Revolutions stand or fall with public support. Voting is the most visible way to establish public sentiment. People like to quote that only a third of the US actually elected Trump, but do we have a clear idea of just how many oppose him, if so many voters apparently never expressed their opinion in any measurable way?
Doing nothing and complaining on the internet is useless. Doing something is scary. If you knew you had your community at your back, wouldn’t you feel more confident to step up?
You’re right that people need to know that voting won’t be enough, but it’s still important in order to communicate the public opinion that separates a revolution from a coup.
That is indeed a good argument for voting, but voting third party
Even along with public support, revolutions need their violent wing. MLK wouldn’t have been as nearly successful without the Black Panthers visibly totin’ guns on the 5 O’Clock news. It made MLK look very reasonable to deal with.
Gandhi, the modern Icon of peaceful protest winning the day, had armed rebellions popping up behind him. The Indian’s had nearly a 100 year history of violence against the British. And an exhausted Great Britain just wanting to get out of the colonial business didn’t hurt either.
When facing despots and fascists, there needs to be people willing to kill and die for the cause of freedom. We have not reached that point yet.
what about voting AND revolution
The success of diplomacy and peaceful protest hinges on the existence of a credible threat that the alternative (war and riots, respectively) will be worse. Even if a (mostly) peaceful solution should be found, I suspect there will have to be some measure of violence to get that point across.
As others point out, the elites won’t go down quietly, and as long as there are bootlicks willing to fight on their behalf, they’ll rather let their bootlicks die than make concessions.
So while I don’t think violent revolutions are good for their own sake, they may be a necessary evil for good ends.
what about peaceful revolutions (as long as they DON’T even escalate)?
Race baiting to distract from the class war?
Why is this type of privileged exclusionary 1 dimension opinion even upvoted?
There are multiple problems that matter at any given time.
Saying that racism is a distraction ignores the very real people who are being harmed right now because they aren’t you, and thus you don’t care about them. “I got mine” but about other issues.
Some take for a socialist to have really…
Some take for a socialist to have really…
I wouldn’t assume they are one.
what about classbaiting?
Moron
Tfw when you vote for the lesser evil and they proceed to appoint Hitler as cancellor.
Voting is one of many tools at our disposal - and right now we need all the tools we can get.
So, don’t shit on voting - do vote!
Do the other things too, but don’t skip the vote.
Widespread violence and voting? That’s the answer.
Vote in the preliminaries, where you can select which bag of shit you’ll get to vote for officially. You may even end up with a decent choice on election day off your area is dope like NYC or Seattle.
Even if you’re stuck in the cousin-fuckingly-deep south like me, where your vote will almost certainly be washed out by a horde of Nazis: still do it. Especially in smaller elections - school boards, city level stuff, whatever you can get in on. Those are the ones where you can really start to turn the tide. All it takes is for the usual rednecks to start feeling apathetic, and a handful of us bleeding-heart-commie-socialist-hippie-libruls to step up, and BAM, we’ve got a progressive oasis elected in our desert of red. Which still isn’t much, but it’s a foothold.
But it does require us to do the bare-assed minimum amount of effort in support of change, which is to vote.
Ugh. I agree with this. But I don’t, at the same time. I’m of the opinion that people need to expire. There was a time where we could make the world a better place by working with people, but some just shouldn’t exist. Some people just can’t be reasoned with.
No I’m with you there - but it’s hard to discuss that stuff without getting banned; and you can do that stuff while still casting a vote every now and then. I’ve stirred up a lot of drama here by encouraging the use of that tool - this thread is stuffed with mouth-foaming Trump progandists, so proceed with caution. And grab some popcorn - it’s a shitshow, but it’s a show!
People not voting is why we’re in the situation we are in right now
Yeah man, the Neo-liberal turn? The war on terror? The GFC? All irrelevant, “people not voting” is the reason we have a goddam Cheeto in the white house.
Yes but they don’t want to admit that, since it makes their feelings hurt, so they pretend voting is useless.
You’re right that voting is a tool; you’re wrong about whose tool it is and what it’s used for.
It can be used for either liberation or oppression. Ceding it to the oppressors does not help you. Promoting apathy among those who would otherwise support liberation helps the oppressors.
What is your goal here?
You are fundamentally confused such that you think there’s any agency in voting in the first place. The only real impact it has is to completely short circuit and subsume all political activity away from any outside organizing that is, historically, literally the only thing that has ever worked to accomplish anything.
My goal is this is a forum. Someone says something wrong and then you say the correct thing under them. That’s what you do on forums.
You are spreading misinformation and promoting apathy among those who would otherwise support liberation. You are an ally to our oppressors.
Bruh
No, we’re calling for the overthrow of our oppressors. We’re calling for seizing the means of production. We’re calling for real and permanent liberation from the bourgeoisie.
Which of those are mutually exclusive to voting?
I don’t care whether you vote, and I’m not telling anyone whether or not to vote. But I am pointing out how little power it gives us for the amount of time, money, and energy people are putting into it. The juice ain’t worth that much squeeze. We’re never going to vote ourselves out of wage slavery.
