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Vote in the preliminaries, where you can select which bag of shit you’ll get to vote for officially. You may even end up with a decent choice on election day off your area is dope like NYC or Seattle.
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Ugh. I agree with this. But I don’t, at the same time. I’m of the opinion that people need to expire. There was a time where we could make the world a better place by working with people, but some just shouldn’t exist. Some people just can’t be reasoned with.
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You don’t have to be violent to encourage alcoholism or smoking.
Both are correct we need a multilateral approach to win this. A peaceful movement is good but it’s a lot stronger if it’s backed by an adjacent movement that has some threat of force. A user above mentioned the civil rights movement with MLK being backed up by the Panthers. This was a great example because if you look at any successful revolution the approach was multilateral. The abolition movement was also multilateral
You’re right that voting is a tool; you’re wrong about whose tool it is and what it’s used for.
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You are fundamentally confused such that you think there’s any agency in voting in the first place. The only real impact it has is to completely short circuit and subsume all political activity away from any outside organizing that is, historically, literally the only thing that has ever worked to accomplish anything.
My goal is this is a forum. Someone says something wrong and then you say the correct thing under them. That’s what you do on forums.
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You literally voted to escalate a genocide because the system you’re playing apologist for presented you no other choice. What misinformation am I spreading? You’re the one acting as an enemy of liberation. You literally voted for a genocide. You are literally an ally to our oppressors.
It’s honestly fucking frightening how you’re capable of that kind of doublethink.
And you’re not just an ally of our oppressors in that sense. You want to waste YEARS of time PER ELECTION of people who would otherwise be doing tangible good in their communities working outside of the genocidal system you cap for.
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BlueMAGA continues to insist that, because they denied the extent of the genocide when it was their team doing it, the genocide actually wasn’t that bad when it was their team doing it.
Last election the choice was between Palestinian genocide and Palestinian genocide. You are smoking crack if you think the oligarchy is ever going to provide you with a meaningful choice to loosen their hold on you through the civic ritual of voting.
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Last election was a choice between Palestinian genocide vs significantly more Palestinian genocide + Ukrainian genocide + it’s looking Venezuelan genocide is about to be kicking off + who the fuck knows, we’ve got three more years of this shitshow and that’s assuming we even have another election.
You are doing the thing right now. The other choice is “none of those things,” actually, and you don’t get that by voting harder because as you’ve just demonstrated you were not given the choice. Is any genocide acceptable to you? The line is never “less genocide,” it is “no genocide.”
So you knowingly voted to throw Palestinians under the extermination bus, is that it? And you consider yourself to be on the right side of history? And you never considered that perhaps your slavish ideological devotion to following the rules of a fascist political system was slow-boiling you into a fascist?
Ukranian genocide
You’re talking about the ten years of ethnic cleansing the Ukranian nazi government was doing to ethnic Russians within its borders, right? You wouldn’t possibly consider yourself to be against genocide while supporting these guys, right? Because nobody could possibly be that deluded, right? Tell me you’re not that programmed.
but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look at Trump and conclude that he’s infinitely worse
This line is smoking gun proof that everyone in this thread trying to engage with you is talking exclusively over your head.
You people really are hell bent on reducing the word “genocide” to meaninglessness
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Nice try FBI
There it is. If you’re not a liberal you’re personally getting checks written by Putin or whomever’s the villain of the month.
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No, we’re calling for the overthrow of our oppressors. We’re calling for seizing the means of production. We’re calling for real and permanent liberation from the bourgeoisie.
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I don’t care whether you vote, and I’m not telling anyone whether or not to vote. But I am pointing out how little power it gives us for the amount of time, money, and energy people are putting into it. The juice ain’t worth that much squeeze. We’re never going to vote ourselves out of wage slavery.
Bruh
People not voting is why we’re in the situation we are in right now
Yeah man, the Neo-liberal turn? The war on terror? The GFC? All irrelevant, “people not voting” is the reason we have a goddam Cheeto in the white house.
Yes but they don’t want to admit that, since it makes their feelings hurt, so they pretend voting is useless.
