The comments have went so far off the rules (and rails). Locking, because mods volunteer, and we’ve been flooded with reports for this post thread alone.
The tankies seem incapable of reckoning with the fact that an informed citizen can vote for the lesser of two evils (usually fairly easily) and also take other action like boycotts protests and community organizing etc. I also don’t believe most of the keyboard communists actually do jack shit to fight back, aside from impotent online rage.
It’s even worse than that. Most of them are incapable of understanding any kind of nuance. To them every issue is black or white. And everyone who doesn’t agree with every single point on their extremist agenda is an identical enemy.
And Lemmy (or at least certain instances on Lemmy) is infested with them. Which means they go around in clusters, swarming anyone on the other instances who doesn’t conform with their impractical ideology and blinkered views.
Edit: Ooh, looks like they found my comment! Just wanted to add a special note to them: grow the fuck up!
These kinds of sweeping generalizations that collapse the entirety of leftist thought into simple black and white binaries is the exact behavior you’re trying to criticize, no?
You and your flying monkeys don’t even come close to representing “the entirety of leftist thought”. Get the fuck over yourself.
Unsure what you mean by “flying monkeys,” but if there’s one thing anarchists and Marxists near-universally agree on, it’s the necessity of directly struggling against the system itself, rather than treating voting as our primary means of political engagement. Collapsing leftist point of views into this unprincipled, nuance-lacking strawman doesn’t actually engage with the primary critique, which is that we need to organize outside the system and direct that organization against said system to gain change, be it revolutionary or even to gain reforms or concessions.
And no, I don’t represent the entirety of leftist thought. I was responding to a sweeping generalization of leftist thought.
If you’re pro-military, pro-dictatorship, you’re not a leftist. Leftists don’t want to keep wallowing in the same monkeybrained shit we’ve been doing for the last ten thousand years, we want to grow the fuck up as a race. Violence isn’t doing the job. It doesn’t work for the enemy when they try to use it on us, and we’d be stupid to think it’d be more effective in the hands of the less violently inclined. We need better tools, better ideas. Fuck Marx, fuck Lenin, fuck Mao. Don’t even try to pretend their authoritarian thinking is compatible with anarchism.
I’m a Marxist-Leninist, but I did used to be an anarchist, and from my time as an anarchist I cannot recall any anarchists opposed to revolution as a means to establish anarchism, which is something anarchists and Marxists share in common. Further, Marxists are not “pro-dictatorship,” not in the sense of an individual with immense power, but in favor of the working class taking control, in favor of radical and genuine democracy.
Marx-Leninism is literally just another word for Stalinism (as in, the term was first used by Joseph Stalin to refer to his own ideology).
So, while you’re correct that Marxism is not pro-dictatorship, Marx-Leninism definitely is.
What happens to the working class after they take control? History says they don’t stay the working class. They become the new rich or the new military leaders. They do their dance just to fall back into the same shit patterns they worked to overthrow. Their revolutions mean nothing because they just use violence as a response to violence rather than taking a holistic proactive approach to the advancement of mankind.
There is no such thing as genuine democracy; each individual must be taught how to control themselves, take responsibility for their actions, and move beyond the ways that failed us so many times. A tyranny by majority vote is still tyranny.
Why are you lying about what the upstream commenter was doing?
Also, fuck all the way off with the fallacious bullshit notion that you can’t organize outside the system and also still vote anyway!
I’m not, I’m responding to the comment directly. I suppose you could argue that their comment was vague enough that they could claim to be talking about a specific group in a clarification, but as it stands they seem to be lashing out against the left in general. Further, when people treat voting as their primary means of political engagement, they do check out! I’m not denying that people can organize while voting for the DNC, many people do, but the problem is that most see voting for the DNC as their primary political agency, and not a pressure valve designed to siphon away agitation against the system itself.
Their comment was very clearly talking specifically about tankies who want to “well acktyually” people on “Theory” while being the textbook definition of useful idiots helping the fascists. That behavior isn’t encouraging people to organize; it’s discouraging them from it because if organizing means dealing with that sort of condescension then they want no part of it!
Everybody but you understood that. You’re the only one who’s so fucking full of yourself you think you’re entitled to speak for the entire Left!
the problem is that most see voting for the DNC as their primary political agency
Those people are not the average Lemmy user.
They call out a cluster of traits as being bad. The only sane way to parse their comment is to interpret it as only applying to people who have all those traits. You’re doing something equivalent to demanding someone clarify that they didn’t mean they hated all food when they complained about not liking things that are sweet.
Further, when people treat voting as their primary means of political engagement, they do check out!
Citation needed. If this is the basis of why you think Voting Bad then you’re going to have to back that up with some science. Not quoting Lenin, I want a solid peer reviewed study.
If you don’t have that your entire reasoning falls on a hunch and vibes.
Personally I think voting helps people become more politically engaged, not less.
Cowbee never shuts up and doesn’t actually debate, just keeps repeating the same talking points and puts words into your mouth.
