism it was to stop the growth of communism. The USA collaborated with the Vatican to bring Nazis to safety all over the US sphere of influence. They created NATO and staffed it with Nazis. They worked with NATO through Operation Gladio to reinforce and support Nazi partisans all throughout Europe.
Every time a vote comes up in the UN to condemn the glorification of Nazis, the USA votes against it.
Fascism is a Euro-settler phenomenon. It predates the US. It was perfected in the US. It emerged in Europe from the reservoir of the US. It returned back to the US when it failed to defeat communism. The US maintained it the entire time.
The idea that fascism is encroaching is a lie. It's always been here. The only solution is revolution.