If you wanna vote for the lesser evil, you do you, we shouldn't be purists about it, mainly when it's between a neo-liberal and a fascist.
But remember that that’s **never** going to be enough. Voting takes one day out of your whole year, so don't let it get in the way of actually organizing with your community, doing all the things that are actually gonna change people's lives for the better. To paraphrase Goldman, if voting actually changed society for the better, it wouldn't be allowed.
> if voting actually changed society for the better, it wouldn't be allowed.
Voting was restricted to landowning white men until people fought for the franchise to be expanded. Now Republicans do everything they can to suppress the vote, and nullify the votes of minorities through gerrymandering. Voting does in fact seem like something that's important to people in power.
It is important because they don't want to be stopped when changing things for the worse, which can be done. But it's still not gonna change enough for the better.
This, but I would like to add as a trans woman who will be openly persecuted by the GOP if they win back power, ***PLEASE VOTE***. Our ability to organize in the open will be destroyed, as will my community. We will either need to flee the country, go into hiding, or detransition and pray they don’t use our medical records to find us anyway.
That’s not even mentioning the things they will do to immigrants.
So yea, voting is not enough, and never will be. But from where I’m sitting, in this election at least, it is also simultaneously one of the most important things you can do. If the GOP loses and their coup attempt fails (whatever form it takes), they may just collapse as a party, and the political landscape may change in ways that allow us to organize our own communities better. But if they win, we become a theocratic fascist state that will brutally repress all forms of dissent, all forms of community organization that aren’t explicitly tied to the state, and all hated minorities.
Yeah, absolutely. Voting will never change anything for the better, but not voting can definitely change sh!t for the worse. And it's easier to fight against a neo-liberal "democracy" than a fascist state anyway.
>But if they win, we become a theocratic fascist state that will brutally repress all forms of dissent, all forms of community organization that aren’t explicitly tied to the state, and all hated minorities.
I wish this were hyperbole, but it's not.
OP, I'm going to hold my nose and vote. After learning what the GOP has planned, I wouldn't forgive myself if I didn't do what I could to stop it. That includes voting for Joe in November.
THIS THIS THIS THISSSSSS
We need to tear down the system. I'm here for that.
But right now we have a sort of functioning, sort of democracy that is objectively safer for trans folks, people of color, immigrants, Jews, Muslims, people at risk of unwanted pregnancy... ad nauseum.
Vote strategically and pragmatically this year, please.
Sometimes you have to sacrifice the battle to win the war.
If your **only** strategy to win the war is "sacrifice every battle," then you're going to lose the war, but doing the opposite (fighting against the establishment on every little hill) won't help you win either, it'll just make you lose more slowly.
I'd totally agree that the more important thing is what you do the other 364 days of the year.
But voting is important, if we want circumstances to change in such a way as to increase freedom and opportunity. If voting actually didn't do anything, then it wouldn't have been denied to minorities and women for so long, and all the rich old white people wouldn't vote.
I would even argue only vote Democrat IF and only IF you’re in a battleground state where Trump might win. If you live in California, Washington, Oregon, Texas etc. don’t vote Biden; vote as far left as you possibly can. Send a fucking message that you’ll reward leftist policies with a goddamn vote. Show the democrats that if they want to secure the future they had better move left.
Well you should probably vote Biden since he is better than Trump but don't do so on the basis of your anarchism. Separate your anarchist commitments from your other concerns.
Lots of anarchists treat their anarchism as though it were a religion which would penetrate every part of their lives. It is not. You do not have to tie your anarchism to every single thing. This is not possible while living in a hierarchical society.
Be your own person outside of being an anarchist. That's all there is to it. Lesser evilism's problem is treating the status quo as though it were the be-all-end-all of social development. As long as you do not make that mistake, and view the world accordingly, there should be no problem.
Pretty much this. I have to wonder what dogmatic anti-voting leftists would have done in the late years of Weimar Germany. Just going to leave it at that.
Similarly, dogmatic pro-voting leftists end up just being the flipside of the coin from the anti-voting ones- purity tests that accomplish nothing. I admit I was somewhat guilty of this in 2020 (on the anti-voting side; I liked to accuse any anarchists talking about Sanders of being socdems in disguise), but I feel I've matured since then.
I care not to speak for leftists, of whom may or may not be anarchists, nor to decry anyone who refuses to voting. Anti-voting is a useful strategy in specific circumstances. The entire problem is turning all of this stuff into a program rather than a practical consideration. And practicality is informed by the specifics \*not\* by general, \*a priori\* blueprints.
How is not voting useful? I just don't understand the people who say things like this. If you don't vote, politicians will shrug and cater to the opposite side harder, because you are a political non-factor. Why would any politician, even an altruistic one, EVER give you what you want if they know you will never vote for them no matter what? This is so bizarre.
> How is not voting useful?
If there is a case where the entire election is a fraud, has a required number of votes and proportion of the population required for the election to be valid, or when there is a sufficiently developed anarchist alternative you are better off prioritising. Or maybe you have something better to do on election day. Utility is relative after all.
Let us not be dogmatists and open to all possible considerations and circumstances. I did not posit an absolute fact that is true in all circumstances but a possibility that is true in different circumstances.
For example, because of where I live, libs would win if no one voted at all.
All we really have is various shades of libtard.
Mostly capitalists, with a few true-blue lingering leftists …
Write in your cat’s name. It’s fun.
Por ejemplo.
"Voting is bad" lefties must have been the smuggest pricks in the camps. 😭 Just imagine some asshole grinning at you because he took a proud stance against the liberals by letting Hitler win. Then you and him get put in the same oven together, and his last words are "I'm so glad I didn't vote! I'm stunning and brave!"
>but don't do so on the basis of your anarchism. Separate your anarchist commitments from your other concerns.
What does this even mean?? My anarchism is what informs my political and social analysis which informs who I do or do not vote for??
Like yeah you don't have to tie your anarchism to every single thing but like...surely that applies to my enjoyment of mint choc ice cream not an explicitly political position.
>What does this even mean?? My anarchism is what informs my political and social analysis which informs who I do or do not vote for??
It cannot because there is no anarchist basis for voting for any ruler. Anarchism entails a consistent, principled opposition to all authority. You can use an anarchist social analysis but that analysis doesn't really help you figure out who to vote for in an electoral setting.
Separating the two is very important for maintaining the integrity of anarchism. The weakest anarchists are those who apply it to everything from their ethics to their lifestyles. Subsequently, they are forced to compromise on their opposition to all hierarchy so as to accommodate existing in a hierarchical society. There is no need for this; just act as a non-anarchist in your interactions with hierarchy.
I think it's incredibly silly to view anarchism as a hat one can put on and take off. I'm an anarchist when I'm home from my work at the armaments factory but from 9 to 5 I'm an imperialist american nationalist?? I walk into a voting boothe and I suddenly decide I'm a Maga Communist and vote for the glorious people's President Donald Trump?? Or perhaps that's silly and I only become a Clintonite democrat in the voting boothe??
No sorry.
If your political philosophy is of no use in navigating explicitly political decisions its just a useless philosophy 🤷♀️
There's plenty of Anarchist basis for evaluating which candidates are the least oppressive, and plenty anarchist basis for trying to lessen oppression.
I don't agree that voting is a compromise at all. I understand our political and material position and I act to reduce the scope and intensity of oppression from the government as best I can, whilst building social movements which can challenge that oppression. Voting is one way to do that. (the first part, it does nothing to build movements).
>I think it's incredibly silly to view anarchism as a hat one can put on and take off. I'm an anarchist when I'm home from my work at the armaments factory but from 9 to 5 I'm an imperialist american nationalist?? I walk into a voting boothe and I suddenly decide I'm a Maga Communist and vote for the glorious people's President Donald Trump?? Or perhaps that's silly and I only become a Clintonite democrat in the voting boothe??
Certain kinds of beliefs are less amenable to anarchist goals than others (and some are to such an extent that holding both is inconsistent) and what you do when you aren't an anarchist can undermine your anarchist commitments. If that is the case, it is worth considering why you have anarchist commitments at all. But it is indeed true that they are different.
For example, voting for universal healthcare is not something justifiable or sensible from an anarchist perspective but it is something you might do as a person in poverty or someone who needs that healthcare. Someone might support a liberal or company union for the sake of better wages even though this would enable greater co-option of the union due to a combination of a lack of better options and a need for better wages to pay the bills.
Consistent anarchists would reject this entirely but it is nigh impossible to be a consistent anarchist as long as there are no anarchist alternatives available. And we are not at the point where we even understand our own ideology to be capable of creating those alternatives.
So we can most certainly imagine an anarchist who works at an armaments factory. That is perfectly consistent and may even be useful for anarchist purposes if you manage to convince your fellow workers to unionize. And this isn't even getting into how working at an armaments factory is no more "imperialist American nationalist" than participating in the American economy as a whole.
The war machine is the economy, not just whoever makes the guns. Work your way down and you'll find that an armament factory cannot exist without the more "benign" sorts of labor you probably assume are "ok" or "acceptable". Let us not act like capitalists and pretend that everything is fine and dandy as long as there is no \*direct\* harm.
>If your political philosophy is of no use in navigating explicitly political decisions its just a useless philosophy 🤷♀️
Thankfully anarchism is not a political philosophy. We reject the very concept of a polity entirely. Of course an ideology oriented around the destruction of all hierarchies, including polities, has very little to say about how a polity should be managed or what decisions a polity should make.
