People attacking the .ml people for organizing while under pressure from the biggest worldwide alt right push in our generation is the funniest shit to me. God forbid the leftists start thinking collectively, you saw what happened to the donald? We’re currently fucked by all that chicanery but heavens forbid you start thinking in the opposite direction too much, wouldn’t want to get out of the right wing mess that we’re living through, least of all if we put in place all those policies my right wing propaganda says are evil. Yeah this is so seruious that we should definitely all quickly jump into being right wing surveillance states to prevent the leftists from doing something about us all eating massive amounts of shit right now.
see that’s the funny bit. I’ve met like 2 self proclaimed tankies irl, all other leftists think they’re lame as hell.
they don’t organize, they just sit behind keyboards and pretend they are.
as long as they show up and help, I have never met anyone who has a problem with them existing in irl leftists groups on ideology alone. it’s when they say shit like Ukraine is full of Nazis, or voting isn’t even worth showing up to the polls, or that the uyghur genocide is a lie, then they gotta go.
Sharing my experience: I have found that online, “tankie” just gets thrown at any leftist that “goes too far” authoritarian or not.
Do I agree with the Soviet use of tanks to suppress dissident in Europe in the 19th century? In so far as I wasn’t there and therefore don’t know fuck all about it: no. Am I going to clamor to distance myself from people who are accused of being tankies on Lemmy, especially if the people making the accusations are soc dems or centerists? Nah. Not engaging with that nonsense.
I’ve never met someone calling themselves that IRL, but that might be because it’s more of a youth thing. I agree that there is a lot more cooperation IRL, which is what’s important.
I appreciate some attempt at answering it, but I gotta be honest and say it seems pretty dogshit so far. I clicked on the “proof” that “showing any support for Ukriane would get you banned” and the post is inaccesible, the comment is too and the only context I have is some user, who has since received a bunch other moderation strikes, claims that they just wrote “slava ukraini”. On what post? No clue. Given how often someone makes up some story about how they were just a uwu smol bean who totally just said “I think we should all be friends” and then the meanevil [outgroup] just BANNED them out of the blue!! Then I have my doubts on that one.
So I looked for some other comment that might showing a large group of ml users declaring their undying love for neoliberal russia, the oligarch putin, and a hatred for all things marxist. In lack of that I clicked on the post that had undeniable PROOF of the admin of .ml declaring his wholehearted support for RUSSIA only to see… A common meme
If this counts as proof that this guy supports everything about Russia, may I then say it is safe to assume you love:
You know, since apparently sharing a meme that indicates any sort of support for a country means you support everything about it. I just want to make sure. And before you respond with “well Russia is bad too” or “whataboutism” or something like that, let me make it clear: I think Russia sucks and I hope the country undergoes major changes. My question here isn’t to justify some international action, it’s to make sure I understand your logic.
After this point of link-clicking it kind of seemed to me like the links didn’t really prove anything or say what they said, and were more just something made by some guy who was butthurt at leftists, so I stopped looking. Please share me any specific link if you have one. Let me know if I missed a “good one” in the aggregation of things that don’t describe what they claim to describe.
People attacking the .ml people for organizing while under pressure from the biggest worldwide alt right push in our generation is the funniest shit to me
There can often be a lot of apathy and de-motivation coming out of .ml; particularly around elections and harm minimization. The way they talk about voting you would think its as much effort as having a week long strike.
The way they talk about voting you would think its as much effort as having a week long strike.
“The way they respond to me constantly talking about voting, in a thread with a strawman position on what leftists say about voting” would be a more honest portrayal. But you struggle with honesty.
Since you’re using me as an example, my point is about the enormous efforts and resources some organizations pour into increasing voter turnout and electoral strategies over the time-tested and far more effective strategies of actually struggling and organizing. No, an individual taking a couple hours to vote isn’t a problem. It’s a problem when an organization makes preparing for, canvassing for, advertising for, and organizing for elections their primary focus. That takes far more effort than even week-long strikes, yet it’s a common strategy.
The point isn’t that individuals shouldn’t spend a couple hours to vote. The point is that voting cannot establish socialism, so organizations that pour a ton of resources into electoral campaigns are wasting valuable resources that could be poured into unionizing, organizing tenants, educating cadre, and growing the organization through on-the-ground struggle.
It’s intensely dishonest to frame it as opposition to spending a couple hours voting on election day. The entire political theatrics that surround elections is a months-years long process that takes up mountains of resources better spent on growing and organizing than pinning all hopes on candidates being able to change the system from within.
It’s a problem when an organization makes preparing for, canvassing for, advertising for, and organizing for elections their primary focus
Things that will also be happening when doing any other organizing. So taking some time to also have a candidate in primaries to shift the conversation further left is worthwhile. Not to even bring up minimizing harm as a last resort when needed.
So forgive me, but I don’t see my framing as dishonest.
Your framing was that Marxists oppose “sparing a few hours to vote.” This is incorrect, and now that I drew attention to this mischaracterization you’re pivoting hard from this. Many Marxist orgs do run candidates, such as PSL, but this is never the focus, as resources can always be better spent. You used my comment as an example, so it’s important that I set the record straight.
Your framing was that Marxists oppose “sparing a few hours to vote.” This is incorrect
Your wording, and that of many others in .ml is ultimately one that is demoralizing those who are also helping on that front and one that is by and large read as against voting, as well as being self defeating. Maybe you personally are not, so perhaps pass some notes to the rest of the crew.
demoralizing those who are also helping on that front
This is the most honest statement I’ve seen on the topic. Yes, absolutely, it is obvious that when we educate people about the lack of impact voting has that people get demoralized. In fact, they think we are attacking them because they feel anxiety, fear, and despondency.