Even as much as I love the Fediverse and tend to lean pretty far left, sometimes this place honestly feels like a Marxist circlejerk.
Widespread violence and voting? That’s the answer.
You should definitely vote but it shouldn’t be the only thing you do.
No
Yes. Voting is useful for showing solidarity with the movement and demonstrating how the current system doesn’t work. Just because it isn’t capable of causing any meaningful change doesn’t mean it’s useless.
Just because it isn’t capable of causing any meaningful change doesn’t mean it’s useless.
I see a lot of folks on .ml and .hexbear not understand this part. It’s like all change must be meaningful, and if it’s not then it’s not worth our time.
Lenin taught us that we need to build within the system of the masses in order to tip them over, not overturn it outright. There is a specific time and place for when change is the most impactful
Lenin’s position on integrating with the masses meant running working class parties in opposition to establishment parties, ie voting PSL over DNC. The vanguard’s task is to become a party that the working class puts their full support behind, so that when revolution does happen, the vanguard can serve as the spearpoint to direct the masses in one unified direction and crush the capitalist state, replacing it with a socialist one.
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Badjacketing is bad. Don’t do that.
You’re right, I dont know that they are a psyop. I do, however, know that the position of ‘voting is not worthwhile if you are a leftist’ that they are taking above is the same position that many psyops would like to have in the minds of leftists. Put more simply, what might they have said differently if they were a psyop? Nothing, I presume.
It is better to root out psyop talking points that diminish our ability to form a collective voice, than it is to allow foolish notions like ‘dont vote’ to continue in our spaces.
Voting doesn’t do much, though. I support voting for working class orgs like PSL, but not for the DNC or GOP, and I know it’s very unlikley that PSL will win electorally. Leftists understand that the path to change is via organizing, not by supporting orgs that work against our interests, and we know we can’t magically turn a capitalist org into a proletarian one by wishcasting.
If you want to argue against that, then do so, don’t badjacket.
Im literally just telling folks to not engage in the same behavior that the fascists hope we engage in.
Fascists don’t care if we vote, what they care about is if we organize. Now that the spoils of imperialism are drying up, fascism is rising, and the super-exploitation we inflict on the global south is turning more inward. What fascists are scared of is working class organizing and building actual power.
- I don’t care what fascists hope.
- If fascists say the sky is blue, does that make it a “fascist talking point,” and therefore isn’t blue? That’s just not how it works.
I don’t know why you think you own the place when this is their Lemmy instance, while you’re a guest here.
I dont own the place. But neither does anyone in this comment thread, no one here is a mod on memes.ml, not that I should be expto know who owns what on a public forum
Just you wait another few more years and I’m gonna vote so hard it’ll make your head spin
bro just one more vote bro, bro I swear just one more vote and it’ll fix democracy bro
Now’s not the time for that we can’t afford four years of Vance. We need to hold our noses and vote for Skeletor so we can stop the spread, then focus on progressive issues
Skeletor, we want to vote for you so Vance doesn’t win, but stop supporting Hordak destroying Eternia
Skeletor: Hordak has a right to defend himself
The total lack of show-up from the majority of the left to primaries and the general election is precisely why fascists are in power today.
You speak just like a privileged white psuedo-leftist who lives in relative peace while minorities have the largest crackdown on them since the start of the War on Drugs.
Weird how voting always seems to work for the right wing
Maybe voting would actually work if…you know…you actually voted
My mom said that you gotta vote if you want to complain and I do like to complain.
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We forgetting when Americans voted out Trump now?
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I get it but do you actually think we won’t have elections in 2028 and that a democrat can’t win the presidency again?
We just had midterm elections and democrats absolutely destroyed in almost all of them
I know it’s mostly doom out there but this is absolutely not a full fascist takeover
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I mean in any other civilized country, a rapist would be sucking cocks in prison, not become a president
Your daily reminder that American liberals are also sadistic fascists
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Ah yes, the “definitely not mad” emoji
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“Hehehe prison rape, I’m not a weirdo btw”
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My bet is that this is all a propaganda campaign.
We forgetting that the person who replaced him was also a fascist and then Trump got reelected anyway now?