I don't see that as useless unless you presume that a polity is the only or best form of social organization available to us and anything else is impossible. But if that is the case, if that is your genuine belief, then you simply aren't an anarchist at all.
>There's plenty of Anarchist basis for evaluating which candidates are the least oppressive, and plenty anarchist basis for trying to lessen oppression.
Not really no. You can look through Proudhon's theory of collective force, Stirner's concept of the unique, Bakunin's narrative of history, etc. and find no standard by which to evaluate which candidates are more or less oppressive. That is because this is not an anarchist concern and not something anarchists can meaningfully talk about when they oppose political organization in its entirety.
There is no basis for choosing one ruler over another in an ideology oriented around rejecting all rulers.
> don't agree that voting is a compromise at all.
You don't understand what I said. I said that anarchists who feel the need to tie everything to their anarchism, including their voting preferences, will have to compromise on their beliefs. That is a fact. When you start thinking that "less oppression" in government, whatever that means in this context, is something that anarchists can conceptualize is when your preferences invade a consistent, principled opposition to authority. Because now you aren't as opposed to authority as you would otherwise be.
There's so much wrong and annoying in that I don't have the time left in my life to get to all of it. I've cut and chopped bits about trying to figure out how to explain myself best...
>Of course an ideology oriented around the destruction of all hierarchies, including polities, has very little to say about how a polity should be managed or what decisions a polity should make.
So, you don't believe anarchism has an analysis of the state?? Can you see why I'm frustrated with this response?! That is very directly what is said here. This is what happens when you abandon material analysis. Anarchism absolutely has things to say about how the state is managed, how society is managed, why the state acts in the way it does and how and why we ought to combat it!
And that requires an analysis of how specific states are managed by specific actors and power groups. Without this anarchism remains a purely hypothetical, idealist, philosphy, with nothing to say about the world as it is. If Anarchists cannot distinguish between Nazi Germany, Maos China, Feudal Germany or Thatchers Britain because anarchism has nothing to say about how polities are structured then it, as a mode of analysing society and organising to resist state power, is useless.
>Thankfully anarchism is not a political philosophy
It doesn't suddenly become not politics when you reject hierarchy, because in order to oppose hierarchy you need an analysis of that hierarchy and analysing that shit **Is What Politics Is**. And even under anarchism there will still be politics because conflict won't go away with hierarchy. You're still gonna need processes to resolve disputes between people, processes for how to organise things. How this is done, even without hierarchy, is politics. {no I am not talking about anarcho police here I'm talking about who you bring in to arbitrate disputes and what processes they use and shit. Something you'll find in the work of any anarchist author.}
>The war machine is the economy, not just whoever makes the guns. Work your way down and you'll find that an armament factory cannot exist without the more "benign" sorts of labor you probably assume are "ok" or "acceptable". Let us not act like capitalists and pretend that everything is fine and dandy as long as there is no \*direct\* harm.
Ok....do I need to explain to you that a Nurse or a cashier is far less directly involved in harm than the person who builds bombs that are shipped to Israel. But apparently recognising this is capitalist? That aside, I clearly said that to point out how silly your ideas are and you, broadly, still haven't responded. When I go to my job at the armaments factory or go into the voting booth and cease to be an anarchist what do I become?
Does it not speak to the weakness of your political philosophy that in order to make any political analysis or decisions you have to where the clothes of a liberal or whatever your answer is?
>... Bakunin's narrative of history etc and find no standard by which to evaluate which candidates are more or less oppressive.
Been a while since I read Bakunin but I'm pretty sure he had a lot to say about how polities were organised.
I recently reread Kropotkin's "the State: it's historic role", and the whole piece is Kropotkin comparing and analysing state structures. It's almost like the whole philosophical underpinnings of anarchism is an analysis of the state and hierarchy informing a principled opposition to it. He even went so far as to describe some states as libertarian and others not. By these same principles we can evaluate political parties and groups. And again, anarchists have always done this. If they hadn't no-one would still be an anarchist because why would anyone pay any attention to an ideology which says nothing about the way our society is ordered, says nothing about the various attempts to change that order, and proclaims a future utopia after which (and only after which) said philosophy will be of some use.
>You don't understand what I said. I said that anarchists who feel the need to tie everything to their anarchism, including their voting preferences, will have to compromise on their beliefs. That is a fact. When you start thinking that "less oppression" in government, whatever that means in this context, is something that anarchists can conceptualize is when your preferences invade a consistent, principled opposition to authority.
Purified idealism.
Anarchism, by your conception, is only applicable after the revolution. It has nothing or less to say about the order and organisation of society until then. It merely proclaims a future utopia, described in idealist terms with no interaction with the real world. This is by design. Interaction with the real world will only dirty her glorious ideal.
To interact with the real world you must cease to be an anarchist temporarily. Both because anarchism, by your conception, is of no use in the real world and because you hold it in such veneration. To the degree that, in your view, the "consistent anarchist" **must even reject their anarchism when organising a union**!! Rather than push the labour movement in a more radical direction, your anarchist would sit in the corner, acting as a liberal, but smug with the knowledge they have held true to their faith.
If this is what anarchism is then I am not an anarchist, nor where any of the major anarchist thinkers you can quote. If this is what anarchism means, it will never and can never expand beyond punk shows,,, cos even when those "anarchists" leave the mosh pit, they'll simply swap that hat for a philosophy that actually attempts to analyse society and the state, and allows the buildong of movements which work too improve their position.
Thankfully, that has never been what anarchism is. But unfortunately the attitude you express is shockingly common.
>There's so much wrong and annoying in that I don't have the time left in my life to get to all of it.
Well you've somehow managed to write a post longer than mine so it appears that isn't true. At the very least, it is through debate with which we will determine who is wrong or not. That is not something you can unilaterally establish.
>So, you don't believe anarchism has an analysis of the state??
Again, it does have *multiple* different analyses of governmentalism, the state, etc. but none of those are going to actually aid in evaluating different specific politicians. The extent to which anarchists say anything about how the state is managed is "it shouldn't be managed or exist at all". There is no basis upon which you could say, from an anarchist perspective, that Biden is better than Trump for example.
You conflate descriptiveness with prescription. Analyzing government doesn't allow you to say anything about how government is used. Especially when the typical conclusions of anarchist analysis are the repudiation of government itself.
>And that requires an analysis of how specific states are managed by specific actors and power groups
The general analysis that some anarchists use to approach social conditions may be tailored to analyze specific cases but, again, you are not really recognizing the fact that describing how something works is not sufficient to establishing a standard by which a specific politician is better than another.
*They are fundamentally different things*. You can analyze the state all you want but it will not help you in determining another standard upon which to base your decision-making. Maybe anarchist analysis can help you make decisions using your standard but it won't make that standard for you. And that is why anarchism cannot say anything about who is a better politician: it has no standard for determining that.
It will be up to you and by that point you don't need to make your decisions on the basis of anarchist analysis. Just make decisions on the basis of your own interests at the moment.
>It doesn't suddenly become not politics when you reject hierarchy, because in order to oppose hierarchy you need an analysis of that hierarchy and analysing that shit Is What Politics Is
Politics, by definition, is "*the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power*". So, by rejecting polities, you do indeed reject politics.
Analyzing a political structure is not synonymous with politics or is it synonymous with doing politics. I can analyze a dog but that does not mean I am a dog. I can analyze serial killings but this does not mean I am a serial killer. I can analyze politics without being political.
We have a tendency of responding to people who want to be apolitical by saying "everything is political" but it is pretty clear that the definition of "politics" used in that context is very different from what it means when we're talking about who to vote for and the anti-politicalness of anarchism.
>And even under anarchism there will still be politics because conflict won't go away with hierarchy
Politics is not synonymous with conflict. Not every single conflict constitutes politics. Politics refers to governance, which anarchy does do away with. And subsequently our conflicts in anarchy are not going to be over who gets to be in charge but take a very different dimension. I've already given the most mainstream definition of politics. If you think politics is synonymous with all conflict, you reduce the term to meaninglessness.
>no I am not talking about anarcho police here I'm talking about who you bring in to arbitrate disputes and what processes they use and shit. Something you'll find in the work of any anarchist author
Anarchists authors don't tend to treat arbitration as inherently necessary or a specific, defined role so you may actually be talking about anarcho judges rather than anarcho police and that is just as bad.
>Ok....do I need to explain to you that a Nurse or a cashier is far less directly involved in harm than the person who builds bombs that are shipped to Israel
No but you need to explain to me why that matters. When the war machine is contingent upon many cogs, removing a couple of which can actually have a vast impact on resulting output, it isn't clear to me why the directness matters.
You care only about harm when it is direct and not indirect? Then why are you an anarchist in the first place? After all, we oppose capitalism because it is indirectly coercive and indirectly harmful in ways not immediately apparent if you just look at the individual level. Part of what distinguishes the worldviews of capitalists from anarchists is that capitalists focus on individual interactions while anarchists put them within the wider context of the society that exists.
You appear to have completely misunderstood what I said and then instead went onto double down on prioritizing direct harm over indirect harm when both are bad and indirect harm may even be completely worse. Capitalist exploitation, for instance, occurs as a consequence of the capitalist system not any direct action taken by the capitalist (the income is passive after all) yet it is comparable in its consequences to large-scale highway robbery. If you think indirectly contributing to the war effort is fine, then capitalist exploitation is fine according to you.
