I want to draw attention to the elephant in the room.
Leading up to the election, and perhaps even more prominently now, we’ve been seeing droves of people on the internet displaying a series of traits in common.
- Claiming to be leftists
- Dedicating most of their posting to dismantling any power possessed by the left
- Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
- Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
- Attacking anyone who promotes defending leftist political power by claiming they are centrists and that the attacker is “to the left of them”
- Using US foreign policy as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the US political system
- Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism
When you look at an aerial view of these behaviors in conjunction with one another, what they’re accomplishing is pretty plain to see, in my opinion. It’s a way of utilizing the moral scrupulousness of the left to cut our teeth out politically. We get so caught up in giving these arguments the benefit of the doubt and of making sure people who claim to be leftists have a platform that we’re missing ideological parasites in our midst.
This is not a good-faith discourse. This is not friendly disagreement. This is, largely, not even internal disagreement. It is infiltration, and it’s extremely effective.
Before attacking this argument as lacking proof, just do a little thought experiment with me. If there is a vector that allows authoritarians to dismantle all progress made by the left, to demotivate us and to detract from our ability to form coalitions and build solidarity, do you really think they wouldn’t take advantage of it?
By refusing to ever question those who do nothing with their time in our spaces but try to drive a wedge between us, to take away our power and make us feel helpless and hopeless, we’re giving them exactly that vector. I am telling you, they are using it.
We need to stop letting them. We need to see it for what it is, get the word out, and remember, as the political left, how to use the tools that we have to change society. It starts with us between one another. It starts with what we do in the spaces that we inhabit. They know this, and it’s why they’re targeting us here.
Stop being an easy target. Stop feeding the cuckoo.
You must log in or register to comment.
None of this shit matters anymore jfc. There won’t be real elections in 2026. Stop drinking Democrat collaborator diarrhea and start preparing for mass street level resistance. In case it somehow isn’t glaringly obvious, when the mass protest encampments shut down cities the Democrats will be the ones telling people to go home and vote instead. And when Trump nationalizes the national guard and sends them in to break up the encampments at rifle point the Democrats will wring their hands and put out a milquetoast statement about how they support peaceful protest but that disruption can’t be tolerated. Were none of you alive yet in 2020? Did none of you get guns pointed at you by national guard sent in by Democratic governors?
The Democrats are sitting in congress making word-shaped noises that gesture at displeasure with the ongoing fascist coup. A Republican Nazi could walk around congress putting them down with a cattle gun and the remaining ones would smile tightly and put out a statement about how “this is a serious violation of democratic norms” and then vote in favor of the next Trump nominee. These people are collaborators. They will do nothing to stop the fascist coup because they don’t want to.
Whether or not there are propaganda accounts actively trying to disperse and confuse resistance is absolutely pertinent to what we do from here.
It’s definitely true that 95% of the Democrats haven’t really been doing shit now that the horrors have started, and that talking about the election and how Trump shouldn’t have won is kind of a lost cause now. The propaganda accounts I am more concerned with at this point are the ones going into /r/50501 and doxxing and confusing people, trying to drown out useful organization, generally trying to defeat anything that might oppose the fascists. I haven’t seen those ones on Lemmy too much although I’ve seen a few. And misleading people about the bigger picture “in politics” as opposed to out of politics is still certainly a problem. They’re both problems.
It’s a psyop
They appeal to leftists by saying electoralism won’t bring revolution, which is true… But then say don’t vote.
Makes no sense to me. Use any lever you have. You can advocate revolution and pull the lever for lesser evil. It reduces the concept to black and white thinking while appealing to people’s sense of self righteousness and laziness.
The same tactics and arguments are deployed on maga, only they’re encouraged to vote
It’s like making banana bread. Everybody has their own recipe, but it’s still banana bread. The Trump administration is the continuation of the Biden administration. And America is an imperialist empire that rapes and pillages the world. We are also heading to a precipice, where we will be fooled into fighting another world war, war because of course blame it on the Muslims. Fascist are the useful idiots of empire, and sometimes fascists don’t realize their fascist. Neo-liberalism is a right-wing ideology, and that’s what we’ve been dealing with when it comes to the Democrats. Because they all take money from foreign powers, and they do not work on our behalf. They also use the intelligence department to divide this nation. since education has been under fire for so long, that most of the people in America don’t understand World War II or the world that they live in today. Russia defeated the Nazis, America came in to take the credit as they were also funding the Nazis, similar to what is happening in Ukraine today. But what is different is that communism is dead and what we have now is global capitalism. With our own capitalist class that fights amongst themselves for their interest while at the same time understanding their place in the hierarchy and keeping us all down and stupid. China is a capitalist country. Russia is a capitalist country. Liberals or the Democratic Party will try to rebrand themselves in order to keep voter engagement because that’s all it is. It’s a suggestion. It’s a temperature. But what I’ve seen is that voter turnout keeps getting smaller and smaller because people are starting to catch on …things will just get worse, I can guarantee. But you’ll just turn a blind eye, because you’re playing Tribalist Games. Red Team vs the Blue Team. It’s all the same, it’s still the same game. You should Google the imperialist Boomerang. What goes around comes around. What they do overseas will come back to you and me. I would think with the Snowden and Julian Assange leaks that would have woken up a lot of America, but America is… That.They’re literate, or they lack reading comprehension and the ability to pay attention. As somebody who is liberal arts educated, I really do think that America is one of the most servile nations in the world. Because we’ve been fat and happy, eating the spoils, well relative crumbs, but spoils of our imperialist wars. Unfortunately, I live in this country and I am struggling. I really want out. I do not identify with this culture and everyone around me seems crazy. And they lack the patience to listen. All I ask for you to do is listen. I plant seeds. Eventually, if you get enough of those, you have a garden of reality. We really do lack critical thinking skills. And then the sofist, Uno card, is something that just drives me mad. Either way, if I live or die, justice will be served, and Yankee gets what they deserve. Justice is coming, either by the nations of the world sick of your shit, or by your own hands. I mean, haven’t you figured it out yet? The whole good cop versus bad cop thing. You are the most gullible nation in the world. America is similar to North Korea. America is like North Korea with Disneyland. You’re in a theme park that you can’t afford and you can’t get out. It’s a small world after all.