Because people like you stayed home.
You’re the reason for Trump, it’s your fault.
Damn, I didn’t realize I - a non-eligible voter not living in a swing state - was that powerful. That makes it even more egregious that the Democrats didn’t try to win my vote. I personally chose who would win and they wouldn’t even not do genocide to convince me
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He was appointed by the elected government
Not once ever? Not even when Trump lost the 2020 election despite the jan6 raid on the capitol?
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So you’re saying “No TRUE fascist”, huh?
Which just resulted in a different fascist being elected, and then Trump got reelected anyway?
And yet, we’re seeing GOP reps resigning in critical and contested seats that have been demonstrated to lean far more towards the Dems, especially when Dem-Socs are on the ticket.
We shouldn’t just vote, but not voting will ensure we never get out of this mess.
The MAGAts wouldn’t be trying every voter suppression trick in the book if voting wasn’t currently still a colossal threat to their power
Maybe people would vote more if the counter offer wasn’t also fascism
Americans: “Our FPTP two-party electoral college system doesn’t work. Clearly democracy doesn’t work.”
Meanwhile in Canada we just voted for dental care. Europeans just voted to take on big tech corporations.
I think the problem is years of “it’s not my job to educate you, sweetie”. Turns out it is our job to educate them. Because they vote.
Remember when Canada voted to replace First-past-the-post voting?
Don’t you have SS veterans to be giving standing ovations too right now?
The right have gerrymandered and bet million bucks rigged the voting machines too. Always projection with them. Look at Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham voting districts. I read years ago that they have it rigged that they could never lose even if people voted.
Those guys are senators. There are no voting districts for Senate elections. They are state-wide popular votes.
Voting districts are relevant at the federal level for presidential and House of Representatives races.
you know what hitler? i tried to reason with you but you have left me no choice. i will be voting for somebody else. good luck earning my vote back fuckstick, you’re gonna need it.
This but the election is between Himmler and Eichmann
Lemmy libs next year: “VOTE FOR BLUEMAGA EVERYONE”
Well, how about we just try it first instead of resorting to instant armed combat against our own government or a civil war?
Not sure if you have noticed, but your government has already started the armed combat against the people
Yes but my 12 gauge shotgun and my .22 riffle and my .45 handgun seem to be a tad lopsided against their tanks and drones and guided missiles so sorry if I’m not ready to pounce just yet.
Totally valid. You’re right. Under those conditions, voting will definitely work. But only if you shame people on the Internet to vote the correct way.
Poe’s law has got me good this time. Not sure if youre sarcastic or not lol.
Full on sarcastic
Read up on the Viet Cong or Taliban and stop making excuses
You can’t complain about the quality of your guns in the US. If I pissed in a circle I’d hit six gun stores. $300 and an hour later, I’d have a better weapon than any of the insurgent groups that beat the US military.
Gotta be a bit…
The .45 has me
. That’s specifically the cartridge that people buy when they want to say a 9mm is too weak for whatever combat scenario they have in mind. Some guy near me has a bumper sticker that says “.45 ACP: it’s like 9mm for men”. You can’t be both a .45 ACP chud and a smol bean.The whole comment reads like someone whose Facebook picture is them in the driver seat of their truck wearing Oakley sunglasses and a baseball hat with an eagle on it.
I’m a .45 ACP chud but I also recognize that it’s not gonna do much against any kind of armored target. There are dozens of us
riffle
Sure thing, would another hundred years suffice or would that still be too early to tell?
woah only a century? cool your jets extremist
Liberals have tried and failed to meaningfully improve their situations via voting for centuries. Without analyzing which class is in control of the state, voting will always be extremely weak.
you’re right. one more election and we fix climate change, ranpant exploitation and discrimination! We just have to vote properly.
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lol, is this bait?
Instant? My guy where do you draw the line?
instant
Martin Luther King, Jr. 1963: https://letterfromjail.com/
Well, how about we just try it first
Nobody in the United States has ever tried to vote against a fascist dictator?
instant armed combat
Who do you think is actually organized an armed uprising against Trump? How do you think they’re doing it “instantly”?