I don’t think there’s any denying that. But it’s basically the same argument as when white parents say that we shouldn’t teach kids about the horrors of slavery because it will make them feel bad about themselves.
The truth is painful sometimes. It is difficult to have your beliefs challenged and more difficult to change your beliefs and your behavior as a result.
All of that is true.
But what Cowbee is saying about wasting millions of dollars and person-hours and political capital and trust on something that is a dead end is worse for harm reduction and liberation. Everyone ought to vote. End of story. No one ought to donate to the DNC. No one should be spending their time door knocking for Democrats. No one should be fighting with their fellow workers if they don’t feel like voting. No one should be spending time getting more people registered to vote. None of it is useful and it propagates a falsehood about the path to liberation.
If you want harm reduction faster and sooner start organizing with revolutionary organizations. You and I do not have enough time to be part of three or for political groups, attend rallies for multiple parties, and to develop the skills and rhetorical training for multiple goals. For anyone who wants the world to change for the better the absolute fastest path is a general strike and literally anything that takes away from that is slowing down justice and harm reduction.
People say we can walk and chew gum at the same time. I agree. Individuals will vote and then do revolutionary organizing. But don’t tell me that someone holding down a full time job can volunteer for the DNC, the WFP, and also do revolutionary organizing at the same time. I’ve tried it. It was impossible for me, there’s just not enough time to do it all, let alone do it well.
We will all see massive harm reduction if we focus on the root cause. That’s what it means to be radical - go to the root. Abortion, medicine, food, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, racialized mass incarceration, homelessness, ecocide, war, human trafficking, the opioid crisis, poverty … you could spend your whole life trying to fix these things by voting for the right candidates and make no progress. Or you could do the root cause analysis and organize to address the root cause. The root cause is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and their maintenance of the imperial capitalist system. That’s it. One solid root cause, one place to focus all of our efforts, all of our messaging, all of our education, all of our training, all of our organizing, and all of our relationships and trust building.
That one thing will protect all of your friends and family and the oppressed in your community and around the world more than 100 years of voting ever will. And that’s why all of the research, evidence, and history proves out. From centuries-ago history to recent history, it all points to the same conclusion.
So yes, this analysis is demoralizing for people who volunteer earnestly every year for a Democrat candidate they really believe in. Yes it’s demoralizing for the people who donate every month, listen to the podcasts, follow the inside baseball, and hang their emotional well being on electoralism on the faulty premise that this is how we will save people and the planet. Yes, of course it’s demoralizing. But just as you have no obligation to make people feel a certain way about their false beliefs, I and those who share my position have no obligation to maintain the morale of people who believe voting will save us or even result in harm reduction. Our obligation is to propagate our analysis of the way the world works, to constantly revise our understanding based on research and data and lived experiences, to debate within our own communities about the various positions we have, and to adapt our understandings and our behaviors to have the maximum positive effect on the world. In our analysis, that means shutting down the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie as fast as possible by any means possible. The general strike is the least harmful and most readily available means.
And while people are striking, they can still take time to vote their conscience.
Can I just say I think this was eloquently put, and I philosophically and intellectually largely agree.
In Australia where I live voting is compulsory; in that context there is less conflict in that “d, all of the above” praxis can be actualised simultaneously.
However, I am ambivalent about it in the context of the USA, however, where militating every possible vote against someone as egregiously awful and negatively impactful as Donald Trump seems from the outside to be a no brainer.
I say this admittedly selfishly, as the decisions he/his handlers make particularly in the realm of rolling back of environmental rights seem to impact the entire world for generations to come.
However, maybe this is just our Great Filter ¯\(ツ)/¯
Life will continue, perhaps it’s for the best it does so without H “sapiens”
But Trump is not unique in this. The largest polluter in the world, bar none, is the US military. Every administration, every legislature, every politician, both parties expand the military and use it to bomb people all over the world.
Obama led the greatest expansion of fossil fuel extraction in the US ever.
All of Eurocentric society is guilty of destroying the planet. The Euro-empire developed the extraction processes, separated billions of people from their relationship with the planet (starting with themselves), and then imposed massive environmental destruction on those they subjugated as a condition of their survival.
I hope this is the filter for the eurocentric world and that settler states like your and mine get dissolved in the coming decades and that white people in those settler states become assimilated into the societies that remain connected to the land. The idea that a single group of humans could cause the extinction of everyone else is not something I’m willing to just shrug off. It has to be stopped, and voting hasn’t stopped it or even slowed it down.
Well, that is just not true. And for all the organizing that the crew in MLs claim to be doing there isn’t much to show for. Still I am not going to bad mouth them for working on their front, but I am calling them out for abandoning us here and their lack of strategic perspective. You have to live to fight another day.
And literally no amount of campaigning for the Ds will help you live another day. The Ds supported the creation of the enemy combatant designation. They supported mass domestic surveillance. They pioneered using drones against US citizens abroad. They created the DHS and ICE policies being used against us today. They created the private prison operation contractor market to achieve mass incarceration. They pioneered the mass deportation program. They cross the aisle and collaborate with the Republicans to condemn communism and socialism. They do had the entire Epstein Files in the DOJ and did nothing to stop anyone despite knowing the the Trump Faction’s plans.
You are making claims that sound good but have no basis in reality. Democrats have never allowed us to live another day, its our fellow citizens that do that. And the more we focus on electoralism, the more that protection erodes because it does nothing to address the power system and its root and every day that power system works to split the working class in order to divide and conquer us.
The Ds are not protecting you. They never have and they never will.