Russia defeated the Nazis, America came in to take the credit as they were also funding the Nazis, similar to what is happening in Ukraine today.
I feel like at this point you’re just inviting someone to say something so you can pitch a fit about “how DARE you” and write more screeds to jam up the conversation that’s going on, and accuse the other people of being victims of propaganda.
I had more I wanted to say on this topic when I first read it, but at the time I also had more energy. Had I not had other obligations, I would’ve written out my more detailed thoughts then. As it is, however, I’ll have to settle for the (relative) shortform, as I find this thread exhausting from the outset and the sheer quantity of incredibly angry back-and-forth here has only made it worse.
To suffice the ideas of mine that I still remember, then:
- I have a feeling that while you may not consider me specifically to be a “cuckoo,” that this post was still partially aimed at people like myself, since I’ve spent a fair chunk of time arguing to the immense faults of the Democrat Party, some of which was in discussion with you.
- If the above is true, I feel dehumanized and find this topic incredibly depressing.
- Regardless of the above, I find jumping to assumptions of bad faith on the part of those with whom you disagree on this topic understandable, but needlessly conspiratorial.
But to end my comment, I’d like to point out an area on which you and I can find common ground: Your point of “Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism” suggests you feel that the people arguing against voting / the Democrat Party are doing a poor job of offering alternative solutions. On this, I agree. Solutions for that scenario are hard to come by and often complicated, and where people do have things to suggest a portion of them are very flawed; voting Green, not voting, and the occasional implicit suggestion for violence, etc. All of those have huge problems that I know I don’t need to explain to you.
For that, all I can say is that I agree that leftists can do better and should. I’ve seen the good suggestions before. Things like mutual aid, education, organizing, joining events — all of these are very useful things that are significantly more important than one vote in a broken electoral system. Unfortunately, as you’ve noticed, frustrated and angry people tend to be bad at mentioning these things.
I only ask that you consider that these people are frustrated, angry, and restless, rather than actively fake.
If you read down to my comments down below, you’ll find some examples of people doing specific fuck-ups that strongly indicate that they are non-American fake accounts, and not someone who is frustrated, angry, or restless.
I do think that a lot of people on far-left-Lemmy are in fact genuine accounts who also do the things OP is saying, and that maybe calling them fake accounts isn’t productive. I actually think fake accounts on Lemmy is also a huge problem, but the tells that I consider are a little different than the ones OP talks about.
For that, all I can say is that I agree that leftists can do better and should. I’ve seen the good suggestions before. Things like mutual aid, education, organizing, joining events — all of these are very useful things that are significantly more important than one vote in a broken electoral system.
Yes. Whether or not someone is fake, talking about those things constantly would be a much better (and also less suspicious) thing to talk about, as opposed to incessantly talking specifically about how important it is not to vote and not so much about those other things.
A lot of the accounts I’m talking about are still talking about how important it is not to vote for Democrats, and haven’t bothered to say more or less anything about joining the protests that are going on right now. Actually, I’ve seen a little scattering of the current generation of fake commenters who are talking about how dangerous the protests are, how some might be “false flags,” how we need to be careful or they’re going to sit this upcoming one out. Things like that.
Great points! Now that the election is over, let’s focus on revamping the Dem party instead of huffing copium by blaming 3rd party leftists for not being conservative enough to vote for a rightwing party!
Glad to have you with us. We’re talking about David Hogg below, who is one of the people who is trying to do this. Let’s rock.
Please stop strawmanning us (I’m sort of assuming that this comment can be aimed at me, which I think is accurate) for long enough to get behind some kind of effort like that. Our main complaint about one certain subset of the “3rd party leftists” so called is that, on Lemmy, the sum total of their efforts seems to be not producing any success for 3rd parties, or for the left, or for reforming the Democrats, or against the Republicans, or anything like that, but actually interfering with the “revamping” as you say. By shitting on people like Bernie, or Elizabeth Warren, or David Hogg, or encouraging people not to vote letting Trump get in office which now makes things much harder, or encouraging them to vote for someone who definitely won’t win, and so on.
@t3rmit3@beehaw.org
Never heard of him, but if he’s like Bernie, I’ll endorse that.
I’m sort of assuming that this comment can be aimed at me, which I think is accurate
Nope, just responding to OP. I fit 3 of the items on their list, 5 depending on who you ask, and I take exception to having my issues with the party that’s supposed to represent my interests dismissed as “maga cuckoo infiltration.”
If it is as you say, then that sounds like bad faith actors posing as 3rd party alright. People will do anything to get you sucked into engagement to drain you and keep you from being productive. I guess reminding everyone of that is a public service
Yeah, I sort of saw talking with t3rmit3 that me and OP do actually see things a little differently maybe in some important respects. I actually don’t think everyone who fits a lot of OP’s criteria is necessarily (or even probably) a fake account. I definitely think there’s a huge problem of fake accounts but the way OP has framed it I think also includes some people who are just speaking their mind.
Some of the accounts that I would place in that category also hate Bernie. They call him a “sheepdog” or say that he is controlled opposition designed to siphon off support that could productively go towards some 3rd party candidate that 99% of the country has never heard of, and that’s who we should be voting for. I mean sure, that viewpoint could be legitimate from some kind of person who’s got a comprehensive master plan I’m just too thick to understand, how doing that will tie in with the left finally seizing power in this country if we can all dump Bernie, but you surely should understand that me (and presumably OP) will be skeptical.
From Fascism and Big Business by Daniel Guerrin
From Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks
In re the first excerpt:
This, to me, sounds totally backwards.
