I find a lot of people arguing that one shouldn’t vote because although easy, it is the least effective form of political engagement.
I’d argue that you should vote because it is the easiest form of political engagment and, if possible considering your material conditions, you should also try to participate in other forms of engagement.
Yep, I think that’s uncontroversial…
Yes, voting is the baseline. It’s the least you can do.
I’m sure that there are anarchists out there who refuse to vote out of principle, but they still do activist work such as participating in mutual aid groups and so on. They’re wrong, but at least they’re still helping society in some way. I think the vast majority of people who don’t vote are just lazy, though.
And then there’s the marxist-leninists who saw the government ban black people and women from voting, see the Republicans trying to make it harder for black people to vote, and then said “when minorities vote it helps fascists”, because they’re clowns.
Slaps table THANK YOU!
Especially since those people refuse to actually provide an alternative form of political engagement besides vague references to a revolution, which has absolutely zero chance of coming out in the Prolitariat’s favor in Americas current political climate, because there is nowhere near enough class conciousness for that to happen.
Even when the Proletariat does win, they often still install a dictatorship. Because those are the kinds of people who lead revolutions.
Dictators appropriate revolutions, not lead them. It’s much easier to kill a couple leaders than to take over a country, afterall.
To all the burn it down and rebuild leftists (by protesting and not voting for the lesser of 2 evils) tell me how well that went for the Communists in Germany and Italy the last time mask off fascism rose to power there…
Edit: Not one of these “Self-righteous leftists” have addressed my question about what happened to leftists in Germany or Italy when fascist took power there. Its almost like they dont give a shit about the Prolitariat and would rather engage in purity politics rather than support the working class or marginalized communities. Absolutely pathetic astroturfing, or simply a complete disregard for the Materical Conditions on the ground in America.
Not voting for the lesser of two evils is the most childish shit. People like to bring up that Geralt quote, as if the situation in that story wasn’t made a hell of a lot worse by his decision not to choose.
If you’re not gonna vote blue all the way down, then you need to put your money where your mouth is and start burning it down so you can rebuild it. Otherwise you aren’t protesting, you’re just being lazy.
Wasnt Biden supposed to be the lesser of two evils last time? How’s that working out for you?
A hell of alot better than if 45 was still in office.
Two major wars with nuclear armed states, one with an actual genocide.
Are you proud of yourself for supporting genocide?
So what are you suggesting? Vote for Trump?
I really dont know what in the fuck they are suggesting, they sound like a Russian shill trying to derail the rising tide of Class Conciousness in America by encouraging leftists to not vote, allowing the mask off fascist Republicans to win. They would apparently rather be ideologically pure and let the fascists win, than pinch their nose and vote for the lesser of two evils and maintain the status quo where large swaths of the population are actively waking up to the hypocrisies of our Capitalist system. Either way they reek of astroturf and are extremely disingenuous, and have completely ignored the onus i set for them to explain what happened in Italy and Germany when fascist took control there, because they dont give a shit and just want to see America burn. They dont give a damn about the Prolitariat.
And 45 being in power would have made it all better and would have supprorted Freeing Palestine. /s Give me a fuxking break. Implying that i support Genocide is ridiculous, I’ve attended 2 Free Palestine marches in D.C. so far, have written the president to voice my opposition to the funding of Israel, and contacted my Representative. What have you done besides engaging in whataboutism on the internet? Biden sucks, but implying that voting for him and/or supporting dems in the midterms is supporting Genocide is assinine especially when you factor the right wanting to commit Genocide on trans folk in the US. You are supporting Genocide by not voting for the lesser of 2 evils you self-righteous internet sjw. Touch grass and engage in Praxis if you actually care.
Implying that i support Genocide is ridiculous
Anyone who supports Genocide Jim Crow Joe Biden is a genocide supporter. It’s that simple.
I’ve attended 2 Free Palestine marches in D.C. so far, have written the president to voice my opposition to the funding of Israel, and contacted my Representative.
And then supported him regardless. This is just performative bullshit for you to attempt to salve your conscience. You are complicit in genocide by directly supporting Joe Biden.
Biden sucks, but implying that voting for him and/or supporting dems in the midterms is supporting Genocide is assinine especially when you factor the right wanting to commit Genocide on trans folk in the US.
The right? Are you trying to claim that the Dems are not “the right”? So your concern is for a tiny fraction of a tiny percentage of the world’s population, rather than the millions who are murdered by America worldwide? At least you admit it. American lives are worth multiples of other humans, right? Scumbag.
