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.

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.

We could have better discourse and solidarity.

Instead they spend their time organizing for a revolution that isn’t coming like evangelicals preparing for the rapture, with no more ability to bring it about and with less public support.

It really does seem that way.

There is also a weird we are not going to get everything we want right away vibe from their comments. It gives a strange passiveness to someone so invested in the matters.

or are basically religious people (heard “voting scars your soul” or some shit once)

I’ve heard from JWs its a we are not of this world, so that is an affair that does not matter to us; which is not really the case of those here in the feddieverse.

Otherwise there is some valid points about who the DNC are. It still seems to me that its someone more concerned with their self perceived purity or something to that effect.

Its the gas guzzler trucks that are driven for no reason other than because they can who get the most vocal about gas prices

Lol and they like to have massive trump flags on their truck to kill any bit of efficiency they might have.

I’m not disparaging voting

Well maybe you can pass along that message to the rest of the .ml. Lot of the rhetoric coming from there is exactly what J. Edgar Hoover would have wanted for leftist movements.

the point is that voting cannot gain socialism. Reforms can be fought for, and should be, but the actual realm reforms are fought for is in the organizing front

This phrasing can be interpreted as disparaging voting. I wouldn’t say voting is the start and end of reform; just that it is part of taking action and being visible.

Accusing me of having a “privledged” stance for actually sticking my neck out and rolling my sleeves up to do organizing work is just a provacation.

Well elections have very real consequences for many of us and we don’t get to pick to move somewhere to be more shielded from them. Someone who does disparage voting is someone who is leaving cards on the table and likely does not have a sense of urgency and have little need for minimizing harm, so they have no issue skipping primaries and general or the rest of the local races on that same ballot.

Its unfortunate you feel this is provocative as this is just a calm discussion in a forum. No showing for elections and leaving the door open for motivated republicans to take office is provocative to me.

You can’t have it both ways friend. Either our path is impotent and we are small and unorganized or we actually have significant effects on the world and our strategies are working.

Feel free to elaborate.

Sure, but if you are disparaging to voting then its not relevant what party it is: PSL, DSA, or any other.

My point is that voting is still a form of organizing and disparaging it means demotivating the broader coalition. I think you have a point we won’t vote our way out of it. Still we can minimize harm. My life would be a lot better with Mamdami as my mayor. I live in Texas and a disappointing Talarico is still living to fight another day, where Paxton means assured death.

It is kind of a point of privileged to be able to dismiss elections and just wave them away as ineffectual. Its not a total dismantling, but taking the .ml road of don’t bother because you wont get everything is a total surrender and has serious consequences. Not all of us have the privileged to be able to ignore that.

The point isn’t to dissuade people from voting

Sure does not seem that way taking a stroll around .ml.

I’d also like to see more of that organizing and changing the system from people who dismiss voting. Talk is cheap.

Voting is fairly low effort to do. Running a campaign is a bit harder, but that is also like a marathon. It does take some time to be able to do well. I see .ml as someone who just showed up and wondered why they didn’t get very far.

It does not bother me that they don’t want to join a party. I get it. I think their critique around the DNC is right, but they should still at least spoil their ballot. I do find blue no matter who to be a last resort type thing.

Beyond that I don’t see them organizing workers or communities anywhere. FBI is taking them down? I don’t doubt feds are going to be doing opposition. I don’t think people too apathetic to vote are going to be gung ho about a protest that could turn violent, or even just talking with the general public if they are having a crashout in lemmy comment sections.

Yeah, I mean, that’s what organizing is for and that’s why the US had two purges of leftists, outlawed communist organizing, huge propaganda campaigns, bipartisan media manipulation, and we are now entering into a third purge with both parties supporting it including putting people into prison with 70-year sentences for free speech.

Let me guess… you are going to try anyway… even tho it is going to be opposed?

Yeah, I mean. That’s how concessions work. Small victories that in a few locations that symbolically work to make people feel like progress is possible. We can see the history of how these things have worked both in the US and all across Latin America - social democracy emerges to absorb the anger of the masses, some concessions are made, and then a right-wing backlash inevitably reverses it all because the structure is still built by and for the power elite. The only way to address this is dismantling the structure entirely and rebuilding it. Mamdani getting elected is a nice symbolic victory and it will make some people’s lives better for a few years. Hell, he may even make a couple of long term beneficial changes. But the power stays the same.

Cool, but your all or nothing still has nothing to show instead of having all. I am comfortable with the idea that I won’t be alive for the revolution. It can take a long time for society to change, but I do want to work toward it. .ml is spinning its wheels pretending they are right. Really they are more worried about their perceived purity keeping their shirt clean than actually helping anyone. I don’t see people serious about a peaceful or violent overthrow, but I do see a group that just wants to shit on those trying to do something. In that way .ml is like that meme of the the dems and republicans being a saw and stopper, but the .mls are the stopper as they are discouraging people from joining those trying something.

