this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2024
118 points (96.1% liked)

electoralism

22015 readers
14 users here now

Welcome to c/electoralism! politics isn't just about voting or running for office, but this community is.

Please read the Chapo Code of Conduct and remember...we're all comrades here.

Shitposting in other comms please!

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

In the leadup to an election is when there is maximum ability to influence the policies of the candidates. At no time before or after this period will any individual voter have more influence. Libs could have joined in with the uncommitted movement months ago and continually demanded an arms embargo on israel as a precondition for their votes. They could even have fucking lied and in their cowardly little hearts known that they were going to vote for the dems anyway. But no, even that small amount of effort was too much. Instead they immediately en masse announced their unconditional support for the dems and spent all their effort viciously attacking anybody who even mildly criticized their candidate. Absolutely useless dumb fucking crackers. I will not forgive them.

top 36 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 month ago (2 children)

And you shouldn't

The average USAan lib is going to put themselves over the lives of anyone else every single time

If you can be fine with seeing our government supporting literal honest-to-god no-foolin' genocide, then you are scum

There is no excuse, you are scum and you deserve nothing but scorn and derision

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm going to have to slightly disagree. They deserve more than that.

barbara-pit

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

God you people are completely unhinged lmao. Voting doesn't mater. It does nothing. WE SAY THIS ALL THE FUCKING TIME.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It doesn't matter, but they are still making the decision to ideologically align themselves with and also sometimes materially support a genocide.

It's not about the act of going to literally cast a vote for Democrats, it's about either wanting or being ambivalent towards a genocide currently happening.

You support Nazis, you get the pit. How is that unhinged?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Because the number of people you're suggesting executing, for one. And because their ideology is not actually Nazism, for two. And because the thing theyre doing does not actually contribute to the genocide in any material way BECAUSE AS YOU ADMIT YOURSELF VOTING DOES NOTHING. AND because in their mind, as hard as it is for some of you to get this, they arent supporting genocide. They're resigned to the fact that the genocide is happening no matter what they do, and trying to improve material conditions in other ways. They're wrong about this, lesser evil voting doesn't work (and we really need a master post as to why btw, or a ProleWiki page about it). But this is the way our ENTIRE FUCKING CULTURE has gaslit us into thinking about elections and its VVERY FUCKIGN DIFFICULT to break out of it. If you're one of the very small number of people who never thought this way about US elections, congratulations. You somehow avoided the conditioning. But the rest of us didn't.

I was a lesser evilist about voting up until Oct 7 last year pretty much lol. And I was a communist way, way before that. Its not an easy mindset to break out of. These people are not Nazis.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Every single time? So I guess just sit on your hands and don't bother agitating or educating or organizing because all of them will always be this way and never change. /s

Most USAmericans on Hexbear were libs who were voting for Obama and even against-Trump Clinton's campaigns after they destroyed Syria and Libya and kicked off huge ethnic cleansings and mass terror. I wouldn't doubt you would be saying ", you are scum and you deserve nothing but scorn and derision" to yourself years ago if you are USAmerican. The genocide of Yemenis has been for a decade and many people here still voted democrat for Obama, and Clinton against Trump. Thankfully you and others had people and communities around you without these anti-social and reactionary conceptions of mass-politics and so didn't abuse you and threaten to throw you into a nazi pit for believing the liberal narratives that are LITERALLY OMNIPRESENT IN ALL SOCIETY AND MEDIA AND DISCOURSE FOR EVERYONE FROM THE DAY THEY ARE BORN; so you were able to be radicalized and educated how you were wrong. A shit ton of the politically conscious democrat voters are disgusted by the Democrats too but just buy all of the dead end status-quo narratives fed to them by the hegemonic media and discourses. So those narratives and conceptions are what is to be attacked. These attitudes are unhinged and counterproductive. Agitate and educate and organize.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago

Things have changed since 2011. There is an actual left wing presence in electoral political discourse that one can only pretend in bad faith to ignore. Half the content I see online is libs malding about left wing people not voting for dems. That was not the case in the Obama days. The level of exposure to left wing ideas has skyrocketed.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 month ago (1 children)

These people are voting for Adolf Hitler out of fear that Joseph Goebbels would be worse. You should not forgive them.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

And do what?