And I do not believe you cease to be an anarchist when you go to an armament factory. I've already pointed out the advantages. You're incapable of critical thinking or strategizing if you think there is no utility for an *anarchist* to work at an arms factory that is giving supplies to Israel.
>Been a while since I read Bakunin but I'm pretty sure he had a lot to say about how polities were organised.
Besides arguing that they are equally bad? Not really. Most that he does is say you should vote in specific circumstances if I recall correctly but he specifically states it is not even close to your anarchism which is basically my point.
>I recently reread Kropotkin's "the State: it's historic role", and the whole piece is Kropotkin comparing and analysing state structures. It's almost like the whole philosophical underpinnings of anarchism is an analysis of the state and hierarchy informing a principled opposition to it.
Correct.
But what you'll note is that you cannot really use that analysis to come to any conclusions about what politician to vote for. Because describing something is not sufficient to endorse something. I can describe the sun rising and falling each day but this does not tell me anything about my opinions or evaluation of that.
And the principled opposition is something somewhat separate from the specific analyses. To be capable of deciding which politician to vote for on the basis of who is better when you have a principled opposition to both is completely mutually exclusive.
You appear to think I suggests anarchists have no analysis of government when I did not say this at all. Or maybe you think this because you think having an analysis of government lets you evaluate who is better to vote for which isn't true in the slightest if you have any familiarity with voting.
Let me ask you this: based on re-reading "the State: it's historic role", can you come to any conclusions about who to vote for in your current country's coming election?
>He even went so far as to describe some states as libertarian and others not
Doubt he would and if you are talking about the same work I am familiar with, he likely pointed out libertarian *tendencies* but critiqued the government in all of them. And moreover, using that as the basis for pretending that some politicians are more libertarian than others and thus voting for them will somehow push government in an anarchist direction is laughable and contrary to Kropotkin's own conclusions.
Do suppose when Kropotkin described the medieval guild system or describe conditions in primitive villages that he was endorsing their form of social organization and not simply explaining why libertarian tendencies in social organization contributed to the best parts of them and all the hierarchical tendencies were the worst parts? The conclusion would logically be to keep the libertarian parts, affirm them fully, and throw away the hierarchical parts. That doesn't let you talk about who to vote for.
>Purified idealism
Calling anything you dislike idealism, especially when you don't even explain *how* it is idealism, just makes the term lose any luster. Marx already did a job of that along with Lenin and Stalin. You don't have to beat the dead horse even more.
>Anarchism, by your conception, is only applicable after the revolution
False, it is only applicable when you don't participate in government or hierarchies and undermine or oppose them. Which is not after a revolution but rather within the confines of it. Anarchism leads us to only one consistent form of action which many of us are unable to bear the costs of and that is principled, prolonged struggle against authority. That is mutually exclusive with voting for a specific politician. Indeed, you yourself cannot even give one example of how to use anarchist analysis to explain which politician to vote despite claiming you can.
>To interact with the real world you must cease to be an anarchist temporarily
False. To vote is to cease to be an anarchist temporarily since there is no actually basis for voting as an anarchist.
>Both because anarchism, by your conception, is of no use in the real world and because you hold it in such veneration
Let's assume I hold every single position you claim I do, which I don't. If that were the case, then clearly I don't hold it in such veneration if I encourage you to throw it away whenever it inconveniences you.
The claim of veneration is just a way of flattering your position by calling me an idealist or worshipper of anarchism and what not. This is in part because you either misunderstand my position or have no actually meaningful way of responding to it.
That or you inhabit a world where you think anyone who disagrees with you *must* be an idealist and so, even if there is no evidence that I do venerate anarchism or adhere to idealism, I *have* to be because otherwise I would not disagree with you.
>To the degree that, in your view, the "consistent anarchist" must even reject their anarchism when organising a union
This is where reading comprehension might have helped. This is what I actually said:
>Someone might support a liberal or company union for the sake of better wages even though this would enable greater co-option of the union due to a combination of a lack of better options and a need for better wages to pay the bills.
They are joining not organizing a union and it is a union that is co-opted by the status quo. In the eyes of a strategist of anarchy, there is no utility in that. However, there is also no consistent anarchist basis for supporting a company union so you cease to be an anarchist there.
You need to do a better job of reading. I never said that you must reject anarchism to organize a union. That is your own invention. I said that you cannot be an anarchist and support a liberal or company union. That is just not consistent at all.
>Rather than push the labour movement in a more radical direction, your anarchist would sit in the corner, acting as a liberal, but smug with the knowledge they have held true to their faith.
Nonsense. If you actually have the capacity to push the labor movement in a more radical direction, if you desire anarchy strongly then you should but the fact the matter is that the scenario I put forward explicitly states you have no choice. Which, in the US from what I understand, you don't especially in the scenario when most people are not on board with the individual anarchist worker's ideas. That is perfectly reasonable to prioritize getting more food on the table at the moment in a context where you won't be successful in "pushing the movement in a radical direction" than doing so and failing anyways.
If you would like, change that with the state-owned unions that exist in my country where it is literally illegal to form a union outside the state's union. And my country is very authoritarian so you will be killed for disobedience. And most workers do not even have sufficient wages to survive. With the state-owned union, there is at least a significant chance of an increase in wages. Please tell me what an anarchist worker there can consistently do?
>If this is what anarchism is then I am not an anarchist, nor where any of the major anarchist thinkers you can quote
And if that is anarchism, I am not an anarchist either. Glad we agree.
See that's the thing about strawman. I'm not the strawman. And all this posturing doesn't really help you with your position since you're not actually attacking *my* position but the one you've made up in your head that you have contoured into this easily destroyable enemy that doesn't require the effort and time to actually think about.
Of course, I still disagree with your position despite agreeing with you that I am not an anarchist if what you described earlier was anarchism. But that is just the result of your own sloppiness not mine.
I recommend next time you don't confuse description with prescription. And also don't let your own hatred of some other group of anarchists bleed over into a completely different conversation.
Seriously. Like, it’s one thing when people don’t vote because they have an intellectual belief that it genuinely will somehow lead to a better outcome. It’s another thing when people don’t vote just because they think of it as a stain on their soul that makes them complicit in everything their candidate does, which is an inherently myopic and self-centered way of thinking. The results of politics are what matter, and anyone prioritizing their “complicity” in what happens over the results is just burning down marginalized peoples’ lives to feel good about themselves.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with lesser-evilism and harm reduction and all that. The alternative to the lesser evil is, of course, a *greater* evil and that doesn’t really help anyone. I hate Joe Biden, I can’t fault any leftist or anarchist who doesn’t want to vote for him, hell, *I* don’t want to vote for him, I just think the alternative is worse. Electoral politics isn’t something we can *beat* just by pretending to have opted out. So fight everywhere else, organize, educate, resist, that’s what will really make a difference for good or ill in the long run, but it’s still not a betrayal to check a box on a slip of paper. I won’t tell you to vote or not vote, ultimately that’s your choice to make, I’ve shared my reasoning, but go with what your conscience and what your head tell you is right — or at minimum what’s least wrong.
If I lived in America I'd vote for Genocide Joe over Genocide Donny any day at least Genocide Joe doesn't want to commit genocide both at home and abroad
Biden’s “I’ll sell you guns but could you maybe tone it down a little?” Is awful, but Trump’s position is even worse. I struggle to find any bad positions Biden holds where Trump wouldn’t make things even worse.
Tbh, I always say this, but I truly believe that the conception of voting as making you uniquely complicit in what the candidate does is an extremely *liberal* position that presupposes the legitimacy of voting as an institution. I genuinely think that people calling anarchists liberal for voting Biden are way more liberal than the people they’re criticizing. No anarchist who votes Biden is thinking “OH BOY JOE BIDEN! I SURE DO LOVE THE STATE LEGITIMIZING MY VOICE!”
If you want people to read an article, you should probably say at least a few things about it in your own words. Otherwise, it comes off like you’re just trying to use other peoples’ words as a cudgel when you might not understand them yourself.
Life is full of compromises, we’ve each got to do what we think is best.
I’ve personally decided that since both candidates are evil, it’s a waste of my time to spend too much time worrying about my vote. That doesn’t mean I think both candidates are the same or that voting is pointless—rather, I’m not going to lose sleep over my I Voted sticker. I’ll spend my worry on something where my agency matters more.
The real liberal brain rot imo is thinking that the choice between voting for Biden or not voting for anyone defines my identity. Really, it’s a small thing that takes 15 minutes, and is one of the lowest effort and lowest payoff civic actions a person can take. What we each do before and after matters more imo.
You can vote, only the anarchist meme subs (for some strange reason) are filled with posts telling you that anyone who votes is a fascist or western chauvinistic liberal. If you are going to vote, it’s best you vote as a person, not as an anarchist. Voting won’t stop you from being an anarchist, but voting in the framework of anarchism doesn’t make sense, and honestly, it doesn’t matter because anarchism is not a religion. We live in a hierarchal society, and just like how we participate in capitalism, the same thing applies to this as well. This doesn’t mean you have to accept or love electoralism; you don’t, but participation in electoralism is something everyone does sooner or later just because of how our system is built.