The biggest bloc of voting-eligible citizens is the non-voter bloc in the US, and that’s because a huge chunk of people correctly recognize that voting won’t change much.

And they are also not marching in the streets.

From the standpoint of organizing for socialism, what is to be done with this? Parties like the PSL do run candidates, but again, it’s explicitly to advertise their platform and to recruit.

And its a good idea. Like I’ve said before, voting is still part of organizing.

The DSA is struggling between a clean or dirty break with the DNC.

Okay. And?

It seems to me that you are very narrow minded about organizing and being able to do more than one thing. Is your community garden going to demolish the system? No. Its too small. Still I would not say its a waste of time. It is still a form of organizing and people taking action. Not all of us have access to one btw. Access to a ballot is still more accessible and we should vote as left as we can. If you are really that hung up on the DNC you can spoil your ballot on the general election day. Also did you know the ballot has more than just the presidential race?

You do not have to do anything to vote other than cast the vote. Organizing is far more than that

True

Organizing takes a lot of effort, but is worthwhile.

Also true. And from my interactions with .ml types they won’t do either. How could they if they drag their feet at something so basic, yet expect me to believe they will grab a rifle when things get heated?

By tying workers to the DNC, or your party to the DNC, you deflate action.

Same thing when you have that attitude around voting.

You should vote but upholding voting as the pinnacle of political engagement is silly. To change the system you must organize opposition to that system with support for a better one and that will never happen by just voting better in a system built for and captured by the capitalist class that have hegemony today.

This is a large part of my point. At a minimum it is low effort action. On its own its not a big deal, but people need small steps to gain confidence. Besides that it is also a call to action that got answered. This means other calls to action: sit ins or strikes, will have more credibility. The group has already shown some numbers at polls and its not just a hypothetical group.

Taking down the whole system? No push back from me. The attitude toward voting creates apathy around it which leaks to other parts of the movement.

The parties do what they want and voting is the symbolic concession that makes people feel like the reason politicians are bad is because the voters failed.

Well don’t give them the concession they want.

It’s very important to understand how organizing works. Organizing for voting is wasted organizing. There are plenty of ways to organize that have nothing to do with voting and that organizing has far and away more impact because voting is impotent. And when more people become aware of the impotence of voting, alternative actions becomes the conversation. Voting is not a gateway drug to direct action. It’s a distraction from it.

DSA has NYC to show for their efforts. They still have a long way. You don’t have anyone to take to the streets or staying power.

t’s that even if socialists won, they still cannot replace the system block by block into socialism. The state machinery itself is not neutral and system-indepentent, it’s developed and shaped specifically for the economic base that it reinforces. A socialist cannot use a capitalist state to create a socialist base and then a socialist state. That’s the critique.

And we should vote anyway. If your movement cannot be bothered to take an evening to do something that easy, even to spoil the ballot, it isn’t that serious or credible.

It’s the actual worker organizing in parties, unions, and social organizations that unite the working classes and allow it to exert pressure.

And I don’t disagree. Further elections don’t distract from this, but people who cannot be bothered to register to vote and act on it are also not going to have courage to strike which takes more effort and has the possibility to turn violent.

Basically, we should get organized, because that’s the actual only path forward.

Voting is a form of being organized and a small proof of willingness to action. Just so you know.

The criticism has been, for decades now, that the Democrats are collaborators with fascists, they are enablers of fascists, and they are, in fact, mask-on fascists. That’s the critique.

And you are not wrong, yet it is still where the DSA and the progressive movements live. At the end of your day you are discouraging people from helping them grow by being apathetic about voting. Like I said “Blue no matter who is really just a last resort and if you don’t want to then you should at least spoil your ballot.”

No one is saying “ooo, we can’t vote because they’ll oppose us”. We’re saying that voting is the system that the power elite hands us to make sure we feel like we have a say because if they didn’t do that then we’d riot.

Voting is Maggie Simpson’s steering wheel in the car - symbolic and powerless.

So… it will be opposed… I rest my case. Guess what the elite are going to work to make anything you try powerless. Should we stop trying all together? No we should do it anyway. Voting at is also low risk and low effort. If you cannot get your movement to do that there is no credibility you can do more.

Also if you read carefully you might notice i never said voting is the only thing we should be doing, but you won’t be doing that stuff either given how busy you are posting about how we should not vote. You should be proud of that btw; its the kind of leftist movement J. Edgar Hoover wanted to see. One apathetic about voting and without meaningful organization.

You’re a fool if you think the Ds are going to let the masses of voters decide what happens via the primary system.

Ohh no there’s going to be opposition?!?!

/s

can’t vote for a third party, I can’t organise outside of getting people to vote for fascists, I can’t wipe my own ass, it’s really too bad.

You should at least do that.