So, to retread that comment, I said 2 important things:
Organizing is the method by which to grow working class power and gain change
Marxists do not emphasize voting because capitalism cannot be reformed into socialism from within
I fail to see how identifying a working strategy and arguing against a failed strategy is “demoralizing.” If anything, knowing for a fact that organizational practice is key, effective, and practical is extremely uplifting. I am also explicitly in this comment against focusing on elections, not against voting in any and all capacities.
Perhaps you should stop spreading disinformation and sowing division by misrepresenting the views of Marxists? Then you likely wouldn’t see such strong pushback from people correcting the record. It’s the same tired strawman as those that say socialists support Trump because we also oppose the DNC.
I fail to see how identifying a working strategy and arguing against a failed strategy is “demoralizing.”
With all respect I am not calling names to your views, even with their lack of apparent progress. DSA won a major election in NYC and is becoming more known. Even then many places don’t have a DSA at all, let alone a PSL.
You are at the end of the day ranting about people wanting the general public to vote as left as possible where they are. That is quite divisive.
Congrats to the DSA for winning the mayoral seat in New York City! The primary advantage of this is that it advertises the DSA as an organization that, at least nominally, supports socialism. Mamdani’s position, however, helps highlight the futility of trying to change capitalism into socialism brick by brick from within, why electoralism is inevitably a dead-end, and the only utility it has with respect to socialism is advertising.
You are correct to say that many places do not have a DSA, or a PSL. This is why the focus should be on grassroots organizing, not electoral campaigns. Imagine if the resources used by the DSA to canvass for elections were employed by disciplined cadre sent out to these areas to start new chapters! The PSL does this, but by nature of being a demcent party is smaller. The strength of the DSA is in numbers, the weakness is in always tailing behind when it comes to strategy and tactics.
To the DSA’s credit, internally there is widespread debate about reform vs revolution. If the DSA successfully converts to a revolutionary organization, then I will re-evaluate them.
I am not “ranting about people wanting the general public to vote as left as possible.” This, again, is a dishonest characterization of myself and the Marxist position on resource allocation in an organizational capacity. I am vocally opposing making elections the primary capacity by which an organization uses its resources and efforts, and instead advocating for making grassroots organizing the primary effort. This is the Marxist position, not what you have been presenting in memes and comments.
I’ve said this time and time again. They do not care about Palestinians either. They want people like Trump in charge, because they’re just fascists in a different coat of paint and millions or even tens of millions of casualties is completely fine as long as it harms the reputation of a western country, any of them in fact.
Have you ever actually listened to the people for whom you’re so busy constructing a tenement in your brain? Or do you just wait for them to finish talking so you can continue to argue against imaginary positions?
I’ve had too many discussions with tankies praising genocide to listen to them anymore. Not everyone from .ml is a tankie, but far too many are and tankies are absolutely disgusting human beings. They’ve constantly shown that people dying is great if it happens for the right cause.
I’ve had too many discussions with tankies praising genocide
I’ve yet to see that happen once. You people keep making these claims and whenever you get asked you make vague gestures about it happening "soooo often, too many times I just can’t bear to repeat it!"
It’s the worlds laziest copout.
If it happened so often then it wouldn’t be that hard to find a few easy quotes to illustrate it. And lets be honest, if it happened so often you make it out to, then you would not be saying this. You would gleefully pull out some fucked up sketchbook to prove how evil these damn tankies are.
In my experience most of people from your instance (and .world) are generally frothing at the mouth racists, and I would not have a hard time to support that claim, if asked. Now I don’t have a sketchbook, but I can go looking. I usually just jump into any thread about China or Russia and I’ll see a bunch of people out with their calipers.
It’s wild how you people just make up shit all the time and people just buy it uncritically, because it’s about a group they’re preconditioned to hate.
Edit: funny how theres always radio silence as soon as one asks for proof for the preposterous claims
None of us want Trump in charge. Accusing communists of being fascists or not supporting Palestinians simply because we emphasize the importance of grassroots organizing over trying to change the system from within is dishonest.
Yet if you don’t vote against fascists, you’re legitimizing what they’re doing. And voting doesn’t mean you need to stop the grassroots organizing. Voting should be only one of many things you do when fighting against fascism, but it should still be one. Every American who did not vote for Harris knowing she was the only candidate with the ability to stop Trump 2.0 from happening, shares part of the blame for everything Trump’s done this term. And no, this doesn’t absolve the DNC from guilt for giving you a shitty candidate in the first place… But if your options are literally “let fascists win” or “bite the bullet and buy 4 more years to hopefully change things via midterms and primaries”, what kind of a sick joke is telling everyone to NOT vote against Trump? That voting against Trump makes them support genocide? Millions upon millions have suffered because of it since January 2025. AS HE PROMISED.
I did vote against fascists, just not for the DNC, who are also a party of genocidal imperialists. Fascism is not an organic movement, it’s what happens when the capitalist class realizes that bourgeois democracy stands to risk their control. It’s also why voting can never establish socialism, or prevent fascism, it’s the decision of a class that is in control of the state to begin with.
A Harris presidency would have continued to see genocide in Palestine, as Biden did, and would have continued the US Empire as normal. Domestic conditions would likely have been a bit more stable, but the fundamental imperialist system that props up both the DNC and GOP would continue to face the same decay and reaction we see under Trump today.
The only way to actually prevent fascism is to organize at the grassroots, and establish socialism through revolution. You place a horrendously false binary of “let fascists win” or “bite the bullet and buy 4 more years to change things via midterms and the primaries.” The former is out of our control to begin with, and the latter is not an actual path forward. The only path forward is revolution, which requires focusing our efforts on building a unified, disciplined, educated working class party that stands opposed to the imperialist system from the outside.
Framing the hours of effort I give every week, every month, every year as “supporting Trump” because I don’t take an electoralist focus is absurd. The only way to end the rule of the DNC and GOP is not through trying to reform the DNC from within, but from fighting the system directly.