So I would love to know. Would voting for either no one or a third party be a big “fuck you joe!” with no real world consequences? Is that seriously your belief?
Voting for one of two given candidates is far from actually directly supporting someone. You do not know what they did before the generals. Who they supported in the primaries. Unless you are literally out there plotting the coup to outdo all the coups of mankind and not idly sitting complaining online, then you have zero room to attack someone for voting for the less of two evils.
Unless, of course, you believe Trump would have somehow done better or prevented this. The guy saying he would remove all the Palestinians from the US. The guy that the creators and backers of Project 2025 wants to be their guy
And quit it with the “a tiny percentage of people is better than _____”. For one, well over a million people is not just some group to throw to the side to support another group and you’re literally doing the same thing you’re accusing this person of doing. Second, if you think that trans people by themselves are the only target of all that nonsense, then you are seriously incorrect.
So you are just an internet sjw that does zero real world praxis, talk about peformative, lmao.
Not one of these “Self-righteous leftists” have addressed my question about what happened to leftists in Germany or Italy when fascist took power there.
Because your question implies that selfish concerns ought to outweigh principles…
Protecting the Prolitariat is not a selfish concern…
I wonder if they had any particular reason to think that supporting the “lesser evil” wouldn’t accomplish that.
Maybe you should get your Facts right. The KPD only didnt participate in the 1919 election. In the last Reichstags eleciton in 1933 they got 12,3%. They where removed and procecuted after the Nazis blamed a Communist for the Reichstags fire. idk much about Italy but they also got a few seats before Mussolini. To your question about what happened to German Communists, they where either put into Prisons/KZs and killed there, flead to the Soviets or went to Spain to fight Facism there. idk about Italy but probalby the same.
Eyuppp the fascists killed them or ran them out of the country. The Prolitariat was never able to achieve the necessary class conciousness needed for a successful revolution and human history entered into one of its darkest and bloodiest chapters. Mask of fascism is bad for the Prolitariat and voting is the bare minimum of civic duty to prevent it from taking hold in a nation.
How would voting harder have prevented the rise of fascism?
I never said it would have, was merely asking what happened to Communist in those countries when fascism came to power there. Your disingenuousness is showing.
You said this
Mask of fascism is bad for the Prolitariat and voting is the bare minimum of civic duty to prevent it from taking hold in a nation.
But voting didn’t prevent fascism in all the countries youre describing. In fact, theyre examples of how voting within a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie can’t prevent fascism.
Please note my use of the term bare minimum, if you arent going to vote you sure as shit arent going to organize. Voting is the bare minimum and an easy first step towards being more politically involved, why are you trying to discourage leftists from voting so hard? Do you want fascism to win the election or something?
Voting in bourgeois democracy is a way of channeling political activity into an unproductive avenue. It doesn’t follow that voting is required for political involvement. And also your original claim was that it was the bare minimum, it isnt. It is below the bare minimum. You could say “it is a step toward the bare minimum” and I’d disagree but that would be more accurate to what I believe you’re trying to convey.
Do you think that Germany or Italy wouldn’t have gone fascist if the leftists just voted harder?
The historian in me eagerly awaits your reply
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/piano_drop.jpg
I’m not saying that voting harder back then would have changed anything, but drawing a parallel between then and America today where mask of Fascism is very much on the ballot tomorrow and a year from now in the presidential election. Not voting to protect one’s ideological purity is the height of privilege.
Okay but voting didn’t prevent fascism in those countries. Fascism didn’t happen because some communists and anarchists refused to vote, it happened because of class war on the part of the petite bourgeoisie and precarious haut bourgeoisie
THANK you. There’s been so much negative trolling on lemmy, really getting me down. Seeing your post actually reminded me I need to re-register.
I can’t get out and vote.
I can though in about two weeks. And the election will probably be just as significant.
Voting is like paying taxes: It sucks, you don’t get anything you want, but not voting leads to problems.
I mainly vote to prove it doesn’t help and I haven’t been proven wrong since 2000
Your presidential elections are like the last step in the process. If you want to make real change, you need to start from the bottom up. You can’t just say (not saying you do this) “oh shit there’s a presidential election this year? And I dislike the Democrats candidate? Time to vote for a third party candidate to show them!”