That’s odd, you kept making a strawman of my argument and kept berating me for not sourcing the strawman. After I sourced the actual point I made, I only got crickets.
Bruv I’ve been doing stuff throughout my day other than telling at people online, give me a minute
Maybe don’t spend time implying I should be assassinated then?
Cowbee is incredibly patient and doing marvelous educational work in threads like this. You confuse it for a debate, but you’d need to be on even footing for that. It’s more like they are a teacher who calmly tries to make some common sense stick with western people who behave like spoiled children and are to privileged and racist to see the simple and plain truths that literally most people in the (non-western) world see clearly.
Cowbee is a bad faith propagandist that can’t reconcile their understanding of theory with literally all of recorded history. Cowbee is full of shit and as bad faith as it comes here on Lemmy.
No? I study theory and history, it’s pointless to only study one aspect. I’m 100% genuine, and making a dozen comments complaining about me in a row without actually adding anything is a bit ridiculous.
Cowbee has some good points and his heart is in the right place, but always seems to show up to imply people shouldn’t vote, which I think is foolish and dangerous.
Nah, I directly state that organizing is more important than voting, and treating them like it’s the opposite is dangerous. I don’t argue against voting, I argue for organizing, and stress it as more important than voting.
“Not a debate” is 100% accurate. They just copy paste some tangential and paper thin propaganda and tweak the verbiage. Basically LLM slop with some extra steps. If you punch a hole in that topic (after a bunch of equivocation and nit picking) they retreat to some other copy-paste talking point.
It’s easy to look “smart” at a glance when your conversation technique is the exact same playbook as Charlie Kirk:
- Pick someone random with minimal preparation (college student :: commenter)
- in a poor environment for a debate (a desk under a tent :: deep thread in a random comment section)
- and throw a nonstop stream of garbage at them (unexamined statistics on black crime :: unexamined stats on USSR beef production)
- when cornered, appeal to a genetic fallacy and change the topic (“that’s a fake woke study” :: “that’s CIA propaganda”)
There’s no way to have a conversation unless you already start in agreement with their priors. I’ve watched them get backed into a corner on basic stuff that contradicts their own talking points in the same thread. Paraphrasing it went something like “Communism is a perfect rational science” => Why don’t we discard the pseudo-religious trappings and make decisions that optimize for quantifiable quality of life indicators à la the HDi? => “Well actually communism is required for the vibes”
It certainly is very easy to make shit up about people! No examples provided, no links, just pure unfiltered strawman.
Look ladies and gentlemen, no straw man needed! Already here in the flesh! Like a terminally online Candyman, say the name you’ll summon the keyboard praxis warrior.
Too hard to search your own comment history? I don’t blame you, 21.4k comments at an average of 668 per month is too much for me too. And of course that’s just your .ml account, lord knows what you’d have to sift through on your alts.
Having actual real life responsibilities prevents me from keeping up with your Kirk-esque pace of a reply every 43 waking minutes, so how about we compromise. You can just copy-paste the existing comments calling out your bullshit right underneath the drivel you regurgitate. It’s all the same conversation anyway, it will save us both time.
You’re literally doing it right now.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees it
Odd considering it’s a strawman.
Cowbee uses the same ‘debate’ style as Charlie Kirk.
How so?
Cowbee never shuts up and doesn’t actually debate, just keeps repeating the same talking points and puts words into your mouth.
What a pain in the neck
Most of them are incapable of understanding any kind of nuance. To them every issue is black or white.
posted on a thread making a black and white caricature about all marxists and anarchists as ‘tankies’
You’re telling on yourself. I just said tankies, if you choose to identify with that, and make it about all marxists and anarchists, that’s on you.
Yeah, people need to stop conflating MLs with Marxists, because Leninism and Marxism are not the same thing at all.
Leninists appropriated the “Marxist” label to lend credibility to their own ideology. Hence it’s “Marxist-Leninism,” not “Leninist-Marxism.”
Nobody is out there calling actual Marxists “tankies.” We’re calling MLs tankies, and then they retreat behind a mote and bailey by saying “yOuR cAlLiNg AlL mArXiStS tAnKiEs?!1?1?!1?1??1?1!!”
Also, “tankie” is a term I exclusively hear used by the left to refer to their own fringe (who, by the way, refer to the rest of the left as “liberals” and “fascists” for not being as extreme as them…). It’s like the left-wing version of maga. They’re completely irrational, bad-faith, militant, and authoritarian.
I never hear centrists, liberals, or conservatives call anybody a “tankie.” To them, the entire left are all just “commies,” because that’s the pejorative they use. They don’t need the term “tankie,” because the entire point of that term is to differentiate between the irrational, extremist fringe of the left, and the rest of us leftists who are capable of both rational thought and empathy (crazy idea, I know…), and are typically somewhere in the democratic range of the socialist spectrum.
disclaimer:
(Although I’ll add that anarchists exist among us reasonable socialists too, but that’s a very broad term and some self-declared “anarchists” truly are actually authoritarian tankies, which becomes clear when you listen to the things they say and how they handle disagreement.
