No one cares much about a firebombed walmart.
Liberals need to make up criticisms of Marxists in order to feel like they’re part of the conversation.
Nobody wants to firebomb a Walmart. That’s adventurism and pointless. You made that up and assigned it to Marxists because you’re anticommunist. Marxists believe in organizing the working class to defeat the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie we all live under and are being oppressed by, not randomly attacking buildings.
Reducing all of leftist theory to “lol they want to firebomb Walmart” is exactly the type of behavior we point to when we call liberal debate idealistic and not rooted in material reality.
Tl;dr youre a bunch of moronic liberals lashing out in incoherent ways. If you people actually studied Marxism, you could form much more pithy memes that actually offend leftists properly.
Are there a lot of Marxists on Twitter? This didn’t seem directed at Marxists.
The big issue with electoralism is the tendency to reduce people down to believing in fairy tales about just needing the right rulers and everything will be fixed. Expecting a group of people, who keep threatening you with an increasingly right wing opposition rather than listening to their electorate, to actually serve your interests seems mindblowingly naive, especially given all the evidence to the contrary we have to hand by now.
It is possible to responsibly advocate for voting (obviously alongside taking more effective measures to put power back in people’s hands directly where possible), but this is incredibly rarely seen. Instead the voting becomes the be all and end all, and things keep sliding further and further.
You can do both. It’s not like voting voids some firebombing permit you never had anyway. Just mind the timing, because firebombing might end up barring you from voting.
Also, please don’t firebomb Walmart. You’d just hurt other victims of the systemic evil. The people who are to blame don’t shop there.
Unrelatedly, I hear there’s a killer recipe for flame-grilled parasite…
Felons should be able to vote!
Sorry, no can do, but how about we make one president?
/s
No state’s permanently bar all felons from voting anymore. The key difference now is when they’re allowed to vote again.
For some, prisoners can vote, for some it’s after you get out of jail, and for some, it’s when your parole is up.
There are still certain crimes that do require the governor to grant permission, though.
lemmy.ml in a nutshell
No ML would see any benefit in individual terrorist attacks, and no ML would disregard the power voting can have in regard to organizing and shattering the belief of “we can change the system from within”.
Not all of us. I’m fully convinced that the people who discourage others from voting are right wing trolls.
Don’t say that in a Lemmy.ml community. You’ll get called a Zionist and banned.
Meh I haven’t had that issue. I think the instance fighting is very silly.
I literally was banned when I detailed my experiences tutoring Chinese exchange students in university. I noted that their die hard belief that Taiwan is not a country, face to face with Taiwanese students, is not disimiliar from MAGA-brand nationalism. Good luck, but don’t mistake that you haven’t seen it for it not happening. The narrative manipulation over there is real.
The UN and a large majority the world’s states agree that the ROC is not an independent state. The US doesn’t recognize it as a state, either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_Taiwan
Initially excluded from the United Nations (UN) in favor of the ROC, the PRC on mainland has gradually gained increased recognition and assumed China’s UN seat in 1971 through the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758. Since then, the international recognition of the ROC has greatly lessened.
Oh look, the fascists are leaking again.
Your response to uncontroversial facts is, oh yeah well ur a fascist 👍
You got a temp ban from c/memes for racist BS. “Brainwashing” isn’t even a real thing. Previously:
The True Story of Brainwashing and How It Shaped America
“Here, then, is the brief history of brainwashing,” [Timothy] Melley writes in a 2011 paper for Grey Room. “The concept began as an [O]rientalist propaganda fiction created by the CIA to mobilize domestic support for a massive military build-up. This fiction proved so effective that the CIA’s operations directorate believed it and began a furious search for a real mind control weapon. The search resulted not in a miraculous new weapon but a program of simulated brainwashing designed as a prophylactic against enemy mistreatment. This simulation in turn became the real basis for interrogating detainees in the war on terror.”
Taiwan isn’t a country… It’s literally not called that, lol. It’s China. Both regions claim to be China.
You sure you were there?
🤔
Not a big fan of geography?
Literally none of us, right? Unless, they’re trolling or don’t understand a single thing about Marxism-Leninism.
I believe, jankforlife would say shit like that. The guy has a fetish for downvotes…
Take a look at modlogs once in awhile, especially on .ml communities.
That sweet sweet Kremlin dough!
Nah, proper mls call that adventurism, because it is. Only collective action will be effective against the forces of capital.