I’m all for rightful outrage but where do you personally direct it so as to dismantle the current system?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Neither Democrats or republicans that’s for sure.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago

Fair enough, to answer your "what is to be done" question it is hard to say. Most people I know IRL are done with electoral politics even at the municipal level. But outside of that you run into the law very very quickly. Labor organization is a possible avenue that has seen growth. But the history of organized settler labor in the US does not give much optimism that it will be a force for radical change. So mostly people are just doing mutual aid networks, which with the generally awful conditions present in the US is basically just charity with no mutuality to be expected. Every meeting I have with people the same question comes up: what is to be done? Nobody has yet cracked the code of how to function as a leftist in the imperial core, for any empire really. Especially a settler state running a FIRE economy (Finance/Insurance/Real Estate) with all actually difficult labor outsourced to the third world. So if you're asking that question you're in the same boat as the rest of us.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 month ago

the most ridiculous and infuriating thing i see is people at my college attending SJP meetings and pro-Palestine protests and then talking about voting dems afterwards. how does one not see the contradictions there. makes me even warier and more distrustful of them.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Liberals are similar to stupidpolers.

They think any movement to the left will alienate everyone and doom the party to irrelevance under fascism.

Yes, many if not most Americans are CHUDs and would probably think even the ERA is too scary. But as Lenin said, tailism is a doomed strategy that opens gateways to right opportunists. I’m not saying it’s easy, and there is a chance of failure. But any vanguard or any other org can work to make these ideas less scary to the masses.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago

what makes it worse is that support for Palestine is not even a losing issue for mass electoral politics!

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago (1 children)

we really gotta start rethinking what propaganda is and how to attack it because the entire content delivery system most Americans are plugged right into, and most of the worlds lib brained treat hogs tbh - everything you consume, from entertainment to news to politics is designed to keep you fuckin' strapped in and, even if you can conceive of ideas and views outside of the approved norm, you lack the initiative to act upon them, be it through coercion, intimidation, mockery, misrepresentation - doesn't matter - information is centralized and monopolized - culture is centralized and monopolized - hell the main ways people meet and socialize are fucking centralized and monopolized - at no point is there even an insertion point for "palestinian lives matter" in the liberal-thought-stream. It's locked down.

We need a goddamn butlerian jihad istg

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

even if you can conceive of ideas and views outside of the approved norm, you lack the initiative to act upon them, be it through coercion, intimidation, mockery, misrepresentation

Literally me k-pain

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

What is it for you? Try to ask yourself thoughtfully, answer deeply what would make you start walking down a different road? Your own security dropping to zero? Things worsening such that the isolating tendencies of our culture begin to fail? Fear of the state giving way to the fear of what they enforce? What would it take to move your bar to a lower standard than, "social/material collapse"? is there a way you can get to it from where your life is now? If there's no easy road, can you find a difficult one?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

The main thing I can think of to get me down that road is to publicly call for the destruction of the United States and Israel so loudly and constantly that none of my friends or family want to associate with me, no employer wants to hire me, no landlord wants to rent to me, etc. Basically showing my power level in a way that causes me to become unpersoned to everyone except radicals.

I'd also have to somehow be able to cope with this psychologically, something difficult for me because I'm already having trouble simply coping in my current hyper privileged life where I'm only ever handled with kids' gloves.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I'm in a similar place. at first I agreed with Will's "I'm not the vote police" line but now I disagree and have become the vote judge; I fucking judge anyone's ass for affirmatively consenting to genocide and exermination and a policy of mass sexual violence on prisoners

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago

It really has been vile to observe and has only deepened my commitment to not voting for Kamala

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

As a non American, I just see them as similar to Trump voters. At the end of the day the USA is a single party state with two wings, a facade. The people of the United States, by and large, will continue to support their country's imperial endeavours until they clash with an "enemy" strong enough to halt them.

The specific combination of factors in the historical formation of U.S. society—dominant “biblical” religious ideology and absence of a workers’ party—has resulted in government by a de facto single party, the party of capital. The two segments that make up this single party share the same fundamental liberalism. Both focus their attention solely on the minority who “participate” in the truncated and powerless democratic life on offer. Each has its supporters in the middle classes, since the working classes seldom vote, and has adapted its language to them. Each encapsulates a conglomerate of segmentary capitalist interests (the “lobbies”) and supporters from various “communities.”