Conversely, some “anarchists” are also actually neofeudal capitalist/corporatist fascists cosplaying as freedom fighters when all they really want is deregulation of industry…).
post summary:
‘tankies bad, i’m not a tankie, anyone who disagrees with me is a tankie’
hate to break it to you but liberals learned a new word and it’s just a left-facing pejorative now.
‘youre a librul lobrul bad, you jerk off the markets don’t you.anyone who disagrees with me is a librul.’
if they’re pro capitalist it’s just describing their position, sorry that the term offends you
^ that, friends is what we call a “bad-faith argument” based on a distorted interpretation of what was actually said, utilizing flashy one-liners to deride a commenter without actually addressing any of the content of the comment they made.
it’s called paraphrasing, you wanted to make it very clear that you’re one of the good ones for the liberals, as opposed to tankies who are the bad ones. i don’t think i misrepresented you.
the term is literally a left facing pejorative the way it’s used, especially how you were using it.
Cowbs there is fully ideological and fails to reconcile his understanding of classroom theory with real world application. Fucker genuinely believes the cow is a perfect sphere and is a bad faith propagandist. He’ll probably report my comment too because he’s a little bitch that just gish gallops bullshit and pivots every time you pin him down. You’re wasting your time. Their whole account is dedicated to getting republicans in power.
I organize in real life, my perspective is based on what I actually do as an organizer and activist as well as someone who studies Marxist-Leninist theory and history so as to apply it better. Just because I oppose the democrats doesn’t mean I support the republicans, I oppose the entire capitalist system. My goal is socialism, and like all Marxists, I believe that this can only be established through revolution, which means I do spend a fair bit of time combatting misconceptions surrounding reformism.
I haven’t reported any of your comments yet, btw. You have this absurd caricature of me that lives on in your brain, this must be the second dozen comment you’ve made about me specifically with no actual substance. Take a break, touch grass.
Leninism is not a replacement of Marxism, Leninism refers to Lenin’s own advancements on Marxism. Lenin used Marxist analysis to bring Marxism to a new era, from the era of industrial capitalism to the imperialist stage of capitalism. The primary advancements of Leninism are the following:
- The Leninist strategy and tactics of revolution
- The Leninist critique of Imperialism
- The Leninist understanding of the national question, and the right of self-determination.
Marxism-Leninism is called as such because the basis of Marxism-Leninism is Marxism. Marxism-Leninism carries over the 3 basic fundamentals of Marxism:
- Dialectical and historical materialism as the guiding worldview
- The Marxist critique of capitalism based on the Law of Value
- The scientific approach to socialism, grounded in class struggle.
In the modern era, the number of Marxists that reject Lenin are incredibly fringe. Lenin’s work as a Marxist is incredibly obvious to anyone who has read both Marx and Lenin, and it’s very clear that Lenin was history’s greatest Marxist, after the deaths of Marx and Engels. MLs are the dominant form of Marxism in the modern era, and most relevant historically, so trying to claim Marxism-Leninism isn’t Marxist requires an enormous level of justification on your part.
Leninism is not the same as Marxism
That’s literally what I just said.
The primary advancements of Leninism are the following:
You forget to add "Assassinating the soviet leadership because they defeated the bolsheviks in a fair election, and that was unacceptable to Lenin; and then replacing the dead soviets with bolshevik stooges while appropriating the term “Soviet.”
Oh and betraying the anarchists and other groups who supported them during the revolution.
Oh and highly centralized and controlling surveillance state apparatus, and making the so-called “dictatorship of the proletariat” a permanent fixture rather than a transitional government.
Marxism-Leninism
It’s Marxist-Leninism, not “Marxism-Leninism.” You might want to get your own label right before trying to school people on the internet about it.
In the modern era, the number of Marxists that reject Lenin are incredibly fringe.
Someone’s never read Merleau-Ponty, and it shows…
No, you said Marxism-Leninism isn’t Marxist. Marxism-Leninism is Marxist. All of Marxism in the modern day has historically evolved from the era of Marx, be it through accepting ideas, changing them, or rejecting them. There is no such thing as a Marxist that has no opinion on Lenin one way or the other, for example. The ideology “Leninism” is used to refer specifically to Lenin’s advancements, “Marxism” to the ideology created by Marx and Engels, and “Marxism-Leninism” as the unified ideology created by Lenin and forged in practice.
You then make vague references to the Russian Civil War without actually contextualizing them. The Bolsheviks did not “lose fair elections,” and fighting amongst the Soviets did coalesce around the Bolshevik line, as the Bolsheviks were supported by both the proletariat and peasantry. The fighting between the communists and anarchists wasn’t some one-sided betrayal either, it was a civil war and some sections of the anarchists that did not join the Bolsheviks took up arms against the soviets.
Further still, the soviet state was not some “permanent fixture.” Such an idea is inherently against Marxist understanding of dialectical materialism, as nothing in the world is permanent, as well as the economic basis for the withering of the state. The USSR was a socialist state gradually building towards communism.
