I had basically given up on electoralism for years at this point.
I do not believe the western working class by and large has any revolutionary potential, basically JDPON-pilled.

But the genocide in Palestine really made me more invested in this whole dog and pony show again.
I guess I figured like…sure bourgeoise democracy will not bring about socialism, but at the very least you can still get some concessions potentially out of it.
Perhaps I was naive, but like…I wanted to hope there was some way the Democrats could be convinced to stop it by November, even if it was electoralist bullshit I feel like the Palestinians deserved (and still deserve) even a futile attempt.

But seeing the shit with the DSA, especially the SMC and Groundwork caucuses, seeing unions who oppose the genocide endorse Biden/Harris right out the gate, seeing the Uncommitted movement do the same while the Harris campaign has done nothing but spit in their face….

I am filled with a helpless rage. Americans are the most pathetic contemptible creatures on this earth.

I’M NOT EVEN ASKING FOR SOCIALISM! ALL I’M ASKING FOR IS THE DEMOCRATS TO COME AROUND ON AN ISSUE 77% OF DEMOCRATS AND 61% OF AMERICANS OPPOSE!
BUT EVEN THAT IS TOO MUCH, TOO HARD FOR THESE ORGANIZATIONS TO FIGHT FOR EVEN WHEN IT IS ALLEDGELY THEIR WHOLE REASON FOR EXISTING!!

I knew Americans were useless and selfish, and short-sighted and stupid…but I didn’t think they were to this extent.
That was my mistake I guess.

  • riseuppikmin [he/him]
    ·
    2 months ago

    So we're at the point where it seems you acknowledge the horror of the US empire in basically being directly responsible (it could stop the money faucet at any moment if it viewed stopping the genocide as being in its own interests) for what I personally can only imagine as the worst crime against humanity possible to be committed by a state actor.

    Tactically the only real electoral power you have as an individual is the threat to withhold your vote, and to deploy that tactic most effectively you'd give a very explicit reason for that withholding in order to apply pressure to the party who ostensibly does want to win an election. Infinitely better than individually voicing this tactic is creating a large bloc of people who exist within the critical states where 10-20k people will potentially determine an election. Getting the number of people in this bloc higher is the only real electoral strategy at forcing Kamala's campaign to acquiesce to electorate demands and bring forth a better outcome for Palestine because if she doesn't she will, explicitly, know she will lose. This provably works because the democratic party has already proven that in the face of an electoral impossibility (Joe Biden winning re-election) they will try to preserve power.

    Even if you're a "there are other issues more important to me than attempting to stop my nation's genocide voter" (and if you are one of these people I really recommend a lot of introspection about yourself, your morals, and your convictions)- recognize that the violence being financed, supported, and enacted abroad WILL INEVITABLY COME HOME at some point if it is not rejected by the electorate. I don't know your most vulnerable issue and where it would rank on democrats deciding genociding or interring you would be politically expedient for them, but it sure seems that at least attempting this tactic even if it's just you falsely signaling to them that you won't vote for democrats over their financing and arms supplying of this genocide is in your long term interests so that you hopefully stop or at least delay the empire turning its violence on you.

    • drone509@discuss.tchncs.de
      ·
      2 months ago

      I want my sisters to maintain bodily autonomy, and I don't want my country to descend even more into christian fascism. I also don't think me falsely signalling that I won't vote for democrats will benefit much of anything. In 2016, it mostly just got leftists labeled "Bernie Bros" and blamed for Clinton's failings.

      • riseuppikmin [he/him]
        ·
        2 months ago

        Then when the state's violence, which has already demonstrated its capacity for genocide to your own acknowledgement, inevitably turns on you or your loved ones (maybe thats 5 years, maybe it's 50) don't be surprised and understand that your potential allies will have already been destroyed. The people you didn't stand in solidarity with before you are gone and the ones next on the list take the same inaction you espouse right now.

      • anarcho_blinkenist [none/use name]
        ·
        2 months ago

        You're mistaken on a few points here, friend. I'm gonna give an overview and then there's a spoiler with a wall of text deepening explanations.

        Your sister is already not maintaining her bodily autonomy under democrats now. It's being stripped all over the country and democrats have been doing nothing to stop it, and in many ways actively helping it be stripped. It will keep happening without change. Fascism is not a person, and is growing and will grow regardless of who is president, as the economic crises and world crises of empire worsen. No one is asking you to falsely signal, but telling you why giving democrats the mandate to do what they are doing and supplying them their margin they rely on to cruise control into genocide and aiding fascism and destruction of the planet so they can turn around and drum up this same sentiment and fears in you for the next election is untenable and is how things got this bad in the first place.

        And 2016 didn't "mostly just get leftists labeled bernie bros and blamed for clinton failing", 2016 and experiencing that nonsense from liberals made people communist. It made them actual leftists. It radicalized more people into communism than any event in decades, only surpassed by the George Floyd Uprisings (which may not have had that kind of energy without such radicalization) and then this moment we are living in now. 2016 made many people into actual active socialists and made them realize the role liberals truly play in society because of the things that you said "mostly only" happened. And what is happening now in 2024 is doing that tenfold. Maybe more. The radicalization happening now is unprecedented in modern USA and other countries. You never would have seen in the USA these kinds of mass sustained protests saying "Free Palestine" and calling for decolonization of the occupation, and interrupting campaign events to protest US-backed Israeli atrocities, like we are seeing now. I'm going to deepen these with explanations, but it's a wall of text so I'm gonna spoiler it so it doesn't mess peoples' scroll.