Also, firebombing a Walmart is a grotesque waste of resources. Better to organise a worker’s collective to take it over, and only as part of a wider regional or national effort.
The only based and true opinion in this whole thread. 🙏 The people voting you down are the living proof that they never even read a single page of Lenin 😭
The no responses but copious down votes are fucking hilarious, lmao
“Why is nobody engaging with my nonsense”
Explain why their comment is nonsense and not tribalism, please.
Why do you even bother commenting if you refuse to engage with those trying to engage with you? Just save everyone the trouble and log out, lmao
I engage them that needs engagin’, mock them that needs mockin’, and ignore them that needs needs ignorin’
People on Lemmy too. Just hop on over to [email protected] and there’s the same sentiment.
It’s because most of the people there are from countries that do not declare themselves a democracy.
“Late stage capitalism” is a red flag for bullshit - tankie Nostradamuses with fake intellectualism and phony “stages”.
Come to lemmy where /c/Conservative is for anarchists, and /c/LateStageCapitalism is for conservatives pretending to be centrists.
And people say the Fediverse is confusing, pft.
Or literally any political thread (including this one just wait)
That community is full of tankies whose literal job it is to mind fuck you into not voting. They ban anyone that calls them out.
Yeah, called out a suspicious account posting that type of content and got banned lol. Account was made a year ago, but had zero activity, not even 1 upvote or downvote, until 3 months ago when it suddenly started posting “voting doesn’t work” type content just as the midterms are coming up. Hmmm 🤔.
Then there’s accounts named shit like ConcernedCitizen or AngryAmerican posting tankie shit. I could take a guess what country they’re probably posting from and it def ain’t US.
I’m proudly banned from that. I can’t stand authoritarians.
I don’t believe that voting will save the world but neither will this comment, still I wrote it and still I vote.
Half the people on this comment section talking left/right, get your fucking heads out of your assholes. Life is more than two binary political positions. Yes I know it’s very easy for your simpleton minds to consider things in this way, but there is nuance to life. Grow the fuck up.
If only this county’s politicians can follow this advice
Spoken like a true centrist, lmao.
Where is the nuance between being murdered in a gas chamber and getting free housing and healthcare?
tell me one political ideology that’s not left or right
It depends on what you’re trying to achieve.
Someone actually did firebomb the local Walmart last night…
Sick!!
Does voting cause Americans some obscure form of pain or anguish?
I can see no other reason why not to vote.
Several reasons - People are lazy AF, maybe a bit “soft disenfranchised” in terms of not preceiving that they have credible information, and also there are active demoralization campaigns going on.
All those are reasons but none are valid excuses. Get off your ass and vote. Many places allow you to vote early. Federal law requires your employer to give you time off to vote.
No excuses… inform yourself and vote.
Americans aren’t really allowed to take off work.
Just so people know because this is important, many states have laws requiring employers to allow time off to vote. Check your local laws. Some states even require that time to be paid.
A problem is that, actually, some are. It’s the carrot on a stick problem allowing the problem to get much, much worse, at a rapid rate.
Like, the big stone door at the end of the tunnel is open, but closing, and there are only 10 people-spaces available. So, 1000 people fight each other to survive, rather than rushing through the door and ripping the spine out of the person closing the door.
“Oh, you have an issue with the door closing person? Maybe if you ran faster and beat more other people you wouldn’t have an issue with it.”
I’m not USian, but here are some assorted reasons why one might choose not to vote. I do not necessarily agree (or disagree) with any of them, and this is my attempt at a reasonably balanced analysis as a person who is not an expert in politics, but has read a lot of arguments in the comments.
-
Voting makes you complicit.
(Let’s say for the sake of argument that it is a given that Democrats will continue aiding Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing just as much as the Republicans, but will improve things for marginalised communities domestically.)
The argument here is that voting for a politician that will perpetuate a genocide makes you complicit in a genocide in a way that inaction does not. The counter-argument is that refusing to exercise what influence you have in the choice between make a choice between Palestinian genocide or Palestinian genocide and trans genocide makes you complicit in trans genocide. This is literally the kind of thing that the trolley problem thought experiment was made to explore. -
Voting for the lesser evil increases harm in the long run.