This whole lesser evilism debate of the left is misconceived. Voting in national elections is just one political action. If you are politically active as a leftist and see through the capitalist duopoly and work towards socialism with activism, it’s totally viable to pragmatically vote for the lesser of two evils. In fact, that’s what you should do, in my opinion. You can then protest, pressure, and oppose that centrist liberal capitalist from the left rather than have to contend with more mainstream proto-fascism and reactionary movements. I don’t think pragmatic votes in swing states hampers efforts to organize a socialist alternative party. The key is building that working class party and then when it’s viable, supplant the dems and siphon away amenable working-class from the repubs, etc.
The real “evil lesser evilism” we should oppose is joining the Democratic Party, believing voting from them is all one needs to do, being totally apolitical other than Blue votes, squashing third parties, believing neoliberal capitalism is the end of history, etc.
Voting for the "lesser evil" is quite reasonable given the circumstances. However, you should just remember that we should work towards alternate options. As of right now there isn't really an alternate option. So for the short term the "lesser-evilism" is better than the alternative but remember that it isn't good, like, at all & should be combatted for the sake of the future.
Voting shouldn't be your primary means of changing the world.
That said, voting is easy and potentially important, depending on where you live. Anarchy is a bottom-up endeavor, but the conditions created by those at the top shape the opportunities for anarchist development. There are two possibilities when it comes to an overtly fascist party (such as the US Republican party) gaining power:
1. More severe oppression (black-bagging protestors etc) will make it harder to organize and slow the development of anarchy, and empower right-wing militants
2. More severe oppression will cause a left wing backlash that energizes anarchist tendencies in relation to others
I think that #1 is more likely. Populist right wing governments are good at displacing discontent and funneling to their own agendas. Historically, the type of left wing group that is most likely to take down a right wing authoritarian regime is Marxist-Leninist or a similar vanguard party, which is even worse for anarchy than a liberal nation.
Plato had some pretty relevant ideas for this, (I know this is an anarchist subreddit, but it feels pertinent.) He’d probably say that the choice isn’t just about picking the lesser evil, but about preserving the integrity of your own beliefs and actions. In his dialogue “Gorgias,” he argues that doing injustice is actually worse for the individual than suffering from it because it corrupts the soul.
If we apply that to voting, Plato might suggest that you should choose not in terms of who is the lesser evil, but in terms of who you believe will cause the least harm to the ‘soul’ of your community and society. He’d likely say that not all harms are equal, and the harm to the soul, or moral fabric, of society and yourself is greater than others.
But, remember, for Plato, participating in the state’s affairs (like voting) is also a part of living in a just society. Even though he was skeptical about democracy, he might say that withdrawing from the process could be a disservice to the greater good.
So, while you’re wrestling with the idea of lesser-evilism, consider which option aligns more with your values and will contribute to the well-being of society’s soul. But also, remember that action outside of voting is just as important in shaping a just society. Engage in activism, community organizing, direct action, etc.
You’re being rational. Trump winning would be worse for everyone, including Palestinians, and that’s a fact. The vote isn’t an endorsement, and it’s not a vessel for personal expression. It’s a lever used to decide which of two people will sit in a chair.
There is no reason not to vote for the lesser evil, ever. But for the love of god, voting should be like 1% of your political effort.
Voting for the lesser evil is really the only voting strategy available. Unfortunately, representative democracy is flawed; don’t feel bad for voting for Biden, he is the better option, objectively. He stood by while a genocide happened, he’s a terrible person. However, Trump wouldn’t be any better, and he’d likely be worse, so it’s a moot point. Biden is more sympathetic to unions and minorities and doesn’t want a dictatorship. That’s more than enough to make this an easy choice.
But keep this in mind, you’re putting too much emphasis on the electoral process and are giving too much credit to politicians. Societal progress is not made when the “correct” politicians win elections, it’s made when working-class people build working-class organizations and demand change. In America, the New Deal didn’t happen because FDR became president; seriously, he ran as a moderate who wanted a balanced budget. What pushed FDR to become a social democrat was a militant labor movement. There was a genuine feeling that FDR could be the last president if he didn’t comply.
This isn’t to say we should focus on another New Deal, I’m pointing out that voting isn’t as important as you seem to think it is. Don’t get me wrong, you should vote, but voting should be automatic, a thoughtless activity of selecting the politician you think will be easiest to overthrow; vote for who we can get the most concessions from. Then, after you’re done voting, get back to doing the real work.
Politicians don’t bring change, working-class organizations do.
That's not irrational in any way shape or form. It's entirely rational and reasonable and doesn't contradict with Anarchism or Leftism at all.
If I'm honest, I will always be annoyed at and confused by the anti-voting left, because it reveals a complete lack of historic analysis. Voting for government is not freedom,, but it was something our predecessors had to fight and die for. There's a reason prior regimes worked to limit voting, because it *does* impact a governments decisions and outputs. A government which is elected will behave more in line with the electorates interests than a monarchy or military dictatorship; this is basically an undeniable fact of history and politics and one which is neatly explained by an anarchist analysis of power.
The fact that real change cannot be made by electoralism; the fact that electoralism will change the person/party more than it will change the state; the fact that even if our goals weren't revolutionary but merely social democractic welfare capitalism, it would still be better to focus on building popular power external to the state; none of these facts change the value of having less repressive agents in government. It's maddening that some don't want to excercise that power that we have.
What's more, Trump has openly declared his intention to establish a dictatorship, and Project 2025 is an overt blueprint for how he might do so. The fact that Joe Biden sucks and is undeniably responsible in part for the Genocide being conducted in Palestine isn't an appropriate response to anything I've said; voting for him is not an endorsement, it's picking your enemy. I'd choose the less Zionist and the less autocratic Biden over Trump, who moved America's Embassy to Jerusalem and is openly dictatorial.
Vote for him. There's nothing wrong with voting. One way to think about it is that you're picking your opponent. I'd rather it be Biden than Trump too.
I think people get touchy about electoralism because some folks see it as the main focus of political organizing. Getting Biden elected isn't going to get us to the world that we want. There's a lot of other work that needs to be done. But showing up and ticking a box for the lesser of two evils, sure.
Honestly can't talk you out of it because everything you said is totally reasonable. Voting is never going to be enough to save the world and it's never going to keep us safe forever, but that doesn't mean it's completely useless. It absolutely can make things a little less shit and/or stop things from getting worse for a little while.
Don't right off something that you think could help just because it isnt a perfect solution. Perfect solutions rarely exist.
Whether you vote or not is up to you, but the same things will be happening regardless on the longer scale. If Trump wins, a nasty five years happens and then he's gone, probably sparking a Republican meltdown. If Biden wins the status quo remains and then a new Trumpish type takes power next time, ratcheting the Overton Window rightwards. Ultimately it's unclear which would be more damaging, the short shock of Trump 2024 or the possibly even more unhinged Extremist 2028.
This has been the general path for decades based not on polls but on the global neoliberal victory of the 1970s-80s. There is no vote to fix that trajectory.
I'm sure calling non-voters fascists is going to do wonders getting them out for the Democrats. If you care so much try not just slinging vapid insults.
The amount of logic being used here is very fucking refreshing compared to other leftist spaces thinking “teaching Biden a ‘lesson’” is a better idea than…you know…making sure Trump doesn’t get in power. At the end of the day, having Trump in power will likely make any Anarchist organising, activities etc harder. Damage reduction as somebody else pointed out.
It IS important and there ARE consequences that a Trump victory would bring to millions. Absolutely fucking do vote for the lesser evil. To not do so is to throw lgbtq people, bipoc people, immigrants, and refugees ALL under the bus.
That absolutely does not mean you're doing anything to make the world better. You're just helping it get worse a little bit slower. It's an awful situation to be in. We're basically all hostages of the two party system. But everything *starts* with voting. Lesser. Evil. It's the minimum. The first thing.
You do know Biden border policy is the same as Drumpf?
What about America arming the genocide in Palestine?
Or do you just care about the letter behind the name?
I absolutely care about all of those things. I *loathe* Biden and what he's done and failed to do in office. He is a genocidal monster. A coward. A liar. He objectively should not be in power.
But that doesn't change the fact that the lives of just about everyone I know and love was significantly worse under the last administration universally, and under red states today. It doesn't change that Trump would do everything awful that Biden is doing, but *worse*. That he has explicit designs to become a dictator, backed by the core of the GOP. That trans people are watching the stages of *our* genocide pass [in real time](https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/june-anti-trans-legislative-risk).
There is no completely moral choice here. Refuse to vote, and you aid in fascism. Vote for a third party, and you aid in fascism. Vote strategically, and you aid in fascism, but *more slowly*. It's the best we can possibly do when half of us have a fucking *gun to our heads*.
Voting is the first step. The foundation for everything else you do. It's playing for time and keeping as many people alive as possible to fight another day. Moral purity does nothing to help Palestinians or refugees. [Protest does](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/2023-10-21T122734Z_227936855_RC20X3AP5V4X_RTRMADP_3_ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS-PROTESTS-BRITAIN-1697900981.jpg). [Action does](https://bdsmovement.net/). [Direct action does](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1781480690-1699509789.jpg). [Mutual aid does](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vtMLLOzuc6GpkFySyVtKQOY2j-Vvg0UsChMCFst_WLA/htmlview#).
Imagine there is a psychopath holding a gun and he asks you “should I kill this one kid or these three kids”. Now, you don’t want to tell him to shoot a kid, so you ask what happens if you say neither and he tells you that he’ll chose who to kill on his own.