The KPD had tried to overthrow the government through violent force with guns, and the establishment government including the SPD had violently fought back. A generation later, the KPD was still so incensed that the SPD had not gone along with getting shot and overthrown that they refused to get things together with the social-democrat + center-party coalition, ran their own spoiler candidate, fought the SPD in the streets, and basically treated the “not left enough” party as the main enemy all the way up until they all went into the camps. Whereas the SPD was still giving speeches against Hitler and trying to muster resistance to him in government even when parliament was half-empty because of all the disappeared opposition.
I have no idea how the groups you’re talking about here map onto the groups I am talking about. But, to me, the problem of splintered opposition to Hitler was 100% a far-left-created problem, which would be an incredibly apt comparison as regards the most recent US election if the election had happened on Lemmy or if the US as a whole had any kind of far-left representation that went above low single digits.
In re the second excerpt:
Yes, it is mathematically certain that in any FPTP election system, things will coalesce into two parties which are both a few inches to one side or another from the center. That is a good argument to me for not doing FPTP. I don’t think you can blame the left-er of the parties if they don’t want to wander away from the center and start losing elections.
If we’re going to apply that to the US, I think the “center” in the US being so far to the right that it’s off the edge of the table is a whole separate problem, largely corporate-media-created, but I think asking the center-right party we call “Democrats” to start losing elections from now on so that everyone on the left can feel better about the Democratic party positions is probably not the answer to that.
(Actually, there is one caveat: They could have just not fucked over Bernie and let him win the election which he 100% would have. That would have been nice. If you want to try to help talk them into doing something like that in the future, that would be grand, but I think (a) hoping for a candidate as good as Bernie to come along every election is a tough ask (b) some campaign finance reform will need to go along with it and maybe putting some people in prison for accepting bribes just to send the point home. If we’re still trying to operate within normal politics. All of this is a little academic now since Trump is aiming to run the elections going forward.)
I have no idea how the groups you’re talking about here map onto the groups I am talking about. But, to me, the problem of splintered opposition to Hitler was 100% a far-left-created problem, which would be an incredibly apt comparison as regards the most recent US election if the election had happened on Lemmy or if the US as a whole had any kind of far-left representation that went above low single digits.
Sure, but this assumes that the KPD and NSDAP weren’t both reacting to a popular sentiment that the SPD wasn’t. I think a good analogy for this is to consider fight or flight in mammal behavior as two extremes of a political spectrum, and an absence of stimulus response representative of ‘status quo’ centrism. A nervous system that is inadequately responding to threatening stimuli risks being eaten/killed by the threat, but a NS that’s too sensitive is prone to overreaction.
There are a lot of ways to flesh out that analogy, but I think the popularity of the NSDAP and the momentum of the KPD (as small as you’d like to see it as) is a missed hormone signal by the SPD that some kind of movement was needed to address the underlying current of populism. Assuming that the KPD ought to have joined the SPD against the Nazis simply because they were the smaller party (without addressing their concerns) completely disregards the political context of the moment.
I think a similar critique of Democrats applies to 2024 (and to an extent 2016 and 2020, with con-founders). Liberals insist that the democrats lost because of 3rd party spoilers and far-left activists deflating the cause, but I think there’s more evidence that the Democrats failed themselves by not reacting to the clear signs of distress that both the far-right and far-left populists were signaling. I think dems miscalculated because they assumed they could meet more voters in the middle like they always had, but didn’t realize that all those people aren’t there anymore. Instead of meeting people in the middle, they were yelling at people on the ends to meet them in the middle, like over-administering an SSRI to someone reacting appropriately to a life-and-death situation.
Any response to fascism is going to need a mixed response to address it - you can’t simply plant yourself in the middle and cross your fingers people will meet you there. Even as a way just to buy time, by not offering any solutions to the issues that created the popular fascist sentiment you’ll end up loosing those voters who can very clearly see them while they grow hopeless/disillusioned that democracy can solve the problems at all.
We can wring our hands all day about far-left and far-right movements being too extreme and demanding perfection all we want, but the truth is that there were simply not enough people in the middle for democrats to overcome the populist motion on the right, and choosing to steer to the middle (and throw a tantrum when people didn’t follow) is a clear cut miscalculation on their part. Especially when it seems pretty clear that most democrats agree on the basic grievances of the left-of-center part of the party.
Assuming that the KPD ought to have joined the SPD against the Nazis simply because they were the smaller party (without addressing their concerns) completely disregards the political context of the moment.
No it doesn’t. Insisting that we need to go to the smaller party’s positions on everything because the center blah blah blah missed opportunity let’s fight about our favorite pet issues that’s what’s really important right now disregards the political context of the moment. Keeping Hitler from coming to power was what was truly important, and the KPD fucked that up completely by not seeing the bigger picture and clinging to their pet issues and they pretty much all died when the horrors started as a result. Whatever sins you want to accuse the SPD of in their positions, it hardly matters. “I’m not planning to kill you and the other guy is and I can win” should be a winning electoral platform whatever else is in it.
I think a similar critique of Democrats applies to 2024 (and to an extent 2016 and 2020, with con-founders). Liberals insist that the democrats lost because of 3rd party spoilers and far-left activists deflating the cause, but I think there’s more evidence that the Democrats failed themselves by not reacting to the clear signs of distress that both the far-right and far-left populists were signaling. I think dems miscalculated because they assumed they could meet more voters in the middle like they always had, but didn’t realize that all those people aren’t there anymore.
Well… for one thing, two things can be true. It can be true both that the far left got itself distracted and the Democrats are a bunch of corporate whores who don’t really “deserve” support. Not all of them but I would say the overwhelming majority are. I get why people aren’t that excited about voting for them, in the same way I am not excited about paying taxes or working a job I hate to get to the one I actually want. However, failing to do those things in this election was a catastrophic tactical blunder which has already produced massive human suffering and promises much more to come. I hope we come out of it stronger, but the whole fucking thing didn’t need to happen. You can reform Democrats without a bunch of immigrants going to El Salvador or worse because you didn’t feel like holding your nose and you’re privileged enough to be able to not have to.