Much less than if you vote for them, which is what people want you to do by voting democrat. And by not voting for a fascist you are in fact signalling they don’t have your support, which means they are less legitimate. There’s a reason why “authoritarian dictators” generally have voter participation in the +90% range and receive the vast majority of votes. It makes them appear more legitimate.
Every American who did not vote for Harris knowing she was the only candidate with the ability to stop Trump 2.0 from happening, shares part of the blame for everything Trump’s done this term
We might be getting into some complicated politics here, but the way voting works is that if you vote for someone, then they get your vote. If you don’t, then they don’t.
What you’re presenting here is also Harris as if she’s not just basically Trump, which she is. She ran on committing genocide, pursuing brinksmanship with all of the US’ enemies, continuing her support for Israel, deporting more people than trump, giving more money to cops, being less woke, cracking down on protesters, increasing the military budget and all the stuff we don’t like when Trump does it.
But if your options are literally “let fascists win” or “bite the bullet and buy 4 more years to hopefully change things via midterms and primaries”
They were both fascists. Yet here we see something interesting, you introduce a longer-term scope - something beyond the immediate. So why is it, that when we argue voting for the democrats, we can apply a long-term perspective, but when we argue against voting democrat, then suddenly it is all here-and-now? How do you think an alternative is created? Do you think it appears out of thin air? No, it grows slowly. Which is why people vote third party or don’t vote democrat (or republican, but that’s a given.)
Finally, you make it out to be that the only thing that matters is wether or not someone voted for Kamala. In other words: Voting is everything, nothing else matters. This is such an odd position, yet I see you DNC-dogs take it constantly. When you are told “don’t vote for the democrats” or “voting does not matter” then you respond “Oh, so I should just do nothing then??”
People not voting for Harris does not mean they did nothing (and by not voting they have already done far more to work against american fascism), but you assume it does. Telling.
wrong, i absolutely do not want trump in charge. i want the democrats to suck less. i put the 2024 election loss at their feet. i wish they had actually delivered things for people (other than bombs to the genocide) so they didn’t eat shit.
the people blaming voters for the democrats obscene incompetence are actively making things worse by refusing to learn anything.
i wish they had actually delivered things for people (other than bombs to the genocide) so they didn’t eat shit.
@[email protected], see I don’t think they are being fake here. They have a point here.
Still they are not under siege, so its easy to keep your purity clean and say something is not good enough. Would a total stop to support of Israel be good? Of course. The overall tone is all or nothing; which surprise they got nothing given their tendency to walk away from the table and surrender all possible influence they might have, so they cannot even muster a reduction of aid to Israel.
Its not clear what their superior community engagement has brought to that or other causes. I suppose they could travel to Yemen and enlist in the Houthis’ army. For what its worth they did say they are standing up to Israel and taking serious action.
the people blaming voters for the democrats obscene incompetence are actively making things worse by refusing to learn anything.
Its a fair point, but also a self fulfilling prophecy. If you walk away from the conversation you lose your position. It is not a surprise that those who left got nothing. Or that when they return they have nothing to build from their previous success. Mamdani is a good example here. The DSA can point to his record for re-election and other DSA can point to him and say lets bring that here; rather than just abstract talking points.
Its okay if .ml isn’t the tip of the spear on the electoral front, but their disparaging is counter productive and damages overall leftist unity.
the “walk away from the conversation” framing assumes that conversation is a place where meaningful negotiation happens.
the democratic party has demonstrated repeatedly that left pressure doesn’t move them. they take the votes and ignore the demands, then they act as if they were always going to win and never needed you (at least until it’s time to cope about a loss, then we’re entirely to blame).
doesn’t matter if it’s for palestine, trans healthcare, minimum wage increase, universal healthcare, more often than not it’s the democrats calling the cops on people for speaking up.
i’ve said before but your vision of ‘left unity’ reads like attempts to discipline leftists, ie get us to shut up about things that make liberals uncomfortable and precompromise with them.
i’ve said before but your vision of ‘left unity’ reads like attempts to discipline leftists, ie get us to shut up about things that make liberals uncomfortable and precompromise with them.
I didn’t tell anyone to shut up. I am saying your surrendering an important part of our class war. Even Lenin said we should engage in electoral politics. We are on a complete back foot here and mls have a defeated complex about building momentum.
Like I pointed out. Not every place is fortunate to have a DSA or PSL, so we must do the best we can. Everyone who defeated imperial powers did it over the long term not on a blitz.
Even Lenin said we should engage in electoral politics.
i’m an anarchist, but i’ve still read a bit of lenin. in fact one of the polemics of his that i’ve read was ‘left wing communism an infantile disorder’, the text you’re paraphrasing.
his point was about using bourgeois parliaments as a platform for revolutionary agitation and exposing their limitations as a part of a workers movement. it was not about supporting bourgeois parties or treating elections as the primary terrain of struggle. invoking that in support of voting for democrats is a distortion of what the polemic was about.
Not every place is fortunate to have a DSA or PSL, so we must do the best we can. Everyone who defeated imperial powers did it over the long term not on a blitz.
this is exactly why i prefer to devote my energy to making sure that my neighbors can eat and protesting against democrats capitulating to republicans. i don’t see those problems going away after a successful election, even when democrats have a supermajority they find a way to do what republicans want.
his point was about using bourgeois parliaments as a platform for revolutionary agitation and exposing their limitations as a part of a workers movement. it was not about supporting bourgeois parties or treating elections as the primary terrain of struggle. invoking that in support of voting for democrats is a distortion of what the polemic was about.