The argument here is that demonstrating a willingness to vote for the lesser evil - with no red lines whatsoever - incentivises Democrats to only ever be slightly less bad than the Republicans, whereas having red lines and allowing Democrats who cross them to lose will incentivise the Democratic party to change their policies. The counter-argument is that Dems haven’t exactly demonstrated that they willing to adopt certain policies even when it would be demonstrably beneficial to their election prospects, and so the pragmatic thing to do is to delay harm for as long as possible to give a better chance that non-electoral politics will shift in the interim. The counter-counter-argument is that such a shift will not occur while that harm is being delayed, which leads us on to… -
Accelerationism.
(Yes, I’m aware that what I’m about to write isn’t the original meaning of accelerationism. Don’t @ me.)
The argument here is electoral politics either can never progress toward socialism/anarchism/your-flavour-of-leftism (if you’re a leftist), or even that it is no longer even capable of halting a descent into fascism (if you’re a pessimistic liberal), and so we should simply allow shit to get fucked so that a critical mass of people have it bad enough to do some revolution and/or non-voting-based direct action about it. The counter-arguments here include, but are not limited to: a) well, that’s just like, you’re opinion, man; b) that’s an awfully big gamble to take when there’s no guarantee that what will come after will be better; and c) you should prioritise the lives of people that currently exist, now, rather than those of hypothetical future people, and immediate harm reduction is of more benefit to those people specifically.
In case any one cares, I’m English. My position on voting is that I may vote in an election where the Greens or possibly the Lib Dems stand a chance of winning, but otherwise I spoil my ballot. Yes, I’m aware that the Lib Dems are shitlibs. Still better than Labour. I will never vote Labour for as long as it remains transphobic or as long as the likes of Luke Akehurst remain in the party.
This is literally the kind of thing that the trolley problem thought experiment was made to explore
no, it’s not. the trolley problem is a series of questions that help you to explore your own morality and understand your tendency (consequentialism or deontology or divine command theory, etc) and how far you’re willing to stick to your beliefs.
there are no correct answers to the trolley problem.
A runaway trolley is on course to kill five people, but if you pull a lever it will be diverted to a track where it will kill only one person. Should you pull the lever? Does that make you a murderer?
You: There is no correct answer to this.
A politician who will commit multiple genocides is fighting an election against a politician who will commit one genocide. Should you vote for latter politician? Does that make you complicit in genocide?
You: This is obviously completely different from a trolley problem, and consequentialist and deontological ethics are not relevant in this situation.
there is no correct answer. it depends on which ethical system you prefer. and in fact, the same reasoning someone would use to make their choice in the trolley problem is, hopefully, the same method they’d use in politics. and, to that end, deontologists never pull the lever.
voting for genocide is wrong
there is no correct answer. it depends on which ethical system you prefer. and in fact, the same reasoning someone would use to make their choice in the trolley problem is, hopefully, the same method they’d use in politics.
Literally the point that I was making in my original comment.
voting for genocide is wrong
If you’re a deontologist. Whereas a consequentialist would argue that allowing more genocide to occur when you could have voted for less genocide is wrong. And, as we’ve established, neither position is objectively the correct one. It depends on you as a person. And let’s not even get into virtue ethics.
great. it seems like you understand that the trolley analogy doesn’t have a single answer
and if you are attacking deontology, you are going to need to overcome all the justifications that deontologists (who make up a plurality of professional philosophers) would proffer.
so you can decide if the right thing for yourself to do is to vote for small genocide or to vote “against big genocide” (ifthe option offered is voting for small genocide) but you can’t decide for others.
The counter-counter-argument is that such a shift will not occur while that harm is being delayed, which leads us on to…
- Accelerationism.
I agree with what you said, up until this point. Non-electoral strategies are not harmed by voting because of accelerationist reasons, but because the messaging becomes muddled.
We have these two horrible, awful parties no one really likes, politics is increasingly driven by “negative partisanship,” just a question of which party you hate more, and then everyone on the other side is assumed to be fully on board with the worst aspects of their side, when in reality almost everyone is following this same “lesser evil” logic, and it’s really just a question of which party’s faults they’re more aware and conscious of. One of the biggest advantages to non-electoral strategies is that you have the opportunity to distance yourself from that and define what you actually stand for and don’t stand for yourself. Someone who (correctly) sees someone like Joe Biden as a slimeball, could be more receptive to leftist ideas if they’re decoupled from him.
Now, you take a protest, a union, whatever, and it takes an official stance endorsing a politician, now you’re gonna be defined by that politicians words and actions, and unless it’s someone you can really trust and stand by, you’re right back to square one.