And then, for another thing, I actually don’t think the far-left lost the Democrats this election, although their lack of support was one more drop in the rainstorm. I think the election took place almost entirely in fantasy-land. The far left (tiny in American politics) thought that Kamala Harris was responsible for 100% of Biden’s Israel policy, but also more mainstream people thought that Biden had accomplished nothing of value on climate change or for working people in the US, other people thought Trump was a genius at business who would bring inflation back down, and so on. It was propagandized to the point that it almost doesn’t matter that the Democrats’ messaging was bad.
Harris was the better candidate. People in overwhelming numbers thought various imaginary things about her which made her “bad,” although the question of what was up with Trump didn’t really factor into it except among the very deeply confused. I think that’s the result of really incredibly powerful propaganda being deployed at a massive scale, and the media being too apathetic to try to do its jobs even when people were listening to them. I don’t think it’s fair to say that Biden’s performance, Harris’s platform, or the far-left’s organic reaction to anything, was responsible in any way for what happened. It was mostly just based on fantasies and misdirection. What we do about that, I have no idea.
“I’m not planning to kill you and the other guy is and I can win” should be a winning electoral platform whatever else is in it.
“Should be”, maybe, but it wasn’t. Maybe a hyperbolic example: people are driven to suicide everyday, but debating the calculus of what’s worthy of ending your life over doesn’t help those people who are in crisis. It’s a failure of understanding to demand that people ignore their own suffering, or accept their own injustice, because you’ve made the calculus for them that some alternative is worse. If you refuse to ask yourself what motivates those people to abandon hope in democracy then you’ve shut yourself off from learning from historical atrocity. It’s insufficient to use hindsight to say ‘they should have chosen the lesser evil’, because then you’ll never be able to recognize the crisis until it’s already happening.
I get why people aren’t that excited about voting for them, in the same way I am not excited about paying taxes or working a job I hate to get to the one I actually want
Then you understand why the democrats failed their own cause, because unless democrats can waive a magic wand and force people to choose an evil (lesser or greater), those people will not be showing up for them. Call it a tactical error of the voter if you want, I don’t care. No liberation or civil rights movement has ever been judged on the merits of their cause - if it were simply a matter of lesser or greater morals there would be no need for struggle - the effectiveness of any fight for liberation can only ever be judged by its ability to stir action against injustice from the un-moving.
It was propagandized to the point that it almost doesn’t matter that the Democrats’ messaging was bad.
It’s also possible that those accomplishments, as much as we’d like to celebrate them, weren’t addressing the core popular discontent of the voters. It could be a matter of messaging or propaganda, true, but it would be irresponsible to have this conversation and not point out that the current popular messaging in the democratic base isn’t related to infrastructure spending, inflation, or climate initiatives - it’s an expression of frustration about a system that’s rendered ineffective against oligarchs who use their immense wealth to undermine and frustrate all attempts at democratic reform. There’s an implicit assumption from moderates that our capitalist system can be managed with incremental reforms, but there’s no allowance for the possibility that we may eventually cross a threshold of inequality that cannot be managed with incremental progress anymore, especially when that inequality is being allowed to express itself in the democratic process itself. Even if we’re not yet at that point, dismissing those concerns as “fantasies and misdirection” is a surefire way of losing those voters to apathy, spoiler candidates, or violent resistance.
People in overwhelming numbers thought various imaginary things about her which made her “bad,” although the question of what was up with Trump didn’t really factor into it except among the very deeply confused.
Because Harris didn’t have a message to deliver for herself, except that she wasn’t Trump. It’s entirely possible (if not 100% certain) that people are reacting to an extreme level of distress and confusion that exists completely separate from Trump, and by not giving them a clear theory about what is causing it and what to do about it, it created a vacuum for people to pick whatever issue they were feeling the most in that moment and accuse/notice a lack of platform to address it. Democrats desperately want to occupy a middle ground of ‘nothing fundamental will change’, while seemingly not noticing that voters are increasingly desperate for fundamental change. Yes, Trump is a fascist, but at least he’s acknowledging the alarm his base is feeling and offering them an explanation and all the reactionary change they could ever want. That’s why his base showed up, and the ours didn’t. The people the democrats are losing aren’t the people who don’t see the danger in Trump, they’re loosing the people who might think Trump is a bit radical but think the democrats are actively protecting a status quo that they’re completely miserable with. I cannot stress enough how much democrats are fucking themselves next cycle by blaming those people who are already pissed off about a lack of meaningful action for their suffering, past and present. That’s how you turn apathetic non-voters into violent reactionaries.
“I’m not planning to kill you and the other guy is and I can win” should be a winning electoral platform whatever else is in it.
“Should be”, maybe, but it wasn’t.
Correct. Which indicates to me that something other than the content of the platforms was the issue.
Like I say, I mostly agree with you about the shittiness of the Democratic establishment and particularly as pertains to kneecapping Bernie, who would have addressed your (extremely valid) complaints and also would have won the election. Assuming no one shot him.
I’m just saying two things can be true. The Democrats can be ghouls who need replacement or foundational reform, and also the electorate can be so addled by propaganda that they missed noticing that Biden did absolutely historic things to help the working class, address climate change, basically all the core issues except for Israel and even his Israel atrocity didn’t apply to Kamala Harris except in people’s minds. And that addled understanding and confusion was what cost them the election. The DNC consultants have dogshit messaging, also, which certainly didn’t help, but people were mostly convinced that Trump would bring inflation back down again and Kamala Harris was just as bad so why bother (depending on which side of the aisle they were on).