American democracy is today the advanced model of what I call “low-intensity democracy.” It operates on the basis of a complete separation between the management of political life, grounded on the practice of electoral democracy, and the management of economic life, governed by the laws of capital accumulation. Moreover, this separation is not questioned in any substantial way, but is, rather, part of what is called the general consensus. Yet that separation eliminates all the creative potential found in political democracy. It emasculates the representative institutions (parliaments and others), which are made powerless in the face of the “market” whose dictates must be accepted.

Marx thought that the construction of a “pure” capitalism in the United States, without any pre-capitalist antecedent, was an advantage for the socialist struggle. I think, on the contrary, that the devastating effects of this “pure” capitalism are the most serious obstacles imaginable.

[...] Behind this facade there is still a people, of course, despite its evident political weaknesses. Nevertheless, my intuition is that the initiative for change will not come from there, even if it is not impossible that the American drive for hegemony will subsequently come to clash with others, which could begin the movement for a fundamental transformation.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago

As a non American, I just see them as similar to Trump voters.

As an American you're right, they're just two sects of the same cult

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Trump voters and Harris voters are driven by the same fundamentals, which are basically wanting to see the other side lose.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago

qin-shi-huangdi-fireball on all harris voters

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

You might think that libs just accept anything that the leadership tells them because they love the Dem party and want to win, so they accept everything for "electability" reasons.

But they just want to be evil rightwingers and "electability" is a ex post facto justification.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I bet half the people in here were liberals and believed the media narratives before they were radicalized and have forgotten. Thankfully there were people in their lives who radicalized them who didn't have these kinds of rigid anti-social frameworks regarding tactics in mass politics and agitation/education. I bet half the people in hexbear and socialist orgs in general in the US voted for Democrats Obama-Clinton even after they'd begun heinous destruction of Libya and Syria and all the slavery and ethnic cleansings. I bet many voted against Trump for Clinton after Obama started with Saudi and others to committing the Yemen genocide and bombing of weddings and hospitals etc. because they also bought into "lesser evilism" or otherwise believed what the media told them, before their political development changed their perspectives; so also by this logic "cowardly little hearts dumb fucking crackers etc. etc. etc. barbara pit never forgive etc.etc." Why would anyone be convinced by this attitude?

There is and has been and will be defections happening en masse from the democrats


since 2016 even, and exponentially now, as much as there has been any change from the status quo toward a further increase of 'immediately en masse announcing unconditional support and attacking defectors'. And these defectors from the Democrats weren't spurred by people on the left abusing them and saying they deserve death and we'll never forgive them etc. Not a single one. IN FACT MANY ARE SPURRED THE OPPOSITE AND LEAVE THE DEMOCRATS BECAUSE OF THE DERANGED SHITLIB ABUSE OF CRITICS so you're not helping by doing the same exact thing as the hardcore democrats just from another angle. Communists are able to be right because of their ability, with historical and dialectical materialist conceptions of history, economics, and class, to have coherent, incisive, structural critiques on systems and mass movements in their class representation; with which to drive and agitate along existing sharpening contradictions to create ruptures and breakthroughs and realignments in class society for the benefit of and/or for the political education of the working class; not because they can be the best at being spiteful or mean toward random liberal voters in a hegemonic liberal environment over not having already developed internationalist class consciousness good enough or media/propaganda awareness and criticality good enough, and by being driven to act in ineffective, destructive, or self-destructive ways by ignorant fear and shallow charlatanry by their politicians, media, and people around them like everyone is set up to do and driven to do from day 1.

Many of the relatively politically conscious democrat voters don't even deny the atrocities and certainly aren't cheering it; they just get duped into media narratives that Trump is so much worse on this as well as everything else and Trump is Hitler and etc. etc. and don't realize how actively complicit, and compliciltly feckless, the Democrats are with all of these same terrible things; and are scared into helping Democrats as the structure is built to make them do as even many communists including in hexbear were duped into before as well. A lot of Democrat voters don't even know much about realities beyond what the media tells them about, it's just project 2025 and various whitewashes. Many don't know the full truth of the border camp situation being just as bad or worse than under Trump until they are taught and showed that Biden deregulated the camps and allowed for and advertised with state money the private subcontracting of the concentration camps for private profit; while issuing executive orders to shut down the border entirely like Trump tried to do who was himself blocked by the courts because it was too extreme. Which is another point of agitation in the list of increasingly sharp and increasingly obvious contradictions between Democratic party's stated goals and what the media states about their goals and purposes vs what they actually do, to continue railing against Democrats for and explaining to working class voters why starving them of margins will break the duopoly because of the Democrats' structural inability to reorient to the left; wedging them apart into support for 3rd parties and radical organizing, which is happening and has been happening and will increase with every political actor who keeps perspective to do so.