Untrue I tried three times to vote against a fascist dictator but over half of my fellow Americans are morons who overrode my vote two out of the three times. But the key here is that voting worked one of those times and no matter how much kicking and screaming and bitching and moaning may have happened his butt was kicked off the WH lawn on Inauguration Day so clearly it does work.
And then we got another genocidal imperialist, worker protections continued to erode, and imperialism persisted.
You mean Biden who believes we would have to create Israel if it didn’t exist, who continued the war drive, who delivered weapons and training to genocidaires, who put infants in solitary confinement at the border, who was instrumental in ensuring that the prisons were full of black people who could be used as slave labor, who pardoned the judge who took bribes in exchange for sentencing 8 year old to juvenile detention for jaywalking, who failed to do anything meaningful to stop Trump, who failed to do anything meaningful to limit the power of the executive so it couldn’t be abused, who failed to do anything to stop fascism at all?
Those 4 years where voting a different guy in didn’t do literally anything to stop fascism in the least?
Sure. Do it again. I am sure continuing to not stop fascism is exactly how we stop fascism
over half of my fellow Americans are morons who overrode my vote
“How about we try voting”
“This doesn’t count, I voted but then other people voted the opposite way”
Maybe the problem is that people on Lemmy don’t understand what an election is.
But the key here is that voting worked one of those times
Oh yeah. Famously, all the fascism in America stopped existing on January 6th, 2021.
That’s why everyone was at the US Capital celebrating.
I think the leftist point being made isn’t that any particular election has no effect. Of course elections have effects. At the very least they provide legitimacy. I think the point is that even though it worked to unseat Trump in 2020, the election did not halt the long term processes leading us towards fascism. It slowed them down a bit but didn’t reverse trend. Reason being that the owner class kept expanding their wealth and therefore control over the entire system. I think leftist memes about elections are often poorly communicated or understood, which isn’t ideal, but then it’s …memes.
I take this meme to also point out that a fascist could just not follow elections, or call them off entirely. Adolf Hitler, the man in the image, called of elections under guise of security. Yeah, you vote against 'em, but then they refuse to leave.
“BannedVoice” pointed out that this didn’t happen in 2020, but I’d point out that then Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, as well as a fair number of Republican politicians, were what you’d call “Tea Party” or neoconservative. Kevin McCarthy, as well as just about every one of these “moderate” Republicans, have been chased out of the party, largely because of their refusal to bow to MAGA orders. The Republican Party of 2020 is not the Republican Party we have now. It’s loyalists all the way through. Remember what happened with the Epstein files?
That’s important context for what happened in 2020.
Broadly, if one believes that elections are a tool that should be leveraged, it’s crucial to understand that elections are not enough, Never have been. Elections are but a small part of the democratic system. All the other cogs - campaigns, fundraising, at all levels of government, for this or that office, within parties, all of that matters immensely. The people you mention who acted as a bulwark against the fascists were a product of that system. Who the choices are come election time is the product of that. Whether it’s a Turd Sandwich v. Giant Douche. Or whether it’s Mamdani v. Cuomo.
Dont forget the rigged machines in swing states thanks to Elon.
thank you for your brainless comment, it really brought this comment section to life.
sorry.
Because they’re already drawing weapons and we’ve been “trying” so hard we elected him twice. You think this will change? You think the Dems will wave a wand and institute voting reform and healthcare or increase wages or improve the living conditions?
Actually my hope is that when this is over people in the MAGA movement will finally wake up and see how much of their own lives have been destroyed by what this ass clown did to them and we as a country can agree to NEVER allow it to happen again and that we can finally go back to letting the adults govern the country instead of a man who would have been a used car salesman had his daddy not given him everything he has.
Trump isn’t the problem, he’s a symptom of the problem. The US Empire has never served the working classes, no president has.
after germany lost in ww2 only 300 people stood in front of nuremberg.
every fascist that survived just used their position of power and recognition and continued staying in politics. they didn’t change their minds, only the approach.
fascism wasn’t suddenly eradicated. the generations they put into this world were taught and raised by these fascists in hiding.