As for “Marxist-Leninism,” no, I mean Marxism-Leninism, as understood by Wikipedia, science direct, and Stalin when coining the term. You’re very confident about this point despite being trivially proven wrong.
As for Merleau-Ponty, yes, Western Marxism is incredibly fringe in the global and historical context.
I don’t see any anarchists in this comic what are you talking about? Maybe the person voting…
Maybe the person voting…
If you don’t think anarchists vote then you do not know what anarchism is.
well i’m an anarchist and i literally vote in every primary and every year for municipal/nonpresidential elections, so it was nice to have you identify me correctly.
what was funny to me is that this comic is so dishonestly framed, like take panel 1, my trans comrades have already been getting arrested by democrats for protesting their abandonment of trans kids healthcare in favor of institutions and placating trump. ‘i don’t want to arrest trans people’ is clearly not the same as ‘i won’t arrest trans people’.
the way the comic is structured is like actually nonsensical too, the person being anti-voting says stuff after the vote has already been cast, and then when it fails we’re supposed to blame the those two? i blame the democrats for losing more than i do voters.
Literally no one above you conflated anarchists and marxists with tankies.
Imagine playing victim about something no one said. The very definition of “strawman.”
‘tankies’ is such a broadly defined pejorative at this point and it absolutely does cover anarchists the way liberals use it.
Are these Liberals in the room with us right now?
You can make any argument you want when you imagine words to mean whatever you need them to mean.
yeah, this whole fucking thread
Can’t argue with reactionaries mate. They don’t engage in good faith.
Tankies aren’t Marxist or anarchists. Tankies are eastern imperialists and statists that like to call themselves Marxist.
“Tankie”, as used in online discourse, just means “person to my political left making an argument I can’t refute”.
No, it means someone who would really love living in a dictatorship as long as the dictator was Xi Jinping, Stalin, or Kim Jong Un.
Yes, that’s the hyperbolic slander it tries to assert when in reality it is just a buzzword for imbeciles to use when they want to stop engaging with the argument.
Authoritarians are authoritarians, they just like different flavors of boot.
Parenti wrote about you thirty years ago. Chapter 3 of that book is all about you.
That is completely false and you know it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
It is about shilling for authoritarian dictatorships like Russia and China.
Sure, if your definition of “shilling for” is “rejecting US State Department narratives about”.
Otherwise, it’s like I said, it means “person to my political left making a point I can’t refute”.
And Lemmy (or at least certain instances on Lemmy) is infested with them. Which means they go around in clusters, swarming anyone on the other instances who doesn’t conform with their impractical ideology and blinkered views.
That’s why i switched to piefed. Out of sight, out of mind.
And a big problem with a lot of them is they antagonize you into saying shit they report you for. It’s not just about spreading propaganda, it’s about removing anyone that disagrees with it.
Let’s be straight here: the likliest scenario is that Lemmy was explicitly created for the purpose of giving tankies a platform to spread misinformation and hate. It is the Nazi bar.
grow the fuck up!
For a non zero chunk of them, this is about getting paid in Kremlin bucks.
And let your instance admins know you’d like them to defederate! There’s a good chance they might also want to but don’t want to force the decision upon their users.
My instance defederated both Hexbear and db0 and it’s crazy how much more emotionally mature the vibe is without those users.
Putting your instance on highest ranking if I plan to migrate.
I think their instance admin was the guy behind the tesseract scandal a few months ago, might want to look into that if you haven’t heard of it.
Basically snuck a hidden blob into a “small” update that shadowbans a bunch of users and keywords. Doesn’t sound that bad on the surface, but the implementation was really shady, the blacklist itself was sloppily constructed, and the way he handled the fallout when people called him out on it was really immature.
If I have this confused with a different instance, then my bad. I think he’s involved with sh.itjustworks at a fairly high level too though.
There’s a couple graphics floating around somewhere mapping defederations of major instances if you want alternatives. I’ll see if I can dig them up.
actually i have that account tagged as the admins sock puppet
I was on that list of banned users!
Dang I knew this was a honeypot thread I didn’t realize it was for THAT.
I’m still upset that you guys managed to sucessfully bully a developer into deleting his (free) project (that had like 10 users), because now his blocklist has to be rebuilt manually, thankfully so many of you out yourselves and make it easy to report.
Oh, you’re the guy I was talking about? Hahaha, I didn’t even realize, but now you’re glowing.
You reported me for an objective delivery of the facts, as I understand them? Sure, don’t care.
Next time be more honest about the diffs in your “free” software updates, and handle things a bit more maturely when people take notice of the unethical payloads you hide behind “security patches.”
If telling you that is “bullying” you, then you need thicker skin. In fact you’re suspiciously bordering on DARVO, a common tactic among narcissists. (Not calling you a narcissist, by the way. Just pointing out how your response resembles how one would react).
Oh by the way, did I just make the tesseract ban list? If so, I’ll consider it an honor.
If I was the guy do you think I would let you Kiwi Farms jerks know my new account?