Those two things can both be true. You seem like you’re spending incredible words lecturing me on the first thing. Yes. I agree with you. Two things can be true.
You seem like you’re spending incredible words lecturing me on the first thing. Yes. I agree with you. Two things can be true.
It might seem like i’m lecturing you because I don’t think you’re grasping what I’m saying. There being an objective better choice in an election has no bearing on if that’s a sufficient platform to get the votes you need. Insisting that ‘it should have been enough that she wasn’t trump’ while also insisting that the base doesn’t have legitimate concerns that depressed their motivation to vote is nothing more than sticking your fingers in your ears. Claiming that, instead of having legitimate grievances with democratic governance, voters didn’t turn out in enough numbers for Harris because they were too propagandized (i’m trying so hard not to use the word ‘dumb’) to know what was good for them is paternalistic bullshit.
Anything to avoid having to consider the possibility that the moderate approach to governance is what created the populist radicalization we’re now having to deal with.
Like I say, I mostly agree with you about the shittiness of the Democratic establishment and particularly as pertains to kneecapping Bernie
We are so far beyond the problems with the 2016 election, it’s almost not even worth talking about it. The democrats have a far, far deeper problem with their organization that is clearly not limited to one or two high-ranking chairmen putting their fingers on the scale.
Insisting that ‘it should have been enough that she wasn’t trump’
Yes. In an “objective” sense if we separate away the realities of what it takes to sell people and win elections, it should have been enough that she didn’t want to kill immigrants, destroy the government, and seize power forever, and the other guy did. And you seem to agree with me on this, up above, so presumably you’re using the definition of “should have been” that I use in the following paragraph.
Clearly, in a “reality” sense instead of the objective sense, it wasn’t enough to actually win, in this election. You are saying the American people are having an understandable reaction to both three decades (at least) of Democratic fuckery, and to bland corporate-friendly “status quo” messaging from a deeply flawed DNC campaign apparatus. Yes, I agree. As I keep saying. That’s pretty sensible.
(Edit: I adjusted some things in the preceding paragraph)
I would also add to that that they suffered from an incredible amount of misleading propaganda that led them to believe absurd fantasies about the candidates. That’s not paternalistic, that’s reality. I don’t think it is fair to ask them to look at corporate news, paid shills and total random idiots on social media, Russian-funded podcasters, and so on, and form an informed picture of reality. That’s not saying they are dumb, it is saying that our systems of news and political information in this country are so shockingly bad that it would literally be better if people were throwing darts at a board to pick the president.
insisting that the base doesn’t have legitimate concerns that depressed their motivation to vote
Claiming that, instead of having legitimate grievances with democratic governance
Anything to avoid having to consider the possibility that the moderate approach to governance is what created the populist radicalization we’re now having to deal with.
Okay, I’m just going to stop my reply here.
Go back and read my message. It says 100% the opposite of that. You’re spending time that you could have spent on your reply, telling me what I think on my side, and what you are telling me is 100% backwards. And then, in passing, you’re lecturing me about how some things I already believe are true. I mean there’s a little side issue of whether propaganda and voter miseducation was a factor in this election (and for some reason you are claiming that it was not), but you’re barely even dealing with that. You’re mostly just telling me what I think and arguing with me when I tell you I think different.
Again, I think this is actually a pretty important issue. I actually think I’ve said pretty much everything I wanted to say on the original discussion, and spending extensive time just repeating “No, I didn’t say that, I actually said the opposite of that” seems like a screaming waste of time. We’ve gone back and forth about it for a couple of messages now and I’m not real into continuing for a bunch more.
I think this is a such a big problem that it deserves a specific real solution, way beyond just you and me talking about this specific issue. I think actually I’ll try to write something up about it (as I threatened to do below when talking about the issue of propaganda accounts), or maybe work on a more sustainable solution of some sort.
This is the discourse that should be going on. Keep up the work and like the insight.
I suppose it must make the world a lot simpler if you assume the US Democratic and Republican parties represent the full range of beliefs that exist in the world, and anyone who doesn’t neatly fit into those categories is simply lying.
Take that, you strawman! And that!
“I disagree with both the Republicans and the Democrats.”
“Impossible! You must be a secret Republican here to turn people against the Democrats”
“It kinda seems like you’re assuming has to be either a Democrat or a Republican”
“Strawman! I never said those exact words!”
I have to say it’s pretty ironic to accuse someone else of strawmanning while simultaneously rejecting every single thing they say about their own position and arbitrarily assigning them a completely different position that contradicts everything they say in a way that makes it easier to dismiss what they say.
“I disagree with both the Republicans and the Democrats.”
And if the people OP is criticizing were saying that, then what you were saying wouldn’t be a strawman.
But, they aren’t, and he is drawing a very explicit picture of the behavior they’re displaying which is very distinct (although I guess you could say that people who disagree with both R and D are part of a superset of which OP’s described people are a tiny little specific subset with specific behaviors… although in practice they very rarely say anything about “both the Republicans”. It’s mostly heaping scorn on the Democrats exclusively and sometimes taking time out to say that the Republicans are better or equivalent on some issue on which they objectively are not).
And that’s what makes what you are saying a strawman.
Weird that you’re taking all this time to call out people who focus their criticism on the Nazis, yet your post is completely silent on Ghenghis Khan. I can only conclude that you support rampant killing and pillaging since you don’t spend as much time calling them out as you do calling us out, since apparently that’s how you think logic works.
Alternatively, we can acknowledge the simple fact that it’s not necessary to make arguments about why Ghenghis Khan was bad if nobody is defending him around here, and by the same logic it isn’t necessary to argue about why the Republicans are bad when nobody is defending them around here.
The few times that I’ve seen a Trump supporter wander into Lemmy (and inevitably gotten ratio’d hard), I have attacked and criticized them. I can show my receipts if you like.
It’s mostly heaping scorn on the Democrats exclusively and sometimes taking time out to say that the Republicans are better or equivalent on some issue on which they objectively are not).