MAGA fucks won’t change their minds. They’ll just change the approach.
and honestly: as a non-american it doesn’t matter if trump or a dem are in power. they’ll continue murdering people in their interest.
As an American who’s lived in various countries and can’t stand his home country, I agree with you 100%.
(also the ‘clean energy’ he’s talking about is fracking 🥰 )
If we just keep changing the bandages and apply no antibiotics, surely the infection will just give up
We’ve been trying for a long time? How long should we wait? Do they need to officially declare fascism?
Is Lemmy just full of hateful ass people or something? In what world does saying we shouldn’t start an armed rebellion worthy of all the downvotes? Y’all are fucking wild.
Lemmy is full of leftists, the vast majority of which understand that electoralism and reformism are losing strategies and that revolution is generally necessary.
I mean this isn’t a “white lib” thing. Most people don’t want political violence or related.
Congratulations
And yet political violence surrounds us. How do you propose voting will stop it? I’ve personally seen that fail for decades now.
“Surrounds us” maybe if you’re chronically online
You ever fuckin’ seen a homeless person? How about the miles and miles of tents along stretches of highways just outside the cities? That’s one of many other forms of political violence. Remember how we stopped counting the death toll from Covid and were all told to get back to work? You know how many “incarcerated” “prisoners” we have doing slave labor? GTFO with your “have to be chronically online to see any political violence” bullshit. You’re fucking steeped in it but you’re too blind to see even what’s right in front of you, even if it’s a boot your tongue is apparently stuck to.
I can log out right now and go downtown to see tent cities full of starving, sick people. You only don’t perceive that as political violence because you’ve been trained to think poverty isn’t political.
All those online ICE raids?
Frequent airstrikes on civilians in Gaza even since the ‘ceasefire’, frequent attacks on likely fishermen/migrants in the Caribbean, strikes on Yemen and Iran within the last few months, Ukraine war, Cambodia-Thailand conflict, ISIS kidnapping in Nigeria less than two weeks ago, attempted arson on a train in Chicago last month, ongoing Afghanistan-Pakistan conflict, Bombing in Delhi last month, I can go on
Does ‘chronically online’ just mean not wilfully ignorant?
Also ICE raids, violent union busting, enforcement of private property keeping hundreds of thousands homeless and millions more on the brink. But sure we’re just “chronically online” God I hate libs.
US foreign policy is a different topic than domestic. US foreign policy has always been vile.
Ok? the topic of this thread is US policy in general
US foreign policy has always been vile.
Agreed and you think you’ll change it via voting?
The gulf between the wealthy class and the rest of the country has reached the critical point where those with power see all of us as “foreign”. The imperialism is turning inwards.
The wealthy don’t even live in the same world we do, nevermind nation.
“killing brown people isn’t violence”
Both here and on my HB main account, I notice you have a way of cutting to the core of liberal bullshit that I really appreciate
Um actually you’re disconnected from the world by paying attention to outside
except for all the white conservatives that stormed the Capitol on Jan 6th, 2021; commit acts of violence against Democrat politicians; make reports and call “wellness checks” on others; commit or support police brutality; defend ICE abductions and trafficking…
There’s over 200,000,000 white citizens. A few hundred doing dumb shit isn’t the entire group. Would you apply this way of thinking to other groups of people?
Nope and I’m not applying it to “white citizens”; just “conservatives”. I’m saying to the "white lib"s and others that the violence is already here.
It’s only white lib thing, if you’re a racist
Thanks for sharing. It’s not bad, except for the lack of class analysis. Assuming the Democrats are principled and will always be opposed to fascism, is sadly wrong. They are exactly like those conservatives who always prefer fascism to socialism.
Yeah, a lot of the historical references and descriptions were good, but then when it got to the present day, essentially the “what is to be done” section, it just flopped hard. Paraphrasing: “a coalition of blue states can just ignore the federal government and do their own thing, boom, fascism defeated.” It’s not actually discussing anything about how fascism can actually be defeated even though the whole first half of it sounds like it’s supposed to be a set up to do just that.