The pissbabies took offense to your comment.
Exactly. You shouldn’t treat voting for a politician as a marriage, you should treat politicians as a vehicle to get you to the place you want to be.
There almost never is an ideal candidate because everyone has different opinion what ideal candidate is. Even in countries where there are multiple parties most people don’t get exactly who they want.
If you want better choices you need to get more involved on politics, vote in primaries, vote in local elections, find and help candidates that are not popular but are closer to what you want or even run yourself.
If you don’t get involved at lower levels don’t be surprised the candidates in general aren’t what you want. Of you don’t vote, don’t be surprised that candidates ignore needs of your group.
Who downvotes this? Even if you are a tankie this should register to you as an entirely sane take.
I see a few potential ways someone might disagree:
- Any kind of political revolutionary who doesn’t consider reformism a viable strategy and doesn’t believe their goals are possible to achieve through voting. e.g. even if every US politician were to be replaced with Mamdanis overnight, the US would never progress beyond “capitalism with New Deal-style concessions” without tearing down and rebuilding the entire state from the ground up. See also: how aggressively the political machinery across most of the west mobilizes to discredit and/or oust any prospective politicians with remotely socialist or anarchist views which could threaten capitalists’ position.
- More relevant to the original meme, trans people (or perhaps other minority groups) who have been thrown under the bus in the past by politicians who claimed to support them, only to pivot after being elected, as a number of Democrats have done recently.
- Another train of reasoning I’ve seen: trans people who fear the potential consequences of electing a Democrat with a neutral or anti-trans position. Paraphrasing an explanation I’ve seen, the premise is that while a Republican president (or whatever other position) will almost certainly enact immediate negative changes for trans people, there is still the possibility that a pro-trans Democrat could be elected in the future. However, if an apathetic or actively hostile Democrat were to be elected (e.g. Newsom), it would set trans people back for decades, as the Democrats (always looking for ways to pivot right to appease some hypothetical median voter) would see this and conclude that trans rights are an effective compromise in exchange for winning votes. They would therefore continue to push candidates who act actively against the interests of trans people, making forward progress for trans rights an impossibility for many election cycles.
I should note that I’m neither an American nor would I consider myself a subscriber of any particular political ideology beyond an assortment of vaguely leftist beliefs. This is mainly just me paraphrasing some sentiments I’ve seen/heard which would probably disagree with the comment in question.
No, you gotta be lying. There certainly have been plenty of billionaires beheaded and police stations burned and politicians tarred and feathered.
Clearly theyre doing what they tell everyone else they should be doing.
Edit- triggered all those tough keyboard warriors with this evidently.
The majority of those keyboard communists are just paid russian propagandists trying to sow discord in every election.
Their opinion is literally worthless.
On the one hand: Yes, go to the ballot and vote blue. Even if they’re 99% Hitler. If you think you have “nothing to lose”, go look at Syria or Russia. ‘The worst the Republicans could do’ is worse than you can imagine.
On the other hand: Have you ever heard of the ultimatum game? Imagine you and a friend are offered $100, and your friend offers you a split of $X. You can either accept the $X, or reject it and you both get nothing. You might think you should accept the $X no matter how low, but if the scenario happens again and you have rejected low values last time, your friend will be more likely to offer you a fair X. Otherwise, if your friend’s a bastard (and he is), he’ll offer you $1.
Anyway, in 2020 the X offered was a Biden, and in 2024 the X offered was a Kamala. If every Leftist votes for Biden/Kamala/Next, then the DNC will keep offering the same dogshit or even shift right because 1) they want to grab more centrist voters (who won’t vote for a more progressive candidate), and 2) they won’t lose any leftist voters so why not. And then when the right-shifted candidate loses they’ll blame it on “leftists didn’t vote enough” anyway, in spite of the statistics saying otherwise.
So in other words: If you’re willing to vote for a 99% Hitler, don’t be surprised if you’re offered a 99% Hitler. Unless you’re expecting the DNC to be extremely principled, anti-corruption, and spineful?
“Vote blue no matter who” isn’t a solution; it’s forfeiting democracy (if you follow it, you literally don’t get to choose not to vote blue) in pursuit of… not letting Republicans in. Great! The Dems reliably prevented Trump from being re-elected, right? No, he trod water in the status quo but didn’t actually fix the core problems, so Trump’s “vote me in and I’ll burn down the system” still resonated with voters. But hey, at least Biden prosecuted Trump and all the criminals who he enabled to flagrantly break the law and rewrite it to their benefit? Not really, no.
“Vote Blue No Matter Who” is a travesty which can be at best justified as a strategy of lesser evil - but still evil. If it doesn’t have an expiry date then you’ve already abolished democracy, and that’s fucking horrifying, even if it’s the correct strategy.
You’re acting like you still have democracy, that’s cute
You lost democracy with McCarthyism, way back in the 1960s.
This is just at the precipice of the point of no return now. You have only two options.