"Never forgive" what does that even mean? Are you going to car bomb random people who have harris/walz stickers? Never try to radicalize anyone ever again if they voted Democrat? Beat people up for believing what their media told them about lesser evilism/Dems being the least bad option? Just give up? Or continue agitating and highlighting these contradictions, and in ways that aren't unhinged and anti-social such that it'd even make other communists in real life organizing uncomfortable and doubtful of your political effectiveness if some of these comments were said toward random liberals of which you were probably one just a few years ago.

Many of the people who are duped into it aren't even happy about what the Democrats do and even hate the Democrats and are ripe for agitation and education to continue in effectiveness. They're just believing the narratives of the corporate owned media machine and status-quo-hegemonizing content algorithms about "lesser evilism." Which is the point of attack to convince people otherwise, which you will never do with this "never forgive them throw them in the nazi pit US is doomed and nobody will ever change their political opinion" in these kinds of threads. They need to be taught and shown to realize they need to challenge the actual structures instead of just facilitating things becoming this way through being manipulated into "politics is avoiding maximal perceived harm with votes for who the media says is less evil" And if the Dems do lose, then you will see an upswell of politically active liberals too as happened with the first Trump win, which also will need education and onboarding and splitting away from opportunist or petty-bourgeois trends; by active communists who aren't spitting on and threatening them because they might have voted for Democrats and making communists look (and be) terrible.

Like "not forgive them" what does that even mean? This is a counter-productive and insular anti-social focus getting this mad at random voters buying into the HEGEMONIC LIBERAL NARRATIVES EVERYONE IS DROWNING IN ALL THE TIME FROM BIRTH, EVEN US, AND ARE EVEN UNCONSCIOUSLY ALGORITHMICALLY FUNNELED INTO REINFORCING, rather than broadening your focus to actually undermine and change it


understanding that and picking your battles to be most effective in organizing mass politics to the ends of socialism and anti-imperialism by fomenting splits along critical lines to wedge misled people out of hollow faith in the duopoly which we've seen happening and happening more and more for the past 8 years and will continue to


but by the actions of those with more sense and perspective than the people in this thread and threads like it---imagine Claudia De La Cruz saying some of the wild and vile shit in these threads while she's campaigning lmao; would never happen because she has perspective and political acumen from study and experience and is trying to build socialism rather than abuse and spite liberals for no purpose other than to pettily see them suffer for shit a lot of them straight up don't even understand fully. Work all of this into the wider structural critiques highlighting and exposing the contradictions in the Democratic party's stated goals and what the media says about their goals and purposes vs what they actually do, stand for, who finances them and who they work for, etc. with actual class analysis and materialist conception of the mass movements of society as they are in current reality; and continue organizing for and agitating along those contradictions to foment splits and defections further in the Democrat party into 3rd parties, without making the 3rd parties seem positively unhinged like some of these comments would do by association.

Add it as another essential and undeniable point to beat the drum against Democrat dead-endism and that not only is "lesser evil" counter-productive in that it makes society gradually more tolerant and compliant with increasing evil over time


but that has been the way of things for so long now the Democrats are effectively already equal evil; while uplifting the alternatives to give people, including those masses already holding their nose the past multiple elections and eager for an off-ramp, an actual platform they see to jump off onto. Join the PSL, agitate and educate among your friends and family and community for PSL (or Greens if you want). Draw independent coalition with these left 3rd parties where the interests align (Greens want to break the duopoly as much as the communists; or if they don't, force them to show themselves opportunists afraid of power and so move their bases to the communists); and further drive the points that the Democrats must be starved of their margins in order to disrupt the duopoly because the duopoly framework benefits the Democrats by keeping a "more (openly) evil" opponent to fear-monger while not offering anything different and ratcheting everything to the right.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago

Half seems like a low estimate lol. There are probably like, 5 people on here who were radicalized from the moment they were politically conscious. The rest of us are either ex-liberals or if I remember right, a lot of them came up through the Ron Paul pipeline.