There it is. If you’re not a liberal you’re personally getting checks written by Putin or whomever’s the villain of the month.
You’re projecting.
You literally voted to escalate a genocide because the system you’re playing apologist for presented you no other choice. What misinformation am I spreading? You’re the one acting as an enemy of liberation. You literally voted for a genocide. You are literally an ally to our oppressors.
It’s honestly fucking frightening how you’re capable of that kind of doublethink.
And you’re not just an ally of our oppressors in that sense. You want to waste YEARS of time PER ELECTION of people who would otherwise be doing tangible good in their communities working outside of the genocidal system you cap for.
You voted not just for genocide, but to crank the genocide up to the max. “No genocide” wasn’t an option, because our system is shit, so why not at least try for damage control instead of taking the absolute most evil path you could?
You want to waste YEARS of time PER ELECTION of people who would otherwise be doing tangible good in their communities working outside of the genocidal system you cap for.
Which of those actions are mutually exclusive to voting?
BlueMAGA continues to insist that, because they denied the extent of the genocide when it was their team doing it, the genocide actually wasn’t that bad when it was their team doing it.
Nice try FBI
Last election the choice was between Palestinian genocide and Palestinian genocide. You are smoking crack if you think the oligarchy is ever going to provide you with a meaningful choice to loosen their hold on you through the civic ritual of voting.
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You people really are hell bent on reducing the word “genocide” to meaninglessness
but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look at Trump and conclude that he’s infinitely worse
This line is smoking gun proof that everyone in this thread trying to engage with you is talking exclusively over your head. You
So you knowingly voted to throw Palestinians under the extermination bus, is that it? And you consider yourself to be on the right side of history? And you never considered that perhaps your slavish ideological devotion to following the rules of a fascist political system was slow-boiling you into a fascist?
Ukranian genocide
You’re talking about the ten years of ethnic cleansing the Ukranian nazi government was doing to ethnic Russians within its borders, right? You wouldn’t possibly consider yourself to be against genocide while supporting these guys, right? Because nobody could possibly be that deluded, right? Tell me you’re not that programmed.
Last election was a choice between Palestinian genocide vs significantly more Palestinian genocide + Ukrainian genocide + it’s looking Venezuelan genocide is about to be kicking off + who the fuck knows, we’ve got three more years of this shitshow and that’s assuming we even have another election.
You are doing the thing right now. The other choice is “none of those things,” actually, and you don’t get that by voting harder because as you’ve just demonstrated you were not given the choice. Is any genocide acceptable to you? The line is never “less genocide,” it is “no genocide.”
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voting is actually the way to go, and would probably help get fascism out of the government. vote or don’t.
Cool song you linked to, but if you think its message is pro-voting, and if you actually think doing so “would probably help get fascism out of the government” then you are painfully naive. It won’t do that. It has never worked and it never will, not under capitalism (“liberal democracy”) and this fact is baked into it. At best, it’s a harmless waste of time. But there is valid argument to be made that the act of voting, useless as it may be to affect positive change let alone oust fascism, is still endorsing the bourgeois dictatorship, still a kind of tacit approval validating the very system that has allowed fascism to slide easily into power.
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the lyrics said “you might vote for someone else, and i might wanna change your mind, so vote and don’t today” and “vote and know it might NOT make a difference; you might see the contradiction, but they’re NOT talking to you”. thank frick for making linking stuff easier here.
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if voting CAN’T help, then a revolution would be the next method. oh and do you think indirect voting, and a one-party system (or multiple like-minded parties under a coalition like china or the dprk) is better?
- And… you think that is espousing a pro-voting message? k.
- Yes, revolution is necessary to defeat fascism.
and 3. (since your 2 contained multiple points) oh, and do you think what we have in the US (and other bourgeois dictatorships) isn’t a one-party system?
Yes, in genuine democracy where the means of production are not wholly owned by capitalists. You really need to learn what the difference between a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and a dictatorship of the proletariat is. China is far from perfect but the voice of the populace is vastly more powerful there and actually does steer the state. Considering the topic here was “voting out fascism” one obvious thing to note is that you won’t find China or the DPRK ever led by actual straight up fascists as is the case openly right now in the US.
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i think the message for that song is “you can vote, but you may NOT be sure about who you voted”
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i assume by “genuine democracy”, you mean like-minded political parties in a coalition (or lack thereof). oh and the us is a two-party system that silences most third parties
- The message of the song, confirmed by the lyrics you pasted, is the title itself. Vote… or don’t (because it doesn’t matter).
- It has nothing to do with “like-mindedness” it has everything to do with class interest. I thought you said you were a socialist. Do you know literally anything about Marxism? oh and no, the supposed “two” parties in the US both represent the same ruling class, you know, the fuckers that own the means of production under capitalism. You can call it “two” if you want, but you’re only displaying your ignorance to the fact that it’s just theater and both are two cogs in the same machine working in tandem to further the interests of the same class. Ever hear of the ratchet effect? Good cop/bad cop routine? Insert famous quote here:
“The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.”