Option 1: Jump off the cliff and deep dive into fascist conservative dictatorship
Option 2: Have a ineffectual blue leadership that are more interested in keeping status quo than actually making change, but at least can be brow beaten enough that they listen to people and make a very glacial change that’s not fast enough
So the solution is to not vote blue? Then what?
The solution is to stop treating politics like a brief interruption of your normal life around election time, after which you go back to being a passive pawn - which is what most people in the USA have been doing since Reagan at the latest.
Join a union, stand for local elections, organize strikes. All year round. If you cannot afford to do so right now, start/join local mutual help communities designed to save enough collective time for one of their members to do so. Reject the hyperindividualism injected into your culture by the wealthiest few permille specifically to hinder your ability to gain collective bargaining power.
Your only bloodless path towards victory is creating a convincing enough economic threat to the personal wealth of elected politicians as a balancing counter force.
Continue to fail to do so (as a people) and all voting for the lesser evil does is buy you time you’re then wasting.
And geez. What we got was the retarded 4th Reich. But that’s way better than actually trying to make a difference. I get not voting for someone who doesn’t represent. But we all know that we’re not there yet. And we’re not going to get there voting fascist or abstaining (voting for fascist) that’s why they are trying to suppress all votes. Just get out, vote, and put a stop to the bleeding so we can actually get somewhere. Stop trying to make the perfect the enemy of the good enough!
Voting for a fascist would be awful. That’s how you get a genocide.
Remember when Biden repeatedly told debunked blood libel lies against Palestinians from his campaign podium, saying he saw beheaded babies in ovens with his own eyes?
Fuck me, right?
Its funny as i keep reading this thread, you keep brining up Gaza, like ita the single cotcha.
Ita not.
Do you think biden would have started the genocide amongst trans people in the states? Trump started one. So your non vote killed members of my community. Thanks for that.
Also, what about Congo, Sudan, Syria,… There’s more atrocities happening as we speak than Gaza. Yet you only care about one here. Funny how that works.
Those trans people and Palestinian children are so selfish! Don’t they realize that .ml users won’t be able to act smug and feel better than everyone else if they vote for a party that they don’t agree with on every single issue? How else will they deal with their insecurities? Palestinian children should be happy to die for true leftist’s need to feel superior.
Muricans, don’t fuck this up. We’re so tired of all the political news from your country dominating every single “global” space. Sincerely, the rest of the world.
Hey, so as a trans person in Ohio, where both of my gubernatorial candidates hate trans people, it’s decidedly not an easy choice.
There wasn’t a Dem primary either.
Sorry to say, but reality doesn’t conform to your MS Paint meme :/
They’re downvoting you instead of engaging because they literally do not care about the struggle of trans people beyond its utility to punch left.
Whats the fix then?
Just checking in: has ‘vote blue no matter who’ been working well for you folks the last few elections? Last time I seem to remember dropping trans messaging since it was a perceived liability and trotting out Liz Cheney.
Fuck your genocide party and fuck the GOP. Our differences are not reconcilable. I’m not interested in a party run by liberal capitalists.
Voting is basic harm reduction, people advocating against voting are doing the GOP’s work for them and should be mocked.
They say this with a straight face. You just need to ask who was in charge when roe v wade was overturned and what was the response to try to save important hard fought rights.
But no, it’s the people trying to hold power accountable that is the problem.
Come on that’s not even a hard one. Congress was split, not enough votes to break fillabuster, meaning Dems didn’t have enough votes to codify Roe after the conservative Supreme Court, thanks to Trump 1, repealed it.
To fix the Supreme Court would take a supermajority which is unlikely. Codifying Roe will take much less. They should have done it during the Obama years when they held a fillabuster proof majority.
If you want to undo the system you should at least have a basic understanding of how it works
Obligatory Simpsons meme
I’ll take “we can’t govern”, please.
Dems supporting trans sports bans (and lockeroom bans and bathroom bans and other sex segregation) are supporting the exact same ideology that justify sending us to men’s prisons. The idea is that we are too strong and manly and will r*pe and kill women if we are allowed to have freedom, so we need to be quarantined away with other men so that we get r*ped and murdered.
I’m not voting for my genocide. If the choice in 2028 is between a transphobe and a transphobe, I’ll just kill myself.
Well, kinda sounds like you’re okay with either outcome, so I don’t understand why you think democrats should suddenly care about your needs.
Ah yes because all Democrats are exactly the same, and all transphobia is the same level.
No shit, but there are transphobic Democrats supporting the ideology of gender segregation and trans genocide. If one of those bluemaggots gets the 2028 nomination, I’m as good as dead already, I might as well just skip the painful and humiliating part.
Democrats say things that flirt with transphobia because they are trying to win over Republican voters. (Dumb idea but that’s their strategy)
Republicans say they want trans genocide because they want trans genocide.
They aren’t the same, and at least one of them can be pressured into changing.
Yeah, but when someone is trying to pressure dems into changing, people like you appear and cry that by pressuring them to change they’re basically supporting republicans
What kind of pressure?