Instead it descends into ridiculous cringe:
California could request Canadian peacekeepers for “election security.” New York could invite European observers for “financial transparency.” Make it embarrassing. Make America’s collapse visible to the world. Force the international community to pick sides.
This is your solution? That’s how fascism is defeated? Any respect I may have built up for the author when they were accurately talking about how fascists slither their way into power using the liberal* political apparatus was nullified by this point.
*(even though the author always insisted on calling the fascist appeasers “conservative” at every turn rather than using the more appropriate word “liberal”)Every solution is just another form of “blue states should just pretend there is no federal government,” even the last one which is titled “International Intervention” but that just means making all the other totally-not-fascist liberal “democracies” play ball with the new blue coalition instead of the liberal democracy that elected Trump.
No, the UN can’t invade America. But they can isolate it. Sanctions work. Ask Russia.
Ask Russia? The country whose economy improved after “the mother of all sanctions” were imposed on it? Russia, who is indisputably winning the conflict that those sanctions were supposed to stop, all while Russia’s economic ties with other enemies of the US have grown and blossomed? How about asking Cuba if sanctions work. Yeah, they work to starve the population and cause civilian immiseration and death, they don’t and never have worked to depose rulers. This doofus has no fucking clue what they’re talking about.
And even with the historical stuff, it left a big fucking gaping hole where the people and organizations that DID successfully fight fascism should have been. But nope, not even a mention. Clearly Christopher didn’t want to admit that communism IS the cure to fascism, theoretically and in practice, historically and right now. This essay is just more cringe liberal drivel.
Okay analysis. Awful solutions. All that just to say what someone far smarter than him had already said: political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Fascists seize state power once they believe they have enough political power (ie the means of dispensing organized violence through a military or paramilitary formation). They are only stopped at the local level by antifascists willing to get their hands dirty, on the national level by the state military that refuses to go along, and on the global level by state actors.
Once they win elections, it’s already too late.
Hey what do you think stops them from winning that first election?
🤫
The upside-down corpse of Mussolini might disagree with that
Funny, posting said article on a nazi platform.
Write more non-Nazi stuff and it will stop being a Nazi platform.
The owner of the site is a fucking nazi so there no making it un nazi. Like keeping X cause you think you can change it from a white supremacist site.
Like keeping X cause you think you can change it from a white supremacist site.
I still lurk on Twitter. Calling it a “white supremacist site” is just… Silly. The whole point of social media is that it’s the users who create content.
I’m seeing a lot of right-wing fundamentalists being clapped by sane people. The only time I see any nazi/fascist/supremacist content is when it’s getting ratio’d or just ridiculed.
I’m not saying this content isn’t there, but I’m saying there’s still a lot of people fighting the good fight. Packing up your toys and going home is not really a method for anything other than getting completely marginalised, IMO.
Surely, having the largest military in human history is going to help us, right?
Chile actually voted out their dictator.
then what happened
So did Brazil, and they actually threw theirs in prison.
No, Bolsonaro was not a dictator; if he had been, we wouldn’t have been able to remove him. He had far less power than he thought; that’s why voting worked.
I would argue the same is true of Trump. It certainly was in his first term. This term has all the aesthetics of authoritarianism, but he is failing to consolidate power, which is kind of pathetic considering how much power in the US was ready to surrender on day one.
how white liberals think fascism works
Chad voting in a UN resolution condemning Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza
you’re finished
Official portrait of Benjamin Netanyahu
no, pls
Some of the dumber white libs I’ve talked to honestly believe 51% of American voters voted for Trump 🤣
They don’t know what voting does or how it works but they’re sure it’s the only reasonable solution!
It’s funny how almost 20 million people less than in 2020 voted this time around (most of the missing voters being on the dem side too); people are beginning to realize we don’t really have a say
And it seems like a lot of Americans don’t understand FPTP or the Electoral College, or even the amount of voter suppression there is. Your vote only counts (and only maybe) if you live in a swing state. The votes in rural areas count for way more than in urban ones but those are already captured by R. Let’s not even get into the other branches of government:
Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability.
- James Madison
Race baiting to distract from the class war?
Why is this type of privileged exclusionary 1 dimension opinion even upvoted?