You can’t present receipts of me doing that. Maybe somebody at some point has made such a claim, but it’s generally a bullshit strawman.
yet your post is completely silent on Ghenghis Khan
If Ghengis Khan had been running for president of the United States last year, and I had been running around Lemmy yammering and biting my nails about what a problem Kamala Harris was, then fuck yes that would be weird. I think people should have called me out for it. Yes. That’s my point.
That is, in fact, exactly the reason why I think it’s stupid that these people were biting their nails so hard. Especially since the sum total of what they accomplished is to help put Ghengis in charge.
Sorry for interrupting your circlejerk, I guess. Apparently we’re supposed to spend a bunch of time talking about things that already have near-universal agreement here. I don’t find that particularly interesting or worthwhile.
I’m not saying that everyone should have spent all their time on Lemmy agreeing with each other that Ghengis was bad. I’m saying that spending all our time leading up to that election talking about what a problem Kamala Harris was, and how we shouldn’t vote for her, would be weird and suspicious in precisely 100% the exact same fashion as what people were actually doing. Thank you for making my point for me, in fact, that’s a really good analogy to explain it.
Removed by mod
Ah, yet another long post by a white democrat who thinks they’re a leftist and shouldn’t be questioned.
EDIT: come join us while we make fun of you: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/43337677
Ah, yet another comment by a doomer wannabe Marxist that thinks giving up and letting the fascists kill everybody is preferable to working with people who only share 90% of your ideals
First of all, Marxist is only an insult if you’re MAGA or right-wing, so way to tell on yourself. Second, I’m an anarchist, notice the instance. Third, democrats are a right-of-center party, you share at best maybe a third of my ideals. And forth, I don’t vote for people who sit at the table with literal nazis. That’s what your party is doing right now. So save the self-righteousness for when you lot aren’t actively working with fascists to end democracy.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Voluntarily disenfranchising yourself is complying in advance.
A broken tool still has its uses. A bent screwdriver can still be a prybar. A rusty sword can still kill, so don’t ask people to drop it before have something better. It is possible to explore and acknowledge the failures and limitations of a system – and to reduce overreliance on it – without abdicating all influence over it.
The Democratic Party is a disappointment. They follow popular (polled) opinion rather than sticking to principles, and that makes them vulnerable to Overton shifts. As public opinion towards trans people has been poisoned by the Jugendverderber libel, Democrats have largely thrown trans people under the bus instead of fighting back. Likewise, Democrats stick closely to corporate interests because money is power. These issues may never be fixable.
The solution to this is not to capitulate and discard what political influence we still hold.
The first half of the solution is to primary the hell out of Democrats. A left-wing caucus within the party could easily tilt things in our favor, just like the Freedom Caucus tilted the RNC in the opposite direction once before. Bernie Sanders (link) and David Hogg (link) are now spearheading multiple campaigns to do exactly that. Even if you have no faith in your ability to change the norms of the party, just think how much impact your resistance could have if you held an office, even a low one, even for just a week. Do you have any idea how much trouble a county clerk can make?
The second half of the solution is to build solidarity-based power structures outside government to reduce overreliance on a broken system. Economic desperation, social isolation, and cultural “other”-ing make people easy to exploit and oppress regardless of the type of government, so attack those problems directly. Unions, mutual aid networks, churches, you know the drill. Put in the legwork to find them in your area or your profession.
Embrace nuance. Embrace diversity – even political diversity. Political beliefs are not sacred, but the lives under those political systems are. Don’t try to reduce the vast complexity of politics to 120 characters. Don’t treat the ongoing wellbeing of human beings flippantly. If you think the problem is the existence of a state, then say so, but make your case for why making the state worse makes conditions for its subjects better. If you think voting third-party will teach the Democrats a lesson and drag them leftwards, then make your case and acknowledge the risks of what happens if you’re wrong.
Don’t just ridicule every positive effort you see. Doomer trolls (or cuckoos, if we’re going with that) are pithy, but reductive, and their criticism is never constructive.
This all day.
I think one if the big things that people miss is that while it may be the most prominent fights in the headlines, there are countless little fights going on all the time and they have a huge impact. They don’t make national news or sometimes even local news, but they still matter. It’s easy to dismiss them, but they still move the overton window and they still have a substantial impact on the day to day lives of people across the country. Every union steward in some small retail chain standing up to management makes an impact. Every judge who stands up for the rights of marginalized people makes an impact. Every city councilor who votes to fund programs for people in need. Every volunteer who shows up day after day to soup kitchens and food banks. Everybody who stops to give a few bucks to a person on the street. Everyone who sees someone struggling and takes the time to try to lift them up. Every advocate who spends their time helping people who are trying to find a way out of horrible situations.
The less visible stuff is much more wide-spread and makes a huge difference, maybe even more of a difference in many cases, than the big visible stuff.
It honestly drives me up a wall when people who seem like they never go out and connect with the real world around them spend so much time ranting about how everyone’s screwed and nobody’s doing anything about it. All they have to do is look outside or step outside themselves and lend someone, anyone a hand.
All they have to do is look outside or step outside themselves and lend someone, anyone a hand.
Touch grass, if you will.
I remember years ago watching a video – I desperately wish I could remember the channel – where the author shared his experience with depression and the early days of 4chan anime forums. He found it easier to browse forums about anime than to go out and actually watch them. Then the negativity piled in. That anime you like? “It’s shit.” Any hint of optimism or passion was an opportunity to get a rise out of someone or smugly ridicule them. The only unassailable belief was to doubt everything. The only winning move was not to care.
I’ve been thinking about that video a lot recently.
Online activism has led to a handful of noteworthy victories. But the ease of online activism has also made people (myself included) rely too much on it, and get disillusioned by it, as if we’ve forgotten that online activism is pointless unless it leads to real-world resistance.