I've been a communist for many years now, but I was a lesser evilist up until about a year ago. My brain couldnt break out of it, and part of my struggles with it still.

People on here very obviously do not touch grass. Do not have liberal friends. Do not talk to liberals/lesser evilists. Because they are constantly saying shit that are NOT how a lot of them think. A lot of them do have good intentions. A lot of them do look at things and go "well, that genocide is extremly bad, but thats happening no matter what I do, so I might as well vote for Democrats out of self preservation". Thats how my trans girlfriend thinks for example. She's in Georgia, she sees the violent rhetoric from the GOP about trans people and thinks voting Democrat will save her because the Democrats are extremly good at gaslighting queer people into thinking that. I dont think thats the selfish impulse people treat it as. Even though I've gotten to a point where I disagree with the choice, and have had many frusterated conversations with my girlfriend and others about that, I still like, get why they think that way.

They haven't come around to seeing how a vote is an endorsement yet. And considering how hard I struggled with that concept, I get that. Because a two party first past the post system and the way our media talks about politics do not really lend themselves to that idea.

The unhinged ones on social media are not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the people I have private personal relationships who are still voting Kamala despite having relatively radical politics otherwise. They're... basically where I was a year ago about it.

"Blood on your hands" is goofy to me anyway because like, y'all listen. We are all participating in the system that is killing Palestinians lol. We literally all have blood on our hands. And whom amongst us is ACTUALLY laying in front of trucks carrying arms for Israel? In 50 years when kids are asking us what we were doing during the Gaza genocide, very few of us are going to have good answers.

Also, and this really sticks out to me, everyone here talks about how elections like... don't matter? Voting is useless? So why is voting for Kamala some unforgiveable act at that point lmao? I miss when we used to say that we don't care if someone votes, we just dont want them to think that you get real change that way. That made way more sense and was way less unhinged.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago

Yeah I've seen some content out in more mainstream social media focused on getting the libs to be more civil with the anti-genocide crowd and getting them to forgive us but I don't know that I can forgive them.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Hexbear: Thinking that the Hurricane destroying Red States is good because they voted for Trump is bad because those are working class (mostly white! :)))))))) ) poors you're talking about.

Also hexbear: if you do an action I repeatedly have said in the past is useless and means nothing, you deserve execution.

Touch grass. Also please, please, please delete social media and talk to people outside your political bubble.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Also you're just looking for a group you can project your anger on. That groujp is NOT the people actually carrying out this genocide. RE-FUCKING-FOCUS YOUR ANGER ON THE PEOPLE ACTUALLY DOING THIS. Not confused gaslit minorities.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Or like, basic observations from actually doing the groundwork to talk to liberals about why they're making the choices theyre making. Oh and being in that mindset literally a year ago lmao.

People in your thread that you made are suggesting shoving everyone who votes Kamala in the babara pit. Thats 75% of black adults. Thats most queer people too. Thats likely to be over 80 million fucking people.

You know what I think is remedial level of analysis? Thinking that a vote is worthless and pointless, but wanting to kill people for how they vote.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Do you have evidence to support your first sentence? Jon Stewart influenced the shit out of Congress to pass the PACT Act nowhere near Election Day.

Individual voters are never going to have influence on candidates for office with hundred of thousands of constituents (Wyoming's "at large" Congressman represents around 450,000).

Influence groups, on the other hand, can work for long periods of time to build relationships with elected officials and other groups and media to put show, continuous pressure on. Jon Stewart's work is a case in point.

Cohesive, identifiable, visible groups of voters, as well, can exert pressure. Such as the "uncommitted" campaign in Michigan. But only because they were cohesive and identifiable and made themselves visible.

Me skipping a vote for Harris (or Trump) tells that candidate nothing about why I didn't vote for them. Maybe polling data could.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

OP never said anything about you or I individually making Harris not do genocide. I mean, it's a communist board, we must talk about people as individuals because they are, on many levels of analysis, individuals, but political action lives and dies by group effort.

Me skipping a vote for Harris (or Trump) tells that candidate nothing about why I didn't vote for them.

Nor did OP say anything about not voting, which is silly for the reason you describe. However, and this is again the doctrinaire response, voting for a communist does tell the mainstream candidates quite a lot about why you didn't vote for them, even if that communist candidate cannot win that election.