Former democratic party activists are organizing Muslims and Arab-Americans in Swing states to vote against Biden with the demand that he support a ceasefire in Gaza.
I’ll allow them a little bit of electoralism this time.
Former democratic party activists are organizing Muslims and Arab-Americans in Swing states to vote against Biden with the demand that he support a ceasefire in Gaza.
I’ll allow them a little bit of electoralism this time.
If neither party represents your interests, what’s your vote doing? Making sure that they can both ignore your interests even more?
The US two-party system is a complete and abject failure of democracy.
If a fascist finds it important to vote, I intend my vote to counteract theirs.
It’s less important that someone “represents my interests” than it is that overall suffrage and equity is reduced at a slower rate. It’s sad, but that’s what it seems we’re up against in the modern republican party.
The two party system IS a failure, and I have a laundry list(*) of electoral changes I want throughout the country, some of which are already in place in a few voting districts including my own. How is not voting going to improve any of that?
(* If you’re interested I can add them tomorrow when I’m more sober and at a keyboard)
If you’re forced to vote for a party to avoid the collapse of your democracy, that’s no longer a democracy. That’s a one-party state with a few more steps.
That’s a fair point - in that event, is it still not an improvement to keep that bare-bones separation from a one-party state rather than run headlong into it? Worded differently- if there is ostensibly a revolution brewing, would the revolutionaries benefit from the additional time granted by the dysfunction of the almost-one-party ? Or are we talking accelerationism?
I guess I’ll also ask, at what point of a democracy-in-decline is it “ok” to vote for a person or party en masse to turn that decline around? As an analogy I’m thinking of like, a car teetering on a cliff. This sounds like sitting in the car with arms crossed saying “you’re just a few steps from falling to your death, no point in getting out of the car now”. Sorry if that’s hyperbolic; I’m trying to give a clear example and that’s the first thing that came to mind.
This is, in my view, the real issue. Statistically, anti-electoralism is in no way functionally different than accelerationism. Both have the exact same outcomes as right-wingers, especially the far-right vote consistently and toe the line.
I’ve not seen an ounce of evidence that accelerationism actually works to achieve its stated goal, which on some level makes me suspect that the whole lot of anti-electoralism and accelerationism is encouraged by authoritarians on the far-right to further disenfranchise any ideas left of center from having representation. That and there’s real harm to LGBTQ+ folks, indigenous peoples, minorities, and their allies caused by empowering the far-right more.
Might that lead to an actual revolution at some point? Maybe. There’s not yet any evidence to say that it will that I’ve seen in historical data, however. And I cannot ethically agree with “end justifies the means” thinking as it nearly always results in increased suffering for workers and “common” people to whom I owe my allegiance.
Now to wait for my anarchist self to be flamed as a “shitlib”. (I hope not because this is supposed to be a leftist unity instance but, it’s happened to me before over misunderstandings).
If you are doing this at the expense of not taking even a chance at stopping the reduction of equity, you are in fact helping the reduction of equity even as you are slowing it.