        spoiler
        • On bodily autonomy: her bodily autonomy is already being stripped in the country, and fascism is rising and will continue to rise regardless of who's in power. The democrats are doing nothing to stop it and never will. Democrats had the executive and both houses of congress in Obama's term and could have codified abortion rights and LGBTQ civil rights then and there. They refused and Obama even gave up a supreme court seat in active capitulation, after which now Biden is refusing to push to pack the court and denouncing the idea; and they do this because they don't care about any of us. They work for all the same billionaires and imperialist monsters that the republicans do. They LIKE womens' rights and LGBTQ rights to be under attack, because then they can drum up exactly the kind of sentiments in you right now to bully you and panic you and manipulate you and brow-beat and shame you to get you to give them a mandate of power while not having to do anything to earn it, and continuing to spiral everything towards and into and through fascism and genocide and nuclear brinksmanship imperialism because "they'll vote for us anyway --- we're not the republicans"
          .
          When in objective reality, they are the republicans. We're closer to WW3 than we've been in decades. military expansion and proxy wars and coups and mass prisons and police militarization and murder, and repressions of civil rights and free speech and protests, have all continued to get worse under the democrats. Cop City is happening under democrats. Biden not only didn't close the border camps, but deregulated them and allowed them to be privatized for profit by private contractors. Biden brought in all the worst neo-con warmongers he could find, put a Chevron executive who defended the destruction of the Amazon and poisoning of Indigenous people to head his environmental executive, and continued the legacy of his President Obama whose entire cabinet was hand-picked by Citigroup (and we all remember him bailing out the banks)! And there is an active genocide, the most televized genocide in history, being financed and funded and armed by the US, and the supposed "lesser evil" Biden went around congress twice to give them bombs and guns faster than even congress could do, hoping that Gaza would be finished off before the Elections. But because Trump is open and honest about his wanting to do what the democrats are already currently doing he's somehow worse for Palestine so we're shamed into supporting the current genocidaires who are covering up their crimes and lying about their crimes? The current genocidaires who, when protestors shout "no to genocide, stop the genocide" are shouted down and smugly condescended to with "I'm talking! You must want Trump to win!" These people are better and Trump is worse? No, they're the same and will continue to bring us down the same path if we continue allowing them to.
          .
        • On false signaling: Who is telling you you should "falsely signal?" We're saying the only option is to not give these people a mandate, and do everything we can to visibly starve them of their taken-for-granted margins and punish them for what they're doing and put our vote toward people with principles and elevate them, with the votes the democrats need, so we are un-ignorable if the democrats ever want power again. If you're capable, join a socialist organization like the PSL who is working on the ground to fill in gaps and help people, but at the very least vote for them too and push them up in numbers and visibility, and force the establishment that is and will continue to bring about all of the things you and your loved ones are afraid of unless they are forced not to. And one of the simplest ways to force them to stop this genocidal cruise-control and reorient or break the duopoly is by starving the only face of the duopoly-of-exploiters that requires your working class margin to win. Either they reorient politically, or a huge amount of people who don't have any illusions about the republicans either are now becoming much more radical and serious, where the PSL will be prepared to bring them on board and tell them why this happens and what is to be done.
          .
        • On what 2016 accomplished and being called names by our enemies: You are mistaken, the Clintonite liberals who chided and brow-beat people who were justifiably disgusted with the flagrantly corrupt and imperialist bloodthirst of both candidates and backed Bernie, and saw how even the liberal Bernie was treated, didn't just then become democrats again. They became COMMUNISTS. Many of them were radicalized by seeing and experiencing their illusions about bourgeois democracy be ripped down and spat on by the ruling class. Many weren't even really part of the political "left" until this happened, and 2016 caused the left to grow exponentially and caused socialism to grow in astronomical proportions compared to how it had in decades. I saw it, I was in the middle of it. This election is doing the same and more, watching the democrats act so viciously and shamelessly in their bloodshed, corruption and lies, and disregard for life and liberty of the people. None of us ever had illusions about Republicans; they never pandered to the working class. The Democrats are supposed to do that but have failed to even remember how to pretend, and are bringing more and more people to the left. Which is why we need to stay ahead of them to grow socialism, to build the change we need from the ground up, and actually resist fascism, which is not resisted in the ballot box between two corporate-imperialist-genocidaire parties which are converging together into fascism which is growing regardless, it's resisted on all fronts.
          .
          Let them call you whatever they want. Why decide what you're going to do politically based on what your enemies say? They will call you worse than that. You should take pride in your enemies calling you such petty names knowing they are throwing ideological tantrums. The more you antagonize the system and its status quo, the more the system and their supporters will demonize you. Why do you think communist was made a dirty word in the US through a century of active red scare propaganda and COINTELPRO operations? It wasn't because they were telling any kind of truth, it was because they were scared of people liking us, and of joining us. Of divesting from their system and building our own. There is zero reason to let the people who hate you and want you to be compliant dictate your politics. Instead do what is intelligent and incisive to jam a crowbar into the contradictions of the system, and work for those working class people (who know better than you do and have known for longer the ruling class and their petty-bourgeois college liberals are full of shit and the names they throw mean nothing) so we can all with our collective weight pry the contradiction apart.

        And remember that the more absurd the demonization gets and the more active work we do to show their lies and hypocrisy, the more their demonization of us becomes their undoing. Like now conservative reactionaries are calling everyone to the left of Thatcher a communist. This didn't make communism scarier to the working class --- it made it so now people are less instinctually terrified of the idea, or think "that doesn't sound right" and read some Marx and realize he had a very prescient analysis of what we can all see around us. There are more communists now than there were in the 80s, and we're growing. You can help in being a part of that, or let our enemies and their liberal minions shame and cow you into submission and compliance based on fears that they've implanted on you that are only telling half the story, and in doing so helping those fears come true.