- Julius Nyerere
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- And… you think that is espousing a pro-voting message? k.
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Fascism litteraly wins through democracy so…well we can stop it prematurely, but once it’s In power it won’t let itself to be voted out
maybe a revolution can work if NOT voting
You should definitely vote but it shouldn’t be the only thing you do.
No
Yes. Voting is useful for showing solidarity with the movement and demonstrating how the current system doesn’t work. Just because it isn’t capable of causing any meaningful change doesn’t mean it’s useless.
Just because it isn’t capable of causing any meaningful change doesn’t mean it’s useless.
I see a lot of folks on .ml and .hexbear not understand this part. It’s like all change must be meaningful, and if it’s not then it’s not worth our time.
Lenin taught us that we need to build within the system of the masses in order to tip them over, not overturn it outright. There is a specific time and place for when change is the most impactful
Lenin’s position on integrating with the masses meant running working class parties in opposition to establishment parties, ie voting PSL over DNC. The vanguard’s task is to become a party that the working class puts their full support behind, so that when revolution does happen, the vanguard can serve as the spearpoint to direct the masses in one unified direction and crush the capitalist state, replacing it with a socialist one.
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I don’t know why you think you own the place when this is their Lemmy instance, while you’re a guest here.
I dont own the place. But neither does anyone in this comment thread, no one here is a mod on memes.ml, not that I should be expto know who owns what on a public forum
Badjacketing is bad. Don’t do that.
You’re right, I dont know that they are a psyop. I do, however, know that the position of ‘voting is not worthwhile if you are a leftist’ that they are taking above is the same position that many psyops would like to have in the minds of leftists. Put more simply, what might they have said differently if they were a psyop? Nothing, I presume.
It is better to root out psyop talking points that diminish our ability to form a collective voice, than it is to allow foolish notions like ‘dont vote’ to continue in our spaces.
Voting doesn’t do much, though. I support voting for working class orgs like PSL, but not for the DNC or GOP, and I know it’s very unlikley that PSL will win electorally. Leftists understand that the path to change is via organizing, not by supporting orgs that work against our interests, and we know we can’t magically turn a capitalist org into a proletarian one by wishcasting.
If you want to argue against that, then do so, don’t badjacket.
Im literally just telling folks to not engage in the same behavior that the fascists hope we engage in.
- I don’t care what fascists hope.
- If fascists say the sky is blue, does that make it a “fascist talking point,” and therefore isn’t blue? That’s just not how it works.
Fascists don’t care if we vote, what they care about is if we organize. Now that the spoils of imperialism are drying up, fascism is rising, and the super-exploitation we inflict on the global south is turning more inward. What fascists are scared of is working class organizing and building actual power.
bro just one more vote bro, bro I swear just one more vote and it’ll fix democracy bro
Now’s not the time for that we can’t afford four years of Vance. We need to hold our noses and vote for Skeletor so we can stop the spread, then focus on progressive issues
Can’t wait for the next biggest elections of our lifetime between JD Vance and Gavin newsome 😂 yikes
Skeletor, we want to vote for you so Vance doesn’t win, but stop supporting Hordak destroying Eternia
Skeletor: Hordak has a right to defend himself
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You’re on .ml, you absolute loser
Hey sorry, what did they say?
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So block .ml and stop whining already.
Democracy is when your corporate lords graciously allow you to choose between genocide and genocide
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Just you wait another few more years and I’m gonna vote so hard it’ll make your head spin
how white liberals think fascism works
Chad voting in a UN resolution condemning Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza
you’re finished
Official portrait of Benjamin Netanyahu
no, pls
you know what hitler? i tried to reason with you but you have left me no choice. i will be voting for somebody else. good luck earning my vote back fuckstick, you’re gonna need it.
This but the election is between Himmler and Eichmann
Is this not also true for liberals who aren’t white?
yes. i did not create this image
Or bearded. You can be a clean shaven, tan, even a woman and the meme still works.
I think the point of the words inclusion is that you might have a very different perspective of the implications and effectiveness of voting when the state doesn’t explicitly cater to your identity as the default.
Chile actually voted out their dictator.
Same as most Eastern Block countries. Except Romania, they chose other ways.
They’re only allowed to be voted out after they establish the rules of the game lmao. Military dictators are just puppets of capital used to organize society with force and when capital is happy with it they just move on from them. It’s absurd to think they were voted out lmao. Every single liberal democracy that evolved from a military dictatorship still uses the constitution written by the dictators, i.e. Spain.
So did Brazil, and they actually threw theirs in prison.
No, Bolsonaro was not a dictator; if he had been, we wouldn’t have been able to remove him. He had far less power than he thought; that’s why voting worked.
I would argue the same is true of Trump. It certainly was in his first term. This term has all the aesthetics of authoritarianism, but he is failing to consolidate power, which is kind of pathetic considering how much power in the US was ready to surrender on day one.
then what happened
Lemmy libs next year: “VOTE FOR BLUEMAGA EVERYONE”
Mamdani just started manufacturing consent for the regime changes in Cuba and Venezuela. 😂
three weeks ago