And for that you need to build a little foothold. Which we lack in many places federal to local.
this is exactly why i prefer to devote my energy to making sure that my neighbors can eat and protesting against democrats capitulating to republicans. i don’t see those problems going away after a successful election, even when democrats have a supermajority they find a way to do what republicans want.
And you would have more room to do that with mid dems too.
Lenin said principled leftists parties could make use of elections as a way of gaining more popular support. The democrats are not principled leftists.
Struggling directly against the capitalist state at every opportunity, on the ground, is “actively helping Trump and the GOP win elections?” What kind of nonsense double-speak is this?
Okay this might be difficult to understand, but the people who didnt vote for Kamala because of her many issues also didnt vote for Trump due to his many issues.
People attacking the .ml people for organizing while under pressure from the biggest worldwide alt right push in our generation is the funniest shit to me. God forbid the leftists start thinking collectively, you saw what happened to the donald? We’re currently fucked by all that chicanery but heavens forbid you start thinking in the opposite direction too much, wouldn’t want to get out of the right wing mess that we’re living through, least of all if we put in place all those policies my right wing propaganda says are evil. Yeah this is so seruious that we should definitely all quickly jump into being right wing surveillance states to prevent the leftists from doing something about us all eating massive amounts of shit right now.
see that’s the funny bit. I’ve met like 2 self proclaimed tankies irl, all other leftists think they’re lame as hell.
they don’t organize, they just sit behind keyboards and pretend they are.
as long as they show up and help, I have never met anyone who has a problem with them existing in irl leftists groups on ideology alone. it’s when they say shit like Ukraine is full of Nazis, or voting isn’t even worth showing up to the polls, or that the uyghur genocide is a lie, then they gotta go.
Sharing my experience: I have found that online, “tankie” just gets thrown at any leftist that “goes too far” authoritarian or not.
Do I agree with the Soviet use of tanks to suppress dissident in Europe in the 19th century? In so far as I wasn’t there and therefore don’t know fuck all about it: no. Am I going to clamor to distance myself from people who are accused of being tankies on Lemmy, especially if the people making the accusations are soc dems or centerists? Nah. Not engaging with that nonsense.
I’ve never met someone calling themselves that IRL, but that might be because it’s more of a youth thing. I agree that there is a lot more cooperation IRL, which is what’s important.
They are authoritarians. They are only against trump because its not their boot thats stomping. They dont fight trump they only fight the left.
Define “authoritarian” without using the word “authoritarianism” or variations thereof or “totalitarian” or variations thereof.
https://lemmy.nz/post/22289983
I appreciate some attempt at answering it, but I gotta be honest and say it seems pretty dogshit so far. I clicked on the “proof” that “showing any support for Ukriane would get you banned” and the post is inaccesible, the comment is too and the only context I have is some user, who has since received a bunch other moderation strikes, claims that they just wrote “slava ukraini”. On what post? No clue. Given how often someone makes up some story about how they were just a uwu smol bean who totally just said “I think we should all be friends” and then the mean evil [outgroup] just BANNED them out of the blue!! Then I have my doubts on that one.
So I looked for some other comment that might showing a large group of ml users declaring their undying love for neoliberal russia, the oligarch putin, and a hatred for all things marxist. In lack of that I clicked on the post that had undeniable PROOF of the admin of .ml declaring his wholehearted support for RUSSIA only to see… A common meme
If this counts as proof that this guy supports everything about Russia, may I then say it is safe to assume you love:
You know, since apparently sharing a meme that indicates any sort of support for a country means you support everything about it. I just want to make sure. And before you respond with “well Russia is bad too” or “whataboutism” or something like that, let me make it clear: I think Russia sucks and I hope the country undergoes major changes. My question here isn’t to justify some international action, it’s to make sure I understand your logic.
After this point of link-clicking it kind of seemed to me like the links didn’t really prove anything or say what they said, and were more just something made by some guy who was butthurt at leftists, so I stopped looking. Please share me any specific link if you have one. Let me know if I missed a “good one” in the aggregation of things that don’t describe what they claim to describe.
There can often be a lot of apathy and de-motivation coming out of
.ml; particularly around elections and harm minimization. The way they talk about voting you would think its as much effort as having a week long strike.We could have better discourse and solidarity.
“The way they respond to me constantly talking about voting, in a thread with a strawman position on what leftists say about voting” would be a more honest portrayal. But you struggle with honesty.
Heres a comment I wrote about why leftists talk about voting as they do
Since you’re using me as an example, my point is about the enormous efforts and resources some organizations pour into increasing voter turnout and electoral strategies over the time-tested and far more effective strategies of actually struggling and organizing. No, an individual taking a couple hours to vote isn’t a problem. It’s a problem when an organization makes preparing for, canvassing for, advertising for, and organizing for elections their primary focus. That takes far more effort than even week-long strikes, yet it’s a common strategy.
The point isn’t that individuals shouldn’t spend a couple hours to vote. The point is that voting cannot establish socialism, so organizations that pour a ton of resources into electoral campaigns are wasting valuable resources that could be poured into unionizing, organizing tenants, educating cadre, and growing the organization through on-the-ground struggle.
It’s intensely dishonest to frame it as opposition to spending a couple hours voting on election day. The entire political theatrics that surround elections is a months-years long process that takes up mountains of resources better spent on growing and organizing than pinning all hopes on candidates being able to change the system from within.
Things that will also be happening when doing any other organizing. So taking some time to also have a candidate in primaries to shift the conversation further left is worthwhile. Not to even bring up minimizing harm as a last resort when needed.
So forgive me, but I don’t see my framing as dishonest.
Your framing was that Marxists oppose “sparing a few hours to vote.” This is incorrect, and now that I drew attention to this mischaracterization you’re pivoting hard from this. Many Marxist orgs do run candidates, such as PSL, but this is never the focus, as resources can always be better spent. You used my comment as an example, so it’s important that I set the record straight.