I don’t believe doomer trolls are right-wing plants (though I acknowledge it’s a potential avenue of attack in the future). I don’t think they usually have ulterior accelerationist motives (though I have spoken with a few). I think for the most part, they’re just people who’ve given up, or otherwise mistaken cynicism for maturity, and seeing anyone else expressing optimism or trying to organize real-world resistance just pisses them off.
I don’t believe doomer trolls are right-wing plants (though I acknowledge it’s a potential avenue of attack in the future). I don’t think they usually have ulterior accelerationist motives (though I have spoken with a few). I think for the most part, they’re just people who’ve given up, or otherwise mistaken cynicism for maturity, and seeing anyone else expressing optimism or trying to organize real-world resistance just pisses them off.
This is the attitude I want to see. Believing people are psy-ops, or bots, or being evil on purpose — none of that is necessary and almost all of it is conspiratorial thinking. It’s the kind of thing the right thrives on, and it’s gross.
But this? Saying there are people who have real issues and real grief, and that it’s driving them to bad but genuinely held beliefs? That’s sympathetic, it’s understanding, and above all else it does not divide us. This is what we need more of.
Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
These two things drive me fucking crazy, and you are absolutely spot on with all of this. Obviously, the Democrats aren’t perfect. But the argument that X makes them complicit in Y issue is a null point when the alternative is unbridled, unchecked fascism.
WHATEVER POINT YOU WERE TRYING TO MAKE, IT WILL NOT BE SOLVED BY ELECTING FASCISTS. It doesn’t matter if it’s corruption, wars, homophobia, trade, the economy, taxes, it could even be people shitting in litter boxes.
Whatever it is, having the entire country taken down to the studs is not going to help your issue, in fact, it’s probably going to make your problem significantly worse. The economy? Look up the tariff war that caused the great depression. Homophobia? Read up on the lavender scare and how it tanked our astronomy and weapons research, notably ICBM research. Wars? Need I say anything more? We’ve had insane wars due to Republican war hawks for decades. Whoever you were trying to protect, they are 100% B O N E D now. And now we are sending innocent people off to literal concentration camps, so don’t give me any of that “the Dems don’t respect human rights” crap. It’s beyond the pale now and all this was warned of in advance by those morons who published P2025 before the election. And yet, people still fell for it. It’s absolutely infuriating that we are gonna have to dig the country (and the economy) out of a massive pit once again, if it’s even possible at this point. We will be extremely lucky to prize it back out of the hands of dictators before they run it into the ground like they did with Venezuela.
I 100% agree with this post. I do believe many of these attackers are sincere, but that it’s time to recognize it doesn’t matter and the end effect is the same as if they had acted in bad faith.
They give permission to be cynical to the less informed who might otherwise feel guilt to support one candidate or the other. They create an argument that no one needs to pick a side, which a lot of people take comfort in because our politics are so divisive and polarizing that many don’t want to wade into them if they can stay above the fray.
The message in the 2024 election should have been “Biden has been great, if you think he was bad you don’t realize what he’s had to deal with caused by Trump and the pandemic and the not-entirely real Democratic majority in the Senate which includes two turn-coats. His only issue is he’s old so let’s go with Harris.” That’s all. But that kind of messaging was never possible because most of the left wanted to always frame things by starting with their laundry-list of all the things they didn’t like about Biden to prove their independent thinker bona-fides, and then circle around and say “BUT here’s the thing-” which is lousy messaging.
Even today, when it’s clear Biden fixed the economy and passed a ton of great legislation we can’t frame the discussion as “Biden was great and now Trump has ruined the economy and defunded all these programs that were working” because people still want to start by crapping on the Democrats and sabotaging their own case. It’s a great plan if the goal is to have the left perform weaker than they should have in all future debates and elections.
EDIT: This is my first post on this platform, so when I say I see people on the left doing this I’m talking about other places I frequent like Reddit, Mastodon and BlueSky.
Hey, have you used Tumblr? I ask, because I don’t think that this is always people trying to infiltrate a political discussion to paralyze effective leftist organizing. I do think it totally is sometimes- but sometimes it’s because of how people structure their values and philosophy of engagement with the world, politics and moral actions.
I have become very familiar with how, on Tumblr, the dominant cultural paradigm has a strong tendency to several of those traits purely because of a combination of ways that the internet, and that website, is structured; and, the ambient cultural values of the US informing how they structured their beliefs about morality and politics.
People who are part of this paradigm tend to have a strongly dentological bent, and are obsessed with if an action is good or bad in and of itself; and, especially critically- if there is any part of it that represents any moral compromise, no matter how small. They do not want to ever have to compromise their principles, and frame those principles as actions and behaviors and not ends. They are very focused on maintaining a sense of moral purity and superiority, which naturally leads to inaction due to the inherent compromises present in political action and general life.
Paired with this is a deep desire to prove one’s virtue, which is done by performing it- frequently by finding an acceptable target for harassment or abuse, then heaping unpleasant behavior on them in order to show that bad people are bad and they, a good person, is good. It’s very simplistic and results in people who are constantly vigilant of if anything they do can be construed as wrong, because then it becomes a vector for harassment and attack, and who are constantly trying to discern if someone else is currently vulnerable to the same.
This mixes with a general lack of critical thinking skill, reading comprehension and fact-checking that so defines our modern septic pit of an internet; and, you have a cycle of inaction and abuse that accomplishes very little. It’s very frustrating, and a major contributing factor to me not using Tumblr anymore. I got really burnt out on people who would use, for example, you not reblogging a post supporting a specific political point as proof that you were maliciously against the political point, even if you openly advocated for it, or it was about a marginalized group you were a part of.