It’s kind of like baking a cake I guess. If you just jump in at the end and taste the cake, well you’re stuck with what it is. "Oh I wish this was a chocolate cake instead of vanilla. I’m not going to eat this cake. I’m going to eat this other cake ", well you should have gotten involved earlier and who knows what’s in that other cake, it could have those disgusting flavored jelly beans in it.
I do agree that not voting leads to problems.
We tried that with Bernie, also doesn’t work
I agree, which is why I’ve been voting in local and primary elections since 2000. And it doesn’t work because the system of government we have is shitty, old, and broken.
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Its a state and local election where our democracy’s rubber hits the road. Literally the bare minimum of civic duty in America.
Fun fact: other countries exist.
Not every state or county is having an election, you can check to see if you can/should participate here https://ballotpedia.org/Elections_calendar
Doesn’t voting not matter because it all gets decided by the electoral collage anyway?
OP demanding people vote, ‘regretted not voting hillary’ and then calling people SJW in the comments. Just your average liberal fascist.
Lmao where did I demand people vote? I asked what the dude calling me out was doing irl besides being an internet sjw, while fully acknowledging that I very much am an internet sjw. Dude couldn’t give me one answer and called me going to multiple ceasefire protest in D.C. as being a performative action, like no shit, thats what protesting is, showing your disdain for what your country is doing with my physical presence. Y’all are so fucking dumb.
Liberals don’t respond to criticism with ableism challenge 2023 (IMPOSSIBLE)
Also calling someone a sjw isnt nazi terminology, thinking that sjw has a negative connotation makes you align with Nazis who view social justice with a negative connotation. Lol
The term literally came from the alt-right, a neo-nazi movement which started as a result of reddit banning r/jailbait
There is nothing wrong with being a social justice warrior lmfao, the fact that they abriviated it doesnt make it nazi terminology, nor does it make being a social justice warrior a negative thing. You are actively reinforcing nazi ideologies by implying that being an sjw is a bad thing… cause advocating for social justice is a good thing lmfao.
If by “came from” you mean “was hijacked by”.
I fail to see how “caring about social issues makes you a bad person” can come from anywhere other than the greasiest pedo-nazis.
Lmao what?!
Voting is important, but only an organized revolution is capable of breaking the system that fucks us up
Start it then.
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This attitude is why Americans have two shitty right-wing parties
Liberals, please acknowledge that if there is a possibility every election that fascism will win, fascism will eventually win unless you take political action outside of electoralism
This is why it’s important to build strong democratic institutions to resist fascism, populism, and the like. They won’t last forever, but they can take a few election cycles of abuse. Part of the problem with many countries that have truly fallen to fascism or fascist-like movements is that they started out with weak or non-existent institutions. Contrast that with the US, where even the election of Donald Trump of the “Lock Her Up” slogan (very fascist) got basically nowhere with both prosecuting Hillary Clinton and overturning the 2020 election.
This sounds nice but doesn’t really address what I said in any way.
How so? Fascism is rarely a matter of a single election. It’s usually a slide. Providing a bulwark against that slide means you have several election cycles to snuff out fascism and return to liberal democracy.
So you’re just crossing your fingers and hoping the fascism goes away on its own?
What are the historical and material causes of fascism? How do they influence how you should respond to fascism?
Rereading the thread, I think we’re in agreement. I was more adding onto your point, that building strong institutions and norms is important along with political activism. Institutions and norms slow the rot from the inside, political action slow it from the outside.
Fascism has already won if you’re a person of color.
No, that is just the status quo in a settler colonial state. Fascism has distinct economic structures that haven’t coalesced yet.
Oui. C’est correct.
The people who vote are losers. They’re people who think electing some person they met or had any alone time with will make their lives better.
As opposed to the people who don’t vote because they live under a rock or in their mom’s basement?
I mean, I’m kidding, but people you’ve never met can absolutely fuck up your life when in comes to politics.
The people who vote are loses.
These are the people who think electing some person they never met or spent any alone time with will magically make their lives better.
People you’ve never met or spent any time alone with basically make your life better super frequently. Medical scientists developing new treatments, engineers coming up with better/more efficient/safer alternatives, state and local governments and councils maintaining services, etc.
If you’ve never met or contacted your representatives, that’s likely by your own choice. They generally make themselves fairly available to some degree.
Electing a random citizen of my country instead of the current leader would make lives of people all around the globe better in mere months, no magic required.