Your wording, and that of many others in
.mlis ultimately one that is demoralizing those who are also helping on that front and one that is by and large read as against voting, as well as being self defeating. Maybe you personally are not, so perhaps pass some notes to the rest of the crew.This is the most honest statement I’ve seen on the topic. Yes, absolutely, it is obvious that when we educate people about the lack of impact voting has that people get demoralized. In fact, they think we are attacking them because they feel anxiety, fear, and despondency.
I don’t think there’s any denying that. But it’s basically the same argument as when white parents say that we shouldn’t teach kids about the horrors of slavery because it will make them feel bad about themselves.
The truth is painful sometimes. It is difficult to have your beliefs challenged and more difficult to change your beliefs and your behavior as a result.
All of that is true.
But what Cowbee is saying about wasting millions of dollars and person-hours and political capital and trust on something that is a dead end is worse for harm reduction and liberation. Everyone ought to vote. End of story. No one ought to donate to the DNC. No one should be spending their time door knocking for Democrats. No one should be fighting with their fellow workers if they don’t feel like voting. No one should be spending time getting more people registered to vote. None of it is useful and it propagates a falsehood about the path to liberation.
If you want harm reduction faster and sooner start organizing with revolutionary organizations. You and I do not have enough time to be part of three or for political groups, attend rallies for multiple parties, and to develop the skills and rhetorical training for multiple goals. For anyone who wants the world to change for the better the absolute fastest path is a general strike and literally anything that takes away from that is slowing down justice and harm reduction.
People say we can walk and chew gum at the same time. I agree. Individuals will vote and then do revolutionary organizing. But don’t tell me that someone holding down a full time job can volunteer for the DNC, the WFP, and also do revolutionary organizing at the same time. I’ve tried it. It was impossible for me, there’s just not enough time to do it all, let alone do it well.
We will all see massive harm reduction if we focus on the root cause. That’s what it means to be radical - go to the root. Abortion, medicine, food, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, racialized mass incarceration, homelessness, ecocide, war, human trafficking, the opioid crisis, poverty … you could spend your whole life trying to fix these things by voting for the right candidates and make no progress. Or you could do the root cause analysis and organize to address the root cause. The root cause is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and their maintenance of the imperial capitalist system. That’s it. One solid root cause, one place to focus all of our efforts, all of our messaging, all of our education, all of our training, all of our organizing, and all of our relationships and trust building.
That one thing will protect all of your friends and family and the oppressed in your community and around the world more than 100 years of voting ever will. And that’s why all of the research, evidence, and history proves out. From centuries-ago history to recent history, it all points to the same conclusion.
So yes, this analysis is demoralizing for people who volunteer earnestly every year for a Democrat candidate they really believe in. Yes it’s demoralizing for the people who donate every month, listen to the podcasts, follow the inside baseball, and hang their emotional well being on electoralism on the faulty premise that this is how we will save people and the planet. Yes, of course it’s demoralizing. But just as you have no obligation to make people feel a certain way about their false beliefs, I and those who share my position have no obligation to maintain the morale of people who believe voting will save us or even result in harm reduction. Our obligation is to propagate our analysis of the way the world works, to constantly revise our understanding based on research and data and lived experiences, to debate within our own communities about the various positions we have, and to adapt our understandings and our behaviors to have the maximum positive effect on the world. In our analysis, that means shutting down the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie as fast as possible by any means possible. The general strike is the least harmful and most readily available means.
And while people are striking, they can still take time to vote their conscience.
Can I just say I think this was eloquently put, and I philosophically and intellectually largely agree. In Australia where I live voting is compulsory; in that context there is less conflict in that “d, all of the above” praxis can be actualised simultaneously.
However, I am ambivalent about it in the context of the USA, however, where militating every possible vote against someone as egregiously awful and negatively impactful as Donald Trump seems from the outside to be a no brainer.
I say this admittedly selfishly, as the decisions he/his handlers make particularly in the realm of rolling back of environmental rights seem to impact the entire world for generations to come.
However, maybe this is just our Great Filter ¯\(ツ)/¯
Life will continue, perhaps it’s for the best it does so without H “sapiens”
But I weep for my (and all of our) children.
But Trump is not unique in this. The largest polluter in the world, bar none, is the US military. Every administration, every legislature, every politician, both parties expand the military and use it to bomb people all over the world.
Obama led the greatest expansion of fossil fuel extraction in the US ever.
All of Eurocentric society is guilty of destroying the planet. The Euro-empire developed the extraction processes, separated billions of people from their relationship with the planet (starting with themselves), and then imposed massive environmental destruction on those they subjugated as a condition of their survival.
I hope this is the filter for the eurocentric world and that settler states like your and mine get dissolved in the coming decades and that white people in those settler states become assimilated into the societies that remain connected to the land. The idea that a single group of humans could cause the extinction of everyone else is not something I’m willing to just shrug off. It has to be stopped, and voting hasn’t stopped it or even slowed it down.
Well, that is just not true. And for all the organizing that the crew in MLs claim to be doing there isn’t much to show for. Still I am not going to bad mouth them for working on their front, but I am calling them out for abandoning us here and their lack of strategic perspective. You have to live to fight another day.
And literally no amount of campaigning for the Ds will help you live another day. The Ds supported the creation of the enemy combatant designation. They supported mass domestic surveillance. They pioneered using drones against US citizens abroad. They created the DHS and ICE policies being used against us today. They created the private prison operation contractor market to achieve mass incarceration. They pioneered the mass deportation program. They cross the aisle and collaborate with the Republicans to condemn communism and socialism. They do had the entire Epstein Files in the DOJ and did nothing to stop anyone despite knowing the the Trump Faction’s plans.