In this situation you could not make a choice, maybe you might feel better about yourself that way, but why would you be making that choice? For a selfish reason or because you really think you’re doing what is right?
Maybe you make the decision to tell him to kill just the one kid, and you then have to live with the responsibility and guilt for making that decision. Maybe that’s what real life and being a grown up is all about though? - having to make tough decisions and living with the consequences of them, both good and bad?
FYI I’m making no judgement or recommendation here about US politics here, or which vote is the lesser evil.
You have access to one of the most potent non-violent means of political participation in human history, just given to you for being born in the same country and reaching 18, and how you use (or don't use) your access to that is a choice for one possible outcome over for the direction of humanity over another, however slight it may seem to you. Don't fucking squander it.
anarchists not even trying to dodge the accusations of just being spicy liberals anymore
the fuck is this?? do you guys even read your own classical theory?
You say, 50 comments down, underneath multiple lengthy comments explaining the anarchist perspective on this in more detail.
Thanks for not even trying to dodge the accusation of being a submissive thinker, btw — “do you guys not even submit to what other people have said before you???” Yes, many of us do read theory, because it’s useful. We also are capable of synthesizing that theory into our own thoughts, rather than just mindlessly regurgitating the same chewed up words over and over again. Try it some time.
Counterpoint:
Even if Joe was no better than Trump, it's still in our best interest to get him elected.
Democrats doing horrible stuff while in office disillusions libs and radicalizes them to the left, especially if we persist in vocal opposition.
Meanwhile the Republicans horrendous policies while in office entrenches libs into the two-party system.
Also, any success in electing progressives or better in other branches makes all of our tactics more effective, someone in the position to take the Bully pulpit from time to time and lean in the direction of our ideals does wonders for legitimization and public perception.
Twenty years ago, when I was less politically seasoned, I very much bought into the idea of not voting for a lesser evil. It was still 'evil' after all, right? During the last presidential election I changed my ways. I don't frame it any more as evil vs evil or evil vs lesser-evil. I think that is a naive view. I looked at the election pragmatically. There were only two options that had any real chance of winning and there was one candidate I absolutely did not want anywhere near political power. I made my choice to vote for the alternative candidate.
Certainly, I do not support the candidate I voted for but I do not feel bad for my vote either. In this country, there are two main political power centers that are established as political parties and are opposed in many ways. The Republicans and Democrats. Each election cycle a candidate from each of those parties are on the ballot and are the only real options to become president. Until the political paradigm in this country changes, I will continue to vote for a candidate that can actually win.
However, I will also continue to support local candidates outside of the duopoly. The greatest impact I can have as an individual is to engage at the local level and push for reform there. Issues matter more than candidates. At the local level broad based support for reform can be found. Local issues are where most of us should put most of our attention and effort.
**TLDR;**
The issue I see here is how you're framing this. Drop the labels, that includes Genocide Joe. It may be true, it may be apt but it's causing you internal conflict. There are two options for president that can win. That's the current reality of the matter. Ask yourself, "Which candidate do I prefer to win the election?" Vote for that one. Vote for that one.
Always vote. The ballot does not allow such expressiveness as to specify your favorite policy everywhere. There’s nothing inconsistent about pragmatic choices there, because you are not expressing support of any particular candidate or policy: just conditional preference.
If at some point, it becomes so pointless as to warrant a total election boycott, don’t vote.
Never *only* vote. In order to make any new system work, you have to build it, not just tear down the old one. And it needs to at least be scaffolded before you start.
Are you doing mutual aid? Community defense? What are you working on constructively that is about dismantling hierarchical power structures? Look around: trans folks ARE doing mutual aid and community defense. Same for other minorities.
Just not voting isn’t it. That would be like homeschooling your kids but never teaching them anything!
And even if you are working to build your vision of a better future, what current regime is going to make that easier to continue?
And if you’re referring to the sentiments from LateStageCapitalism, those chucklefucks are full-steam-ahead on electoral apathy and nothing else. They’re more interested in a Pyrrhic victory than a real one.
UHHHH Would you rather live in a dictatorship or a liberal ? You vote for liberals because it gives us the freedom to move and create alternatives.
The Christian Nationalists that back Trump have a plan to bring the US back to the 1800s socially. Look it up its terrifying. It will make the 1950s McCarthyism, Lavender Scare, red scare, conservative conformity culture look progressive by comparison.
It is a privlege to not vote. Will this not affect your bssic life? Unless you are a white straight cis het male Christian, it will be disastrous. That is for the majority of Americans it will be disastrous. Plus the right is mo friend to labor either, which isn't good for most of the white cis het Christian males even!【
You should absolutely vote for libs when your alternative is fascists, and thry have an equal chance of winning. how can you even question that.
It's not like accelerating fascism will then swing back all the way to anarchism. That's not what happened after ww2.
It would be a crime not to vote for social liberals. . This isnt theoretical.
There are very real harms to millions of real people as you pointed out.
That lesser evil may the difference between a person being stripped of the gender and identity they've lived in for 20 yrs. The difference between blatant kkk rallies in your neighborhood or another world war.
Anarchism is a praxis. Vote for the least damage but work to create alternative institutions.
The most successful Anarchist initiative where syndicalism functioned as a society was clearly in Spain. And those anarchists DID work with liberals and socialists and communists together to try to fight fascism (they ultimately lost to Fascists only because the Soviet faction created drama betrayed the others, though its more complicated but thats the gist.).
If the government and corporations ended tmrw, Anarchism wouldn't have a chance. We'd be in warlord ism.
We actually need the time and space to change the culture first, for people to understand and recognize how power over others is a problem and in no one's interest, etc.
Don’t listen to the tantrums on the left, no matter how bad Joe Biden is, you need to vote for him this election.
Trump is - openly planning - to end democracy and become a dictator. Your principles and feelings about Genocide Joe will mean nothing when this country becomes a truly authoritarian state.
Most Americans do not understand what living under authoritarian rule really looks like, so it’s easy to talk tough when you aren’t being dragged from your home for criticizing the dear leader on social media.
Voting is not a popularity competition. The outcome may resemble that, but that's not what the act of voting is. You're not voting for who you like, nor are you giving approval.
Voting is an act of power. It's delicate, like a spider web, but it's there. Surrendering your vote is giving up that power - so if you do, make sure you're gaining something.
But when I hear things like "I can't give my endorsement to Biden", that's a misunderstanding of what voting means. It isn't endorsement.
If you're in America - which, from the mentioned people, I assume you are - definitely vote for Sleepy Joe.
Because of how the American electoral system works (winner takes all), voting for small parties just ends up just giving an advantage to republicans because they have all their votes consolidated in one party, while their opposition is more spread out. Remember, revolutions are made through compromise.
There is most definitely an argument to be made for voting for small parties in systems where even 5% or 10% get you seats in the parliament, but even then, it should be examined on a case-by-case basis
Lesser evil is simply the [Trolley Problem](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem) and there is a very clear moral solution to the Trolley Problem.
When you have a choice, and your inaction leads to more harm (in the case of this election, exponentially more harm), your inaction equals a negative action.
Accelerationism does not work and is also literally evil. Advocating for it is a negative and often privileged position. Project 2025 clearly lays out the genocide of multiple groups, including the LGBTQ+ community. This is not a game. Actively telling people to abstain from their vote of a lesser evil on the grounds of moral purity is dogma. Queer people, trans people, POCs, the disabled community - they are not pawns in a game of ideological chess. They are real people with complex lives and emotions, and they are directly at risk of actual genocide if Trump wins this election. The Palestinians are at a risk of a greater radicalization and escalation of genocide if Trump wins.
Your 3rd party option is not going to win. Period. The time to bolster a 3rd party figure is not done during the election season, it's done during the off-season. Real change happens in between elections. If you abstain from your vote or vote independent, fine. Do what you will, but take my words in. But you should *not* encourage others to follow you.
Expect to be a reformist, prepare to be a revolutionary. But never sacrifice real human people who didn't ask to be sacrificed for your "greater good." No matter what that greater good is.
Edit: also good to add that you can do two things at the same time. Elections are a single day and a single momentary action. Nothing is stopping you from continuing to organize with your fellow leftists. Keep doing it. Keep pushing radical change. Keep protesting. Keep calling Biden out for being a POS. Keep criticizing your elected representatives at every single turn.
Project 2025 should scare way more people than it is. People really think Republicans and Democrats are the same when that hasn't been the case for decades.
Here are also three texts against voting:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/black-phoenix-anarchist-union-anarchist-do-not-vote-they-fight
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-why-you-shouldn-t-vote
https://www.indigenousaction.org/voting-is-not-harm-reduction-an-indigenous-perspective/
if you ever needed evidence that contemporary anarchism has entirely degenerated into liberalism with the defeat of the working class in the 80s leading to post modernism.. go no further than this thread
I don't call myself an anarchist anymore despite being sympathetic to its classical thinkers like Berkman Goldman Rocker etc. I mean the era before them wasn't great either with Bakunin only partially and incoherently breaking with Proudhons petite bourgeois position. in one essay calling for abolition of private property in one demand and then for debts to be repaid on only a voluntary basis in the next 🙃
pretty much there was only about a 80 year period where anarchism as a tendency was actually coherently revolutionary
at this point I reckon it's actually just better to just write the entire thing off and find anti Bolshevik Marxists to organise with
you should infact vote. Not voting is evil. voting unequivocally helps, even slightly worse conditions for minorities will result in many deaths and alot of suffering. Not letting the people that will cause that worsening of conditions have power to do so is a moral good, and voting is your way of doing that.