All the anti-D sentiment I see on Lemmy is from lemmy.ml people saying that Ds are just as bad as Rs (therefore don’t bother voting).
Which of course convinces people who would vote against Rs to stay home and convinces Ds not to bother appealing to that kind of person because they’ll probably not vote anyway.
i vote in primaries and municipal/midterm years but whatever you say, officer
democrats are more likely to call the cops on me than appeal to me in any way.
i vote in primaries and municipal/midterm years
I’m glad to hear it, but I clearly wasn’t talking about people like you. That view isn’t shared amongst the legions of people pictured in the OP who screech that voting for a Democrat under any circumstance is the exact same as voting for a Republican.
Red Herrings not quoted for obvious reasons.
Bluemaggots say things that help build the argument for my extermination because they’re worthless fucking opportunist cowards that don’t stand for anything. I’m sure, in their heart-of-hearts, they don’t even care about trans issues one way or the other.
However, that won’t stop them from “reaching across the isle” to vote for it in a big bipartisan compromise to show how reasonable and moderate they are; they’ll trade away my rights for idk canceling up to $20,000 in debt for Pell Grant recipients who open a business in a disadvantaged community and operate it for at least three years. Either we nominate a progressive or I die.
Every single Democrat that supports any form of gender segregation supports sending me to men’s prison.
Well, I was trying to give you a hope for an out but I guess that’s a no go.
I’d rather you didn’t kill yourself.
I already have hope for an out; we nominate a progressive.
It’s September 29. AFAIK most, if not all, of the primaries are over now. Either you got your ideal candidate or you didn’t, but either way, there’s only one way to keep the guaranteed-to-be-trans-genocidal Republican out of office at this point.
There is a difference between not playing competitive sports and being sent to men’s prison to be raped and murdered. Life may be a fight, keep on fighting for a better world, and please stick around to see it!
Ok so trans people should be ok with the dems turning right on trans issues each cycle right?
Keep pushing right conservatives! You got it!
People who care about Trans rights don’t vote
Party correctly sees voters don’t care about Trans rights
Let’s make sure the “I hate trans people and hope they die” party gets more votes, that’ll show them!
This thread is filled to the brim with the people in the meme.
But guuuuuys muh rachet effect! Every DEMONcrat is exactly the same ok? The system is broken so we shouldn’t try to do anything about it, it’s way more cool and revolutionary to talk about an eventually revolution generations down the line, the trans and browns can wait! If you vote you’re CAPITALISTIC SWINE WHO LOVES GENOCIDE. The 33% who didn’t vote last election didn’t just let Trump win they were actually cool revolutionaries ok?
Gotta love the schordinger leftist, simultaneously responsible for the Dems loosing and not significant enough for Dems to pander to.
Thought I was gonna get in before the “my candidate was imperfect for me so I didn’t vote so fuck everyone else” people.
Too late!
“Imperfect”
Looks at imperfection
Genocide
Oh good thing we have Trump now.
Looks at reality you created
Still genocide, but now it’s a regional war with Iran and people are talking about ethnically cleansing Gaza so Trump can build the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Good going. You really stopped that genocide by electing people who hate Muslims.
What would it take for you to admit your decision was stupid? If Trump drops a nuke oh Tehran, would that do it?
You are literally the only new account I’ve seen recently that isn’t actively trying to discourage people from voting. Good on you. For real it’s like Lemmy is allergic to the concept that they should fuckin vote and if they don’t vote, they’re still responsible for who wins by not voting. Fuck. Sorry, the discourse here is fucking infuriating and I’m drunk, and you’re a breath of fresh air.
That’s not shroedinger, that’s just logic. Hard concept for some people on here, it seems. For how well you understand right wing politics and tactics, it’s suprising you believe that the “left” wing would be much different.
Let’s say I need 51% of people to vote for me. I can get 41% with all the standard talking points of making things slightly less shitty. 10% I could get by shouting about the genocide in Gaza, but then I’d LOSE some from the 41%, because “I’m too extreme”. In this scenario, the leftists are responsible, AND not significant enough to pander to.
When a nazi sees a conservative and a democrat on the ballot, do you think he doesn’t vote, because the conservative didn’t call for the gassing of Jews?
Most people are completely uninformed and just think Republicans = better economy. In the last election the people who sat out or voted 3rd party caused all of this with Trump, because apparently ruin all research including children’s cancer research, gutting USAID, removing environmental protections and ruining the world while getting into 4 wars, while supporting Israel, is not worth voting for someone who supports Israel. Anyone who didn’t vote in 2024 is in great part responsible for all the deaths in ukraine as well.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/19/kamala-harris-book-trans-athletes-00573966
Maybe don’t use an issue where the Blue capitalist lap dogs are moving closer to the position of the Red capitalist lap dogs every day to illustrate your ridiculous point that the Blue capitalist lap dogs are somehow preferable?
Maybe try immigration!
https://theintercept.com/2024/11/07/harris-trump-election-immigration-border/
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/4361/text
Ooops!