You are making claims that sound good but have no basis in reality. Democrats have never allowed us to live another day, its our fellow citizens that do that. And the more we focus on electoralism, the more that protection erodes because it does nothing to address the power system and its root and every day that power system works to split the working class in order to divide and conquer us.
The Ds are not protecting you. They never have and they never will.
So, to retread that comment, I said 2 important things:
Organizing is the method by which to grow working class power and gain change
Marxists do not emphasize voting because capitalism cannot be reformed into socialism from within
I fail to see how identifying a working strategy and arguing against a failed strategy is “demoralizing.” If anything, knowing for a fact that organizational practice is key, effective, and practical is extremely uplifting. I am also explicitly in this comment against focusing on elections, not against voting in any and all capacities.
Perhaps you should stop spreading disinformation and sowing division by misrepresenting the views of Marxists? Then you likely wouldn’t see such strong pushback from people correcting the record. It’s the same tired strawman as those that say socialists support Trump because we also oppose the DNC.
With all respect I am not calling names to your views, even with their lack of apparent progress. DSA won a major election in NYC and is becoming more known. Even then many places don’t have a DSA at all, let alone a PSL.
You are at the end of the day ranting about people wanting the general public to vote as left as possible where they are. That is quite divisive.
Congrats to the DSA for winning the mayoral seat in New York City! The primary advantage of this is that it advertises the DSA as an organization that, at least nominally, supports socialism. Mamdani’s position, however, helps highlight the futility of trying to change capitalism into socialism brick by brick from within, why electoralism is inevitably a dead-end, and the only utility it has with respect to socialism is advertising.
You are correct to say that many places do not have a DSA, or a PSL. This is why the focus should be on grassroots organizing, not electoral campaigns. Imagine if the resources used by the DSA to canvass for elections were employed by disciplined cadre sent out to these areas to start new chapters! The PSL does this, but by nature of being a demcent party is smaller. The strength of the DSA is in numbers, the weakness is in always tailing behind when it comes to strategy and tactics.
To the DSA’s credit, internally there is widespread debate about reform vs revolution. If the DSA successfully converts to a revolutionary organization, then I will re-evaluate them.
I am not “ranting about people wanting the general public to vote as left as possible.” This, again, is a dishonest characterization of myself and the Marxist position on resource allocation in an organizational capacity. I am vocally opposing making elections the primary capacity by which an organization uses its resources and efforts, and instead advocating for making grassroots organizing the primary effort. This is the Marxist position, not what you have been presenting in memes and comments.
I’ve said this time and time again. They do not care about Palestinians either. They want people like Trump in charge, because they’re just fascists in a different coat of paint and millions or even tens of millions of casualties is completely fine as long as it harms the reputation of a western country, any of them in fact.
Have you ever actually listened to the people for whom you’re so busy constructing a tenement in your brain? Or do you just wait for them to finish talking so you can continue to argue against imaginary positions?
I’ve had too many discussions with tankies praising genocide to listen to them anymore. Not everyone from .ml is a tankie, but far too many are and tankies are absolutely disgusting human beings. They’ve constantly shown that people dying is great if it happens for the right cause.
I’ve yet to see that happen once. You people keep making these claims and whenever you get asked you make vague gestures about it happening "soooo often, too many times I just can’t bear to repeat it!"
It’s the worlds laziest copout.
If it happened so often then it wouldn’t be that hard to find a few easy quotes to illustrate it. And lets be honest, if it happened so often you make it out to, then you would not be saying this. You would gleefully pull out some fucked up sketchbook to prove how evil these damn tankies are.
In my experience most of people from your instance (and .world) are generally frothing at the mouth racists, and I would not have a hard time to support that claim, if asked. Now I don’t have a sketchbook, but I can go looking. I usually just jump into any thread about China or Russia and I’ll see a bunch of people out with their calipers.
It’s wild how you people just make up shit all the time and people just buy it uncritically, because it’s about a group they’re preconditioned to hate.
Edit: funny how theres always radio silence as soon as one asks for proof for the preposterous claims
Absolutely nonsense, communists don’t praise genocide. Share receipts or stop the blood libel.
None of us want Trump in charge. Accusing communists of being fascists or not supporting Palestinians simply because we emphasize the importance of grassroots organizing over trying to change the system from within is dishonest.
Yet if you don’t vote against fascists, you’re legitimizing what they’re doing. And voting doesn’t mean you need to stop the grassroots organizing. Voting should be only one of many things you do when fighting against fascism, but it should still be one. Every American who did not vote for Harris knowing she was the only candidate with the ability to stop Trump 2.0 from happening, shares part of the blame for everything Trump’s done this term. And no, this doesn’t absolve the DNC from guilt for giving you a shitty candidate in the first place… But if your options are literally “let fascists win” or “bite the bullet and buy 4 more years to hopefully change things via midterms and primaries”, what kind of a sick joke is telling everyone to NOT vote against Trump? That voting against Trump makes them support genocide? Millions upon millions have suffered because of it since January 2025. AS HE PROMISED.
I did vote against fascists, just not for the DNC, who are also a party of genocidal imperialists. Fascism is not an organic movement, it’s what happens when the capitalist class realizes that bourgeois democracy stands to risk their control. It’s also why voting can never establish socialism, or prevent fascism, it’s the decision of a class that is in control of the state to begin with.
A Harris presidency would have continued to see genocide in Palestine, as Biden did, and would have continued the US Empire as normal. Domestic conditions would likely have been a bit more stable, but the fundamental imperialist system that props up both the DNC and GOP would continue to face the same decay and reaction we see under Trump today.