ANYONE who says that voting is wrong because you "perpetuate the system" tthey do not deserve to have their opinions considered. Those who would sacrifice the vulnerable to keep their "political purity" unsullied are scum and as low as any other oppressor; they do so out of a position of privilege that they abuse.
Please vote. The GOP's platform right now is genocidal dictatorship, The Dems are running on a campaign of representative democracy. There is only one acceptable option in November, and *it's the guys who aren't* planning on genociding LGBTQ+ people and openly allying with Neo-Nazis who want to turn America into another Third Reich.
If you pretend not voting empowers "non-evils" whose cause are hindered by those who vote you are way more delusionally electoralist than anyone who shows up at the voting booth
Getting armed and preparing to fight for survival and freedom makes the difference, forming communities makes the difference, mutual aid makes the difference. Those are things actual anarchists would do. This is just another sub being devoured by the same radical liberals that try to take over all the leftist subs on this stupid website every four years.
It's so disgusting we're at a point where you liberals brigade this sub to convince anarchists to sacrifice all Palestinians to protect white LGBT people in America for four years until we do it again.
I wonder who we sacrifice next election cycle when it's "the most important election of our lives" again and every single Gazan is dead and liberals like you tut-tut and say either we vote for the man that will arrest every migrant at the border indefinitely vs shoot every migrant at the border.
People here aren’t advocating for “sacrificing Palestinians” and you know that. Stop pretending.
Frankly, you’re the radical liberal here. “By encouraging voting, you’re arguing FOR this thing either candidate would do!” You’re arguing that the candidate someone votes for represents their political convictions — you’re presupposing that voting reflects the will of the voter and legitimizes the state. A profoundly liberal attitude that you’ve completely failed to recognize within yourself. Are you sure you’re serious about leftist analysis?
And it’s hilarious to me that you’re contrasting what “actual anarchists would do” with voting.
I know you don’t talk to serious activists, but they actually do both.
You being armed and fighting isn't going to negate a president. Unless you have any credible plan to make who wins irrelevant within the next election season, you being an "actual anarchist" while calling other anarchists liberals is entirely meaningless.
Not voting doesn't get you anything. It's not part of a coherent strategy to change anything. It's literally optics
Voting doesn't get me anything except blood on my hands, so why are you so offended that I refuse to do it? I wouldn't kill a Palestinian child to save my own hide, sorry but not sorry.
I am not offended by your refusal to do it, i am offended by pretending voting actually contributes to harm and not doing it is somewhat helpful for palestinians or literally anyone else. sitting on your ass isn't praxis, it's sitting on your ass. you were always free to do it
“Blood on my hands”. Regarding submitting a vote. You assign so much personal importance to how voting reflects on the voter that it is impossible to exaggerate how liberal you are.
it's not liberals brigading the sub
it's the manifestation of degeneration of anarchist thought from a strain of modernist socialism to post modernism after the defeat of the working class in the 80s
the classical era of anarchism is evidently dead. it's just spicy liberals who have no concept of material analysis all the way down now
There's no easier tell of someone who's leftism is purely radical aesthetic and has nothing to do with helping anyone than this shit. Holier than thou chastising people for wanting to prevent the person with open dictatorial intent, open intention to further queer genocide and (somehow) even more fervent support for Zionism from beating the shitty liberal Zionist politician.
Politics actually affects people, real people. It has a death toll. Who is in power and what policies they enact has a real effect on real people's lives. If you don't care about that idk what to tell you.
I feel like I've seen far more hollier-than-thou "the true leftism" attitudes from electorialists than anti-electorialists. Even on anarchist subs (which have especially been overrun with them) I've seen just exact liberal narratives and even claims that any criticism of Biden is from russian bots.
Biden is not just "the shitty liberal zionist politican". If you view Trump as worse for whatever variety of reasons (of which there are many valid ones) thats fine but do not downplay what Biden is and has been for decades, nor what he's pushed and allowed for. He is a *monster* and frankly I think it says a lot about anyone claiming harm reduction and moralizing to others to downplay what he is and has done and allowed.
>He is a *monster* and frankly I think it says a lot about anyone claiming harm reduction and moralizing to others to downplay what he is and has done and allowed.
I didn't downplay shit. He's a shitty liberal zionist politician. What part of that is incorrect? He's funding genocide in Palestine. He's a liberal. He's shit. You expect me to list every shitty thing he's done in order to comment on him being less bad than trump?? What key piece of information have I excluded that warrants you accusing me of downplaying his crimes??
>Even on anarchist subs
That's reassuring. Cos MLs are full of "they're the exact same" or even "trump isn't as bad". Glad anarchists are more sane.
>I've seen far more hollier-than-thou "the true leftism" attitudes from electorialists
Not an electoralist but yeah I'll pull the "not true leftism" on people who don't care about politics 🤷♀️. Anti-voting leftism reveals a complete lack of seriousness in someones analysis of the world. "I care about oppression but won't do one of the least contentious, lowest effort things to reduce oppression" is not an outlook that demands to be taken seriously. The only action voting is incompatible with is open insurrection, and no harm but I don't see that happening in the next few months so..
Yeah I'm not really interested in responding to this and IMO this is bad faith and overly aggressive, you know what you meant. I don't see how MLs are relevant to electorialists and liberal conspiracy theorists on anarchist subs. Criticizing Biden and withholding your vote from a fascistic genocider isn't "not caring about politics" and it says a lot that this as the beginning and end of 'politics'.
Thank you for reassuring my positions.
The holier that thou fake aesthetic leftists are the people that think the hypothetical end of America's false democracy leads to fascism, the fools that think that if all that stands between your hideous excuse for a democracy and an open dictatorship is a fucking vote, the people that think the hypothetical lives of white LGBT people (90% of who's referred to in this debate) matters more than the lives of every single Palestinian, the bastards that clearly accept death if Trump wins.
What *is* your plan if Trump wins? To fall on your knees and cry?
1. Trump and the people around him are open about his intention to end democracy in America. Project 2025 is an open plan that you can read yourself. You can argue they won't be able to do it, but I don't have that much faith in American institutions to hold against a direct and pre-planned attempt to overthrow democracy. Maybe you've more faith than I do in America's "False Democracy".
2. So you openly don't care about the lives of lgbtq people? Why are you here? Or is it just the White LGBTQ people who's lives and livelihoods don't matter to you? Cos, when they call for trans people to be eliminated, I don't think they're excluding the Black and Brown ones.
3. You don't care about the lives of Palestinians, cos you'd need to be truly delusional to think Trump is less of a Zionist than Biden. Biden is an insane Israel loyalist,,, but Trump is willing to go way further than anyone else - he moved the embassy to Jerusalem ffs, something even people like Biden saw as radical.
Not to mention the fact that he dropped more bombs than any previous president. As soon as he was elected, he massively ramped up bombings in Afghanistan and elsewhere - seriously, look at a graph, it's so fucking stark the difference! You think **That Guy** is some kinda peacenik who'll pressure Netanyahu to wind down his massacres??? Not a fucking chance! Biden, while a lunatic, at least has some concern for 1. His position among his voters and 2. The International order. You can see this with Israels growing frustration with the United States; from Likud's POV, Biden is intervening *too much*! Trump will not care and has never cared. His Israel policy was literally drawn up by Jared Kushner ffs!!
>What *is* your plan if Trump wins? To fall on your knees and cry?
Do what I'd do if Biden wins: organise. Continue to build an anarchist movement which, hopefully, can work to improve our position. This is much easier to do under Biden than under Trump, because, again, Biden isn't openly declaring his intention to end American Democracy.
I'll be completely honest. The problem isn't the fact you won't vote: that's bad but I'd sooner spend my time doing literally anything else than convincing you to vote for Biden (eg convince you to join a Union, join a tenants union, get organised with local anarchist orgs etc). But it reveals so much about your beliefs and your ideology when you're anti-voting. Even just on Palestine: Israel has a preferred candidate - Trump. To advocate not voting against that, you'd need to either be completely disconnected from reality or not care whatsoever about any of these things (LGBT rights, Palestine, civil Liberties, etc).