I feel like you are identifying a pattern that is very real and important, but I think your conclusions about why it happens may be too narrow. I think there’s a multiplicity of groups of different political and philosophical tendencies that are contributing to this atmosphere. I also feel like sometimes people need a place to vent about how incredibly infuriating US politicians and politics are- I try to keep that to my friends and personal writing, nowadays, but there was a point when I was incredibly bitter about how the Democrats continued to neglect and ignore people in need due to political exigencies. Sure, I get it, and sure, I support them whenever I get a chance to, but damn if it’s not frustrating.
I increasingly feel like there needs to be more sectioning of discussions on platforms to allow constructive discussion and vent-posting to be clearly separated and have that be aggressively enforced.
Very good post. I appreciate the time, effort and insight that went into this as well as and especially the fact that it is advocating for understanding others and seeing why they do what they do without accusations. Thank you for the write-up!
Let’s just get a few facts out of the way:
- Genocide is the worst crime humanity is capable of
- The US has a direct hand in multiple genocides
- Record levels of homelessness in the richest nation on earth is unacceptable
- Death from preventable illnesses in the richest nation on earth is unacceptable
- Highest infant mortality in the western world in the richest nation on earth is unacceptable
- Democrats are not interested in changing the status quo
- Republicans want a return to chattel slavery
- Neither party is willing to help us, nor will they ever allow us to vote third party by adding ranked choice or anything like that
- Therefore, our best bet to break the cycle is to collectively vote for, say, the green party
You think leftists are unrealistic for being disgusted with Democrats? The genocide was live streamed to the world. Did you not see any of it? Did it not move you?
By the way, the Democratic party is not left-wing. It is right-wing. Please educate yourself.
Also, are we hopeless? Fuck no. Boycotts have been making progress. Noncompliance has accomplished a lot. Unionizing, if you can swing it, can accomplish a lot. Meshtastic can offer resiliant communications if Trump declares a national emergency. Democrats want you to panic. Leftists want you to organize.
I was with you but then you said vote green?
If you’re going to vote, vote against the Republican party. If you want change from status quo, the ballot box isn’t where it will happen
In my case, I’m in a deep blue state. Otherwise I would grit my teeth and vote for the “lesser” evil. But we really do need a new party.
I’m not an american (but anti-electoral nonetheless), and I do get the critique and think it is perfectly valid if one views things through liberal framework - vote for the lesser evil, minimize suffering, not voting is letting the bad candidate on getting the upper hand, etc.
However, this isn’t an objective position but an ideological one, as it operates within lesser-evilism, coalitionism within capitalist institutions and having a definition of “the left” that generalizes them to essentially having to be “pro-democracy somewhat progressive liberals”, and any deviation makes them into a troll or a right winger or something like that.
What is important to realize is that most leftists aren’t liberals - in fact, many leftists, particularly Marxists, view elections as:
-
A way to legitimize the class rule that leads into passivity among the working class who are being ruled over, essentially recognizing that this “tool that we are given” is just an illusion and leads to neutralization of worker power,
-
Enabling of ‘capitalist-tribalism’ in the form of “which capitalist manager do you support” which is seen in US through party loyalty and basically disarming the working class from realizing their own interests.
Essentially, their goal isn’t to just “vote for the lesser evil” or “achieve the maximum good through the means we’re given” but to abolish the system entirely, and electorialism/voting is counter-productive in that regard due to legitimizing effect that it has that I mentioned previously. This does go against the “liberal left” and their goals, and being on the same political wing does not automatically mean there’s an alliance or shared goals, nor does it mean that two positions aren’t going to have antagonistic goals.
Besides, why blame the left for the electoral failure who abstained from voting? Why not blame MAGA for voting in an enemy that goes against your interests (as in, people who have actually voted)?
EDIT: Reading some of the comments over here, and what the fuck. Automatically labeling people as bots or trolls for daring to commit the crime of ‘wrongthink’ is definitely dehumanizing and the most toxic I’ve seen beehaw be. It’s fine to disagree, it’s fine to choose not to engage, but making a post calling a certain somewhat niche political position out, having people such as myself try and explain that this position is more complicated, then going full on “nah I’m right, you’re wrong, everyone who disagrees is now blocked and also not human or Russian/Chinese agents” is genuinely loser behavior to put it bluntly, especially on a “Chat” community where discussion is expected.
I agree with the concept that electoral politics will not bring us the change we want but disagree with the notion that it isn’t beneficial to vote for lesser evil.
We exist in both paradigms. The worse evil does directly impact our lives, this isn’t debatable especially with Trump, so it makes sense to vote for lesser evil. Leftists are correct the lesser evil voting does not change the status quo (ratchet theory) but I view it as incorrect for leftists to moralize the act of voting to the point that if you vote you are not a leftist
It’s a tool and revolution is easier when you aren’t under threat of being sent to a concentration camp. These are issues of tactics not virtue
There just isn’t that kind of leftist discourse in America. If there are communists here, I’ve never met one in real life, and I live in a very progressive region. Lemmy has been my first real exposure to anything further left of democratic socialism. I’m not sure why non-Americans are so continually surprised that we use “liberal” framework to discuss politics (that word means something completely different to us than it does to you). It would be great if the far right didn’t keep moving us to the right, but that’s the situation we live in. As capitalism fails, more people are waking up to the class struggle, but you can’t just change a whole country’s political paradigm overnight.
Honestly, this applies to EU too. There are still communists out there in real world (mostly found in university groups, labor unions or just some very niche book clubs), but way fewer than when compared to 20th century thanks to the efforts of red scare, the hellscape of “socialist” regimes, etc. There’s also the fact that if you want to be a communist, you need to go way out of your way to seek the theory and groups and actually study rather than having the ideology imposed onto you (but exceptions apply, like how Marxism-Leninism and Maoism can definitely be cultish).
Also, “liberal framework” in my comment was referring to viewing politics as choosing between good or bad, treating the system as being a fair, neutral arbiter, and it’s how majority view electorialism since that’s what is imposed onto us. Doesn’t really have to do anything with progressives being referred to as liberals in the US, but just taking liberal democracy at its face value.
-