The only way to actually prevent fascism is to organize at the grassroots, and establish socialism through revolution. You place a horrendously false binary of “let fascists win” or “bite the bullet and buy 4 more years to change things via midterms and the primaries.” The former is out of our control to begin with, and the latter is not an actual path forward. The only path forward is revolution, which requires focusing our efforts on building a unified, disciplined, educated working class party that stands opposed to the imperialist system from the outside.
Framing the hours of effort I give every week, every month, every year as “supporting Trump” because I don’t take an electoralist focus is absurd. The only way to end the rule of the DNC and GOP is not through trying to reform the DNC from within, but from fighting the system directly.
Much less than if you vote for them, which is what people want you to do by voting democrat. And by not voting for a fascist you are in fact signalling they don’t have your support, which means they are less legitimate. There’s a reason why “authoritarian dictators” generally have voter participation in the +90% range and receive the vast majority of votes. It makes them appear more legitimate.
We might be getting into some complicated politics here, but the way voting works is that if you vote for someone, then they get your vote. If you don’t, then they don’t.
What you’re presenting here is also Harris as if she’s not just basically Trump, which she is. She ran on committing genocide, pursuing brinksmanship with all of the US’ enemies, continuing her support for Israel, deporting more people than trump, giving more money to cops, being less woke, cracking down on protesters, increasing the military budget and all the stuff we don’t like when Trump does it.
They were both fascists. Yet here we see something interesting, you introduce a longer-term scope - something beyond the immediate. So why is it, that when we argue voting for the democrats, we can apply a long-term perspective, but when we argue against voting democrat, then suddenly it is all here-and-now? How do you think an alternative is created? Do you think it appears out of thin air? No, it grows slowly. Which is why people vote third party or don’t vote democrat (or republican, but that’s a given.)
Finally, you make it out to be that the only thing that matters is wether or not someone voted for Kamala. In other words: Voting is everything, nothing else matters. This is such an odd position, yet I see you DNC-dogs take it constantly. When you are told “don’t vote for the democrats” or “voting does not matter” then you respond “Oh, so I should just do nothing then??”
People not voting for Harris does not mean they did nothing (and by not voting they have already done far more to work against american fascism), but you assume it does. Telling.
wrong, i absolutely do not want trump in charge. i want the democrats to suck less. i put the 2024 election loss at their feet. i wish they had actually delivered things for people (other than bombs to the genocide) so they didn’t eat shit.
the people blaming voters for the democrats obscene incompetence are actively making things worse by refusing to learn anything.
@[email protected], see I don’t think they are being fake here. They have a point here.
Still they are not under siege, so its easy to keep your purity clean and say something is not good enough. Would a total stop to support of Israel be good? Of course. The overall tone is all or nothing; which surprise they got nothing given their tendency to walk away from the table and surrender all possible influence they might have, so they cannot even muster a reduction of aid to Israel.
Its not clear what their superior community engagement has brought to that or other causes. I suppose they could travel to Yemen and enlist in the Houthis’ army. For what its worth they did say they are standing up to Israel and taking serious action.
Its a fair point, but also a self fulfilling prophecy. If you walk away from the conversation you lose your position. It is not a surprise that those who left got nothing. Or that when they return they have nothing to build from their previous success. Mamdani is a good example here. The DSA can point to his record for re-election and other DSA can point to him and say lets bring that here; rather than just abstract talking points.
Its okay if
.mlisn’t the tip of the spear on the electoral front, but their disparaging is counter productive and damages overall leftist unity.the “walk away from the conversation” framing assumes that conversation is a place where meaningful negotiation happens.
the democratic party has demonstrated repeatedly that left pressure doesn’t move them. they take the votes and ignore the demands, then they act as if they were always going to win and never needed you (at least until it’s time to cope about a loss, then we’re entirely to blame).
doesn’t matter if it’s for palestine, trans healthcare, minimum wage increase, universal healthcare, more often than not it’s the democrats calling the cops on people for speaking up.
i’ve said before but your vision of ‘left unity’ reads like attempts to discipline leftists, ie get us to shut up about things that make liberals uncomfortable and precompromise with them.
I didn’t tell anyone to shut up. I am saying your surrendering an important part of our class war. Even Lenin said we should engage in electoral politics. We are on a complete back foot here and mls have a defeated complex about building momentum.
Like I pointed out. Not every place is fortunate to have a DSA or PSL, so we must do the best we can. Everyone who defeated imperial powers did it over the long term not on a blitz.
i’m an anarchist, but i’ve still read a bit of lenin. in fact one of the polemics of his that i’ve read was ‘left wing communism an infantile disorder’, the text you’re paraphrasing.
his point was about using bourgeois parliaments as a platform for revolutionary agitation and exposing their limitations as a part of a workers movement. it was not about supporting bourgeois parties or treating elections as the primary terrain of struggle. invoking that in support of voting for democrats is a distortion of what the polemic was about.
this is exactly why i prefer to devote my energy to making sure that my neighbors can eat and protesting against democrats capitulating to republicans. i don’t see those problems going away after a successful election, even when democrats have a supermajority they find a way to do what republicans want.
And for that you need to build a little foothold. Which we lack in many places federal to local.
And you would have more room to do that with mid dems too.
Lenin said principled leftists parties could make use of elections as a way of gaining more popular support. The democrats are not principled leftists.
Nah, that’s a complete mischaracterization
All the .ml users replying to you:
“I don’t want trump in power!” Proceeds to actively help trump and the GOP win elections at every opportunity
Struggling directly against the capitalist state at every opportunity, on the ground, is “actively helping Trump and the GOP win elections?” What kind of nonsense double-speak is this?
Okay this might be difficult to understand, but the people who didnt vote for Kamala because of her many issues also didnt vote for Trump due to his many issues.