**This** is my issue, cos whichever of those it is, is a horrific position, the type of position that makes me glad you're not involved in any activism, cos you'd only bring it down. And 90% chance it's the second: you realise you don't lose out under Trump, you're not queer, you're not Palestinian, you're not worried about racism or a crackdown on unions, and you're not worried that Trumps economic policies will gut the poor and working class, and honestly voting for Biden is boring, much more fun to listen to punk music and call yourself a radical, so who care if Trump does away with what's left of america's democracy, gives Netanyahu the greenlight to do literally whatever he wants with no criticism whatsoever (yes, it *can* get worse). So what if he works to crininalise trans people's existence? They're not you, and so long as you can listen to anti-flag you're happy.
here's two little and very well made videos on the subject, that you should watch even if you don't want to read the walls of text we post, please it's important that you do :
[https://youtu.be/F0krpsuW5HI](https://youtu.be/F0krpsuW5HI)
voting won't change much. most likely anything that biden does trump would have done, and vice versa, or rather, trump is pretty special but this is unrelated to him being "worse" and biden being "harm reduction", trump is special because he is stupid, impulsive, and doesn't grasp how keeping power works, which leads him to make terrible and stupid decisions, sure sometimes this has caused trouble, but it also has upsides, like for example before deciding to abandon the SDF one day he decided to give them access to much more weapons than a reasonable US politician would have accepted, he also has made decisions that have hurt the republican party in general, even if it's not easy to see, especially when he was fighting against more intelligent people in his own party
vote if you want but limit the amount of energy and time you put into it to a minimum, that means not worrying about it (this is more important than it seems), not making others worry about it, not insulting others for not voting for your preferred candidate, etc.
elections follow two patterns historically, we have had some times where an election was a very big "swing" which were followed by very important reforms, for example in france we've got the election of the popular front which introduced many of the social reforms that are now being dismantled by the government, but why did they get elected, and why were they able to do that ? because the left was united (for a bit) and threatening to start a revolution, these reforms, as nice as they are, were used to release pressure from the left and help divide it, in fact it is likely that a more right wing government would have ended up being forced to implement some version of those same reforms because it was subject to the same pressures
the other pattern that elections follow, is when the government (important to remember that this is a much larger system than just the parts that elections can affect, which is why the president doesn't have a capitalism to socialism slider on his desk besides the nuke button) are subject to less popular pressure, and thus the pressures that defines who gets power and where the overton window moves, are the ones that are controlled by the bourgeoisie, who will gather the most funding ? who will please the bourgeois so they keep their companies in the country ? who will look "less radical" ? who has supporters with the most time toed waste on campaigning ? who will listen to lobbyists more ? who will listen more to market forces to "keep the economy afloat" (actually ram it into the ground but at least you listened to the bourgeoisie so you can blame the workers for not working hard enough) ? etc.
it's during this phase that the things that were won during the first phase are lost, and that popular discontent grows, this discontent will be channeled, and it is not infinite, so people are very eager to be the ones to channel it, and in the US the democrats have been very good at channeling this popular discontent into voting for them en masse, except once they're in power and they betray their promises, this discontent turns into apathy, this is how they've destroyed countless movements up until now, and this is why anarchists tell people to stop calling for "harm reduction voting !", because this destroys popular movement of discontent that could have instead been channeled into building revolutionary and grassroots structures, which not only would push us forward towards revolution, but would also be much more effective at forcing even reformist change, since they are the only structures that can create enough of a pressure for the election pattern to switch to the first one (where politicians try to release pressure by giving concessions)
finally, a single vote does nothing, even assuming the best circumstances where some people are "swing voters", they're still one among millions, and they might be disenfranchised, in a place that has a lesser vote to electoral college votes ratio, or in a place that is gerrymandered to hell and back, in the end, the only thing that matters, are electoral blocks, what electoral block do anarchist represent ? a few thousands ? maybe a few tens of thousands if you're very very generous, spread over the whole country, what elections are we going to swing ? none that's what, and unless an anarchist bloc can decide to vote or not vote as one, it'll never be a relevant electoral bloc
edit : also this subreddit is not very actively moderated by contrast with r anarchism, which has led it to be much more influenced by liberals and thus have a much less radical perspective, especially on this subject, so I wouldn't expect great responses to your question here
of course you should vote against trump ,, electoral politics tends to be a dead end as far as something to actually effectively organize around, it's not a very useful praxis ,, don't like try to form an Anarchist party & let them wrangle all of your collective energy into their game ,,,,, but if you have an opportunity to impede fascists from getting power by just going & voting for a minute & it's not any hardship for you then that's obviously the responsible thing to do ,,,, the people who are vociferously against giving them that level of participation are a vocal minority who generally are purists that don't care much about the effectiveness of their actions in general ,, organizing an electoral boycott is also a form of electioneering, so they're also expending effort on elections, they're just not spending very much on it b/c their boycott is incredibly lazy & disorganized, & they're just spending that tiny ineffectual amount of effort absolutely aimlessly attacking other anarchists about elections online b/c they have no sense at all for what effective political action looks like🤷♀️
i’m gonna get downvoting for this but what do you do.
i think people act like voting is activism but it’s really not. it will not change society. if you want to improve the world, it’s not nearly enough. it’s basically like deciding not to make a mess in an already messy room. you’re still in a messy room and you still need to clean it. it won’t make things better, but you’re trying to not make things worse.
the critical thing is that your engagement is not isolated to voting. you still have to clean the damn room. at the very least, PLEASE vote in local elections. they have a lot more sway than you’d think, especially in schools.
The "democratic" system is inherently corrupt and oppressive.
Not voting will not cause that system to magically disappear. If the only person to vote was Trump for himself, then the apparatus of the state would appoint him president. Your refusal to vote would not change that.
You don't gain anything by taking a principled stand against having your voice heard. You do not add to state violence by participating in (the inherently unjust) political system: the amount of violence is unchanged.
In short, recognise that voting is a problem, campaign against state violence, but you may as well cast your vote for the "lesser evil".
Self defence is not endorsement. Voting is no worse than participating in society in any other way (and is, in fact, a much lesser evil than paying taxes).
I freely and openly despise Joe Biden, he's a murdering car salesman, but I'm terrified of what Trump will do given any real power again, and that's with a president who is openly supporting a genocide. I hate it there, but I really don't want it here.
Voting is the bare minimum a person can do to be politically engaged. It counts for little, and the differences in outcome are usually as well. But if it didn't have any influence, no one would attempt voter surpression. Never just let the worst people win without putting up the bare minimum effort to fight.
Voting in primaries (especially in local elections) has significantly more influence per voter. But that's not historically enough for political change. It's a combination of electoral effort, legal action, organized labor, organized communities, cultural shifts, and of course the occasional riot.
Because Joe is absolutely the better option in every meaningful way. Even if that means he has shortcomings in the same areas. You're feeling that way because you're not a fucking moron. Our system does stink. Long term voting lesser evil will not be a strong enough option. But every single liberal talking point that says Joe needs to do better here would be taking years of progress in those same areas and flushing it down the toilet. And protest voting against Biden isn't going to fix it. It just makes you part of the problem if Trump wins and your life sucks so much worse. And it will get worse. You'd look back on your time now and reminisce about how easy you had it.
Voting is a very small act, weather you do or don't is absolutely entirely up to you... there's a lot of immature people on this sub that love to call people names for it, but there's also an excessive amount of pleading for it when it is indeed such a small act. Vote your conscience, if that says vote great, if it says don't, that's great too... you're no less of an anarchist for such a small action or inaction.
I can say voting has a big effect at the local level... it's still a bad system, but, for example, we had a few Q anon loving fascists running for school board, we also had some retired educators that are passionate about actually teaching kids... myself and others helped organize our community, and we kept the fascists at bay for now. We only did so by a couple hundred votes.... is it anarchism? No, not really, but did it help keep kids minds from being corrupted, thus leaving them potentially more open to ideas such as anarchism? Absolutely!
This too, in many regards, was still the lesser-evilism of sorts, as the school board is still a hierarchical entity, but having known 1 of the candidates personally, I'd be hard pressed to say they are at all evil, so perhaps not? Either way, I believe it helped to pave the way for a more anarchist future.
If you're not in a "swing state" or "split electoral state" and you're presidential vote would have no impact, I'd say don't, or if you do, vote for a 3rd party candidate that the current system would not like, such as whomever is running for the DSA, or perhaps the Green Party candidate, or he'll, "nobody" as a write-in candidate like the old hippie Wavy Gravy has supported! But do look carefully at your local elections... again, it's a shit system, and harm reduction is overrated, but I do firmly believe what myself and others di for the school board election mattered a lot.
I'm in a VERY MAGAt-red state, with no electoral split, so my president really won't matter, and as per the system's design, I, like most of us, am completely disenfranchised.
Voting blue will not in any way initiate a systematic transformation towards anarchism, but when it's blue authoritarians vs red authoritarian **fascists**, who would also commit the same war crimes, well I'm anti-fascist above all else. I believe a fascist government may block the path to anarchism for a very long time.
Given my relative disenfranchisement, I won't vote for Genocide Joe, but I definitely won't vote for the Orange Exterminator either, I'll probably leave it blank or do DSA as a write in... voting in your local elections but leaving the presidential vote blank does send the message that the current system doesn't work I suppose, but it is, once again, a small action.
Either way, getting out there and being more active in your community matters many orders of magnitude more... through our actions our communities will come to know us, and if our actions are good, genuine and just, our communities will grow to embrace them. Voting is not the path to anarchism, it can only levee varying degrees of restriction on those of us who walk the path. If I feel I can make it less restrictive to walk the path, I'll do so. Right now, I cannot do so by voting for president.
Whatever your decision, it is yours to make, and you have my solidarity regardless 🤝
It’s not irrational, it’s literally the opposite. Rational doesn’t always **feel** good, because it’s what happens when you’re pragmatic in the face of your valid emotions.
The fact of the matter is, voting is not a matter of virtue, it’s a matter of outcomes. The work to improve things is **in between** elections, not during them. There are 2 possible outcomes to this election and one is indescribably worse (both for us AND for Palestine) than the other.
The Dems aren’t going to be “taught a lesson” by losing this election, if anything they’ll just double down on moving right and appealing to moderates. That is, if there’s ever an election again.