Point is, accelerationism is stupid and doesn’t work, and I can’t say that no one believes it, but I certainly don’t (although people often assume that it’s what I believe despite everything I say to the contrary). We can look at history and see very long periods of time when things were horrible for a lot of people and they weren’t able to change things just by really really wanting them to, because they lacked power and organization. It can also just lead to the left straight up getting exterminated, as has happened many times in history, like Nazi Germany, or Iran under the Shah, or the mass killings in Indonesia under Suharto. Sometimes, the bad guys just win.
Imo, anyone who actually believes in accelerationism is a fool who doesn’t read theory or study history, but it mostly just exists as an insult or accusation, rather than being something people actually believe.
This is a spot-on analysis, especially for someone not in the US.
-
There was a law a few years back that prevented giving water to people standing in line to vote. Lines in places where your vote matters can take hours. You also do not get time off work so you have to use a personal day or just get paid less that week.
The water law was specifically in Texas, not a federal law.
It’s stupid how difficult some places make it to vote. Also, in a surprise turn off events, the military was specifically ordered to make sure everyone gets a “down day” to vote.
Probably because of the amount of stupid people in the military that will vote red. I hope it flips this year though.
A lot of us have been disenfranchised yet the rest of the world keeps parroting the oligarch shit about pulling ourselves up by the boot straps.
Had a very long argument on here with some “leftist” several months back where they were trying to argue voting does nothing and makes you complicit with the genocide in Gaza, but during the argument they conceded that republicans had a much more extreme on Gaza as well as were doing worse things to citizens than any democrat, and that voting doesn’t stop you from doing any other kind of activists, but they still just doubled down on “voting bad”
Genuinely insane
They boil down to:
- Paid trolls
- Genuinely mental ill people whose decision making centers are broken
Either way the solution is not to engage with them in anyway. You will not convince them to be reasonable and your energy is better spent elsewhere.
Or ai bots that have lost the plot in the argument
Damn AI bots taking away jobs from paid trolls
Haha, the paid trolls are much more convincing and I’ve noticed a lot more sophisticated propaganda on the fediverse. Regular Bots are probably in higher abundance on meta and Reddit and other big tech social media platforms.
I knew a guy who daily stared into the sun for a few seconds.
He claimed to vote and tried to get me not to. I think he was either a secret Nazi or a secret superalcoholic or both.
That’s lemmy as well. Tons of talk. Absolutely zero action.
But if they talk really hard maybe the green party gets 5% which would do checks notes absolutely nothing in a first-past-the-post system
Wrong! 5% of votes in green party means checks notes Democrats get 5% less votes, which secures a victory for Republicans!
It also pressures dems to lean more left. A thing we should be doing in blue states.
This seems true on the face of it, and it is definitely worth trying to get further left democrat candidates, but it seems to me that they have to believe that trying to capture said 5% won’t cause them to lose more in the process, especially if they can never “earn my vote” for much of said 5% no matter what they do.
First and foremost, we need to spread the implementation of ranked voting in more cities. Once enough cities have ranked voting and it’s proven successful and popular, then more cities will adopt, then states, and once enough states have adopted ranked voting, we’ll have a real chance for anyone to be elected despite what party they’re aligned with. Two states use it for federal elections, and many other states have cities that use it for local elections. All states that have it banned need to have it bills constantly in circulation to get it unbanned until it finally is, then bills to constantly have it implemented.
There are a lot of issues that need fixing, but I think starting here will open the floodgates for fixing a lot of the other issues.
Right. I must be tired.
I advocate both.
The fuck do you know?
Ever heard of OpSec?
If there was opsec there wouldn’t be talking about it
It’s not about keeping the action secret, it’s just about preventing the powers that be from finding out who took the actions.
If you can fire bomb a Walmart and have them not find out about it, that’s actually pretty impressive, or it was a really small fire.
at least none that could be directly related to action. which is exactly what OP was complaining about…
LMAO!!
The people talking about doing illegal shit won’t brag about doing said illegal shit, unless they’re stupid.
Firebombed Walmarts tend to make the news, though, and I haven’t been hearing about any
Because that’s a terrible waste of a protest. If you’re going to do something illegal it’s gotta be smarter than just that.
To anti-quote Carlin, if voting didn’t do anything, they wouldn’t be trying so hard to stop us from doing it.
Now you’re bending my brain. Was Carlin’s stance something like, “They keep encouraging everyone to vote, but voting doesn’t matter because everything’s rigged!” ?