There are multiple problems that matter at any given time.
Saying that racism is a distraction ignores the very real people who are being harmed right now because they aren’t you, and thus you don’t care about them. “I got mine” but about other issues.
Some take for a socialist to have really…
Some take for a socialist to have really…
I wouldn’t assume they are one.
I mean their post history seems to match, as does their presence here and comment.
I just think some people only believe in ideas insofar as they are in the groups that benefit from said policies.
Adding white into this meme doesn’t acknowledge or address any problems, it just serves to divide people.
what about classbaiting?
Revolutions stand or fall with public support. Voting is the most visible way to establish public sentiment. People like to quote that only a third of the US actually elected Trump, but do we have a clear idea of just how many oppose him, if so many voters apparently never expressed their opinion in any measurable way?
Doing nothing and complaining on the internet is useless. Doing something is scary. If you knew you had your community at your back, wouldn’t you feel more confident to step up?
You’re right that people need to know that voting won’t be enough, but it’s still important in order to communicate the public opinion that separates a revolution from a coup.
That is indeed a good argument for voting, but voting third party
Depending on the stakes, yes. It is categorically better than not voting at all.
There is still the spoiler effect to consider, which may make voting third party a worse strategy in the complex, blind game that elections are. In elections where that isn’t as big of a risk, it’s a good way to indicate dissatisfaction with the status quo and the parties on offer. If there is a particularly convincing third party that many agree on, it also communicates what people do want.
In presidential elections, in a country where the president already had so much power even before this whole shitshow, when one candidate is a much greater threat to the basic feasability of resistance, it’s a dangerous gamble, risking much for a fairly slim chance at an all-or-nothing victory.
FPTP is one of the many things that are fucked up, but not every election has that kind of impact, and particularly if you’re in states where one party is so dominant that the spoiler effect is negligible anyways, it may be the more valuable choice.
Even along with public support, revolutions need their violent wing. MLK wouldn’t have been as nearly successful without the Black Panthers visibly totin’ guns on the 5 O’Clock news. It made MLK look very reasonable to deal with.
Gandhi, the modern Icon of peaceful protest winning the day, had armed rebellions popping up behind him. The Indian’s had nearly a 100 year history of violence against the British. And an exhausted Great Britain just wanting to get out of the colonial business didn’t hurt either.
When facing despots and fascists, there needs to be people willing to kill and die for the cause of freedom. We have not reached that point yet.
This is absolutely the correct answer. Successful revolutions are always multilateral in their approach.
Agreed on all points. It’s kinda like a robbery – you probably won’t arbitrarily hand a random stranger your wallet, but if they point a knife, things look different.
Though in this case, it’s the robber barons getting mugged by their victims.
so voting AND revolution are both good
The success of diplomacy and peaceful protest hinges on the existence of a credible threat that the alternative (war and riots, respectively) will be worse. Even if a (mostly) peaceful solution should be found, I suspect there will have to be some measure of violence to get that point across.
As others point out, the elites won’t go down quietly, and as long as there are bootlicks willing to fight on their behalf, they’ll rather let their bootlicks die than make concessions.
So while I don’t think violent revolutions are good for their own sake, they may be a necessary evil for good ends.
what about peaceful revolutions (as long as they DON’T even escalate)?
If, for whatever reason, the police collectively decides to no longer enforce the commands of those in power and no other group steps up to violently defend the status quo, a peaceful revolution in the form of civil disobedience would be conceivable.
Getting to that point without some measure of violence is what I believe to be unlikely – not impossible, mind you, and I very much hope for it, but it’s quite likely that an attempt to create such a consensus would (at least initially) be violently suppressed just as violent resistance would.
Even if it is achieved, the new society will need to guard itself against opportunistic egoists seeking to exploit the new power vacuum. Here too there may be at least an initial period of violence until that new dynamic is clear.
As long as there are people willing to hurt others for their own benefit, they will have to be fought.
But we should try to fight as little as possible.
I know of no revolutions that didnt use force or the credible threat of force, because the ruling class would always rather escalate than voluntarily give up their power.
thejre’s the people power revolution in the phillippines back in 1986