Well I’m sure you’ll find something! Good luck!!
Maybe find 2 issues that are not the most divisive issues ever even among democrats and there will be a point there.
E: oh a bill about trying to stop the fentanyl crisis, one of the most contentious issues. True she’s basically a fascist at this point.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/691454/two-thirds-prefer-birth-sex-ids-athletics.aspx
Oooops im totally out of touch with the electorate but it’s the candidate’s fault for not doing the opposite of what people electing them want 😂Fuck off, fash.
Nobody cares what someone willing to sacrifice trans people for a quieter brunch wants.
Hm well i hope those contentious objectectors are enjoying their literal fascism and removal of roe v wade and gender affirming care for trans people because those dems were outspoken for trans people, but said im not sure about competitive sports. Outcomes don’t matter, principles do (as long as I’m not the one affected). My brother and 2 friends, one who is trans, left the US permanently because trump got elected. But hey at least the dems can signal to the even more radicalized country and not get elected again now hey?
I hope the self-deluding people who think that it would stop at sports enjoy taking the slow road to fascism.
Why is that when politics demands compromise, it’s always a compromise with fascism and never with the left? Because all mainstream politics in all Western countries is just various routes to fascism.
It’s almost like a politician’s job is to not only uphold the will of the electorate, but also act as opposition, and push back on bullshit that the other side is spewing. Rather than constantly conceding to their framing in the hopes of seducing a handful of “moderates”. That very tactic is a contributing reason that shit like this gets 2/3rds of the electorate to agree to it because now their party is also saying it’s a problem.
Seriously how much of that do you think is genuinely deeply held well thought out beliefs of the masses vs just people uncritically giving in to the framing that they hear in the media, and on the news, and see spoken about by politicians.
And why is it that when it comes to things like healthcare, cracking down on price gouging, fixing the housing market, blocking the building of data centers, taking down/preventing flock cameras, stopping the sending of weapons to Israel, and other things that are broadly popular with the electorate, they have no issue ignoring those wishes. But for some reason, this issue is one that is very important for them to listen to the will of the people. They couldn’t possibly ignore it like everything else.
It’s almost like a politician’s job is to not only uphold the will of the electorate, but also act as opposition, and push back on bullshit that the other side is spewing. Rather than constantly conceding to their framing in the hopes of seducing a handful of “moderates.”
That’s literally what “establishment” dems have been doing, the media is just completely failing us and accepting the republican framing of trans issues being actually just 2 people in the Olympics winning over cis women.
https://www.aclu.org/harris-on-lgbtq-rights
https://www.advocate.com/election/kamala-harris-gender-care-interview
https://www.factcheck.org/2024/10/harris-position-on-health-care-for-transgender-prisoners-and-detainees/
She is signaling extremely clearly her support for trans people and that they are important to America.Dems have been trying to get healthcare passed constantly and Republicans block it tooth and nail. All the popular policies you’ve listed ARE popular, but the implementations are divisive. Should it be single payer healthcare, state sponsored, something else. Because of that, obamacare is all we got. Most people are fine with data centers so long as it’s not in their town, how to fix the housing market is contentious, flock cameras are contentious (among all americans, not sure about dems specifically), and israel is contentious (not among dems but among moderates and Republicans).
We haven’t seen policy on these because it’s hard to get a room of people to agree on the specifics of how to fix them. Dems are absolutely failing on their messaging that they support these popular issues, and maybe they should have a policy on it by now, but their job is about 100x harder than Republicans who literally just press the be evil button while fox news says actually it’s good. Add on to that, half of America keeps electing Republicans who undo the policy or block it from existing in the first place.
lmao I got called “Blue MAGA” for encouraging strategic voting just yesterday. I was a card carrying member of DSA before it was cool.
You can tell an election is coming up because all the bots and shills crawl out of the woodwork to start arguments between centrist Democrats and progressive leftists. I’m often disappointed by Status Quo Democrats but I’ll take a status quo that doesn’t work well enough for everyone over a lurch towards fascism that intends to claw back every right we’ve secured since the 1860’s and eagerly steal the territory and resources of middle powers… and do it all fucking incompetently.
Did you think everything was fine before Trump?
Then you’re Blue MAGA.
Go back to your bridge.
Edit: Clearly things were not fine before trump. OP is not posting in good faith.
Blue when in power: But boo hoo we are so powerless we cannot undo any of these anti-trans laws red put in place.
You genuinely can’t be this dumb. There’s a giant difference between “blue in the white house” and “blue in power”. Yes, every bit helps, but we’ve had very few times where blue was truly in power, as in, White House, Senate, House were all blue majority. In those rare times, things did get better. Not fucking perfect, but way better.
And I still need all the haters to actually propose a real alternative that doesn’t involve wishful thinking, expecting millions to risk their life and liberty, or doesn’t sacrifice minoritized people on the altar of accelerationism. How many walmarts have you bombed recently?
You can vote third party, the important thing is to be a voter rather than a non-voter.
Third party vote is a non vote in the US two party system.