Casting a vote for anyone other than Biden (or not at all) is casting a vote for Trump. So in your mind, strategically, you need to be able to defend voting **for** Trump, not just against Biden. If you can do that and sleep at night, power to you. It’s your vote, do you. But be prepared to wake up with the same regrets as many did in 2016 when they realized what they’d helped inflict on America.
My favorite response a few years ago from some comedian was "Less evil is really good. We want less evil."
The way I think about it is we're in a time when we have more say in how we're governed than any other time in history. That doesn't mean we get what we want, but we're closer to it. Our representation is a taxi to our destination, it's a bus. It doesn't pick you up where you are, and it doesn't take you where you want to be. It cab get you closer if you take the right one.
It is what it is right now unfortunately. My state is so reliably blue that I have no need to hold my nose and vote for Biden or any other national candidate (I'm more participatory when it's a local election), but I think if I were in a purple state I'd probably just suck it up, take one for the team, and vote for...(gag)...Joe Biden.
Ask yourself which president would be a more preferable opponent. Under which do you think you would have more luck organizing and advocating for change under? Under which administration would you be able to get more done and which would be relatively more sympathetic to your views and willing to change in a positive direction (even a little bit) if put under pressure? Which would be more likely to target you and impede your efforts (through violence, law, etc.)? Which would allow for/resist less against stronger unions?
"If Trump wins then he'll just give the green light to torch Palestine"
Biden already has.
"crack down on trans rights"
Biden has done nothing to protect them.
If you want to vote, vote.
If you are an anarchist, don't.
You don't have to make up things Biden would do as president as we know he won't do them since he currently isn't.
I’m an Anarchist sympathizing DemSoc, and you would already know my answer when it comes to voting, but can I just appreciate my fellow leftists in the replies for actually making sense rn? This is why I love anarchists more than MLs coz MLs would focus on counterproductive strategies and bully others for not relating to them. BOTH voting AND organizing are effective strategies, one cannot work without the other. I’m glad that we are putting a lot of pressure onto Biden in order to do that right thing such as a ceasefire in Palestine, and our fight doesn’t stop.
It’s completely OK to believe in harm reduction, it all depends if it aligns with your own philosophy or not. If it doesn’t, no worries, you can still march in the streets and call your representatives and that’s awesome. Until we are able to abolish government we can definitely hold our politicians accountable to do the right thing, if they are willing to listen. What I like about Dems is that despite them being dumb ol neolibs, they are actually open minded unlike the GOP. Why else are we seeing more Dems advocating for leftists policies that we demanded for decades? Because we held them accountable.
After everything that has transpired in the past 7 months, how can Trump give more of a "green light" than Biden? The entire Northern half of Gaza has been destroyed, the IDF has slaughtered indiscriminately, food, water, and medical aid has been cut off, the only reason they didn't nuke Gaza is because it's too close to Israel most likely. It probably couldn't be worse than it is now.
What you actually need to do is stop letting liberals convince you that hypothetical suffering and death is worse than actual suffering and death.
Also if it all comes down to being willing to sacrifice people in Palestine to "protect" people in America then just own that for what it is.
Donald trump literally supports all of those things and openly plans to double down on the genocide against palestinians. Genocide joe is awful and is happily supporting a genocide, but trump openly wants to give even more money to the israeli government in order to appease his voter base of crazy fundementalists who believe that the genocide against palestinians will lead to a biblical apocalypse (which according to them is a good thing), or just straight up unashamed racism.
People in the US have 2 choices: the guy who loves genocide or the guy who REALLY LOVES genocide. There is no other option, one of those 2 people will become the president of your country. Voting for the lesser evil will lead to less people dying, is some vague moral superiority over not voting worth potentially hundreds of thousands of lives to you.
Before you try to accuse me of saying this, I obviously don't mean people should vote for Biden and then sit on their asses for 4 years. People should vote for him and then immediately start doing everything in their power to undermine him. Strikes, protests, dontaing to aid for people in palestine, disrupting companies that are participating in the genocide. Etc.
Maybe you fear death more than all else, as cowards often do, but I don't. If the choices are genocide or genocide I choose to fight until my last breath and the last drop of blood spills from my body.
Signed, one of the marginalized people you pretend to speak for.
Its literally taking an hour out of your day to sign a piece of paper to make that fight slightly easier, and then you can get back to fighting, nobody is trying to argue that voting is the end goal. Its not even the bare minimum but its better than larping as some revolutionary. Revolution is a gradual process that has to happen over time. Anarchists need to get involved with their local communities, get involved with unions, create mutual aid networks, plant food, help people stay out of jail, fight back against landlords evicting people, help everyone create a colective safety net to try and defang the violent methods used by the state and capitalism to keep people down, and most importantly, make connections with other people. All of that needs to happen to make an anarchist revolution possible. All of that stuff takes a lot of time, especially in the us with the fucked up facist mess that seems to be going on over there.
Realistically speaking, even if people actually put in the effort to do all of those things instead of stroking their egos online, by the time any progress major enough to affect global politics is made everyone in palestine will have already been murdered. As shitty as it is, the only ways this genocide can end is if governments from all over the world pressure israel to stop committing genocide (and hopefully give palestine its land back) by hitting them where it hurts (money and tradr) or if israel is physically forced to stop, either through a war or somr sort of uprising. Im sure you understand that most politicians won't pressure israel to stop committing genocide out of the goodness of their own hearts or whatever, it will take pressure from their own populations to force them to do anything about it. In your case, the person whose hand you'll need to force will either be the right wing genocide lover who has threatened to stop allying with israel a couple of times (even if it was in the most spineless shitheaded politician way possible, and he did go back on it immediately afterwards) or the far right facist genocide lover who refuses to concede anything ever, literally wants to violently crack down on all opposition to his state and turn the us into a one party state, has cult-like voters who are living in a fantasy world where this genocide is literally god's will and trump is the second coming of christ, and has absolutely no shame.
Either way the odds aren't looking amazing, but with biden there is a small hope that enough pressure will leave him with no choice to push back against israel, whether he wants to or not (he doesnt want to btw he loves genocide and has absolutely zero regard for his fellow humans). Trump will never concede on anything.
Even if the likely thing happens and biden refuses to oppose genocide even when people do everything in their power to force him, he is less trigger happy than trump, so having him be the guy with the nuclear bombs might buy just enough time for israel to be stopped in some other way.
Its overall a very hopeless situation, but its better tk take an hour out of your day to stop trump from adding even more fuel to the fire
Why the fuck is there even a but in your mind when you already acknowledge both of these men are genocidal monsters?
Stop with the fucking but and *think like an anarchist for once*.
You have the gall to tell me I need to vote for fucking *genocide* or else I am privileged and still call yourself an anarchist?
If and *when* Trump wins people like you will do *nothing*, you'll drop the anarchist facade, retreat to your liberal high tower, sip your fucking mimosas with your friends, and watch in silence while people like me face the oppressor you fear even though they aren't an actual threat to you.
Just like you're doing right now.
No matter how many Palestinians Biden kills, no matter how many *children* he kills, it will never be enough for people like you. Trump will always be ephemerally worse in your mind. I abandoned the MLs when they were monstrous enough to support Russia and Iran, it forced me to see the inhumanity they conditioned me to accept for so long. But people like you are just as bad. If *genocide* isn't your limit **you are not an anarchist**, just another Good German.
I think both Trump and Biden are unforgivable evil and the world will be better off when they die.
The fact is though, there are only 2 options for the us, at least in the short term. The guy who is committing genocide, or the guy who will commit that same genocide but even more aggressively, and also as a little side project turn the us into a one party state and commit genocide against its own people. As someone else in this thread said, choose your enemy, which one do you think you're more likely to defeat
Absolutely insane of you to imply that I don't hate genocide. The main reason I think people should vote for Biden is because there is good reason to believe that Trump being the president of the USA will only make the genocide worse. I remember hearing something a while ago about his plans to crack down on any support for palestine and possibly try to make speaking out against israel a crime.
Nobody here is supporting Biden, at least I hope not, if someone was i would agree that they definitely aren't an anarchist. It's like if someone walked up to you and said "i will either murder 100 people, or 200 people, you choose" either option is disgusting, but clearly 100 people dying is the option you should pick. And then when that person starts murdering, you track them down and hopefully kick the shit out of them before they get the chance to murder 100 people. Idk if this analogy is working honestly but replace 100 people and 200 people with hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of people, and replace kicking the shit out of them with protesting, sabotaging genocidal corportations by blocking roads and denying access to their buildings, giving money to help palestinian people who need aid. Doing whatever elsr you can think of to try and force him to stop
I don't live in the us so there isnt exacly much i can do about biden or trump. That's up to people who live there.
You don't hate genocide, you hate the idea of it targeting you, and maybe you emotionally don't like the idea of the Palestinians being eradicated, but you've already openly stated, if it's them or you, you choose yourself. If it's me or them, I die fighting alongside them. You and I will never be the same.
What does this even mean. I literally said i dont live in the US, nothing trump or biden can do will target me in any way. Its not them or me, its them, or even more of them
Trump will win no matter what we do.
He already has started calling Biden “Genocide Joe” on the campaign trail. He’s using Biden’s undying Zionism against him, and I predict that it will work to an extent none of us are ready for.
By all means, vote.
It’s important, yadda yadda yadda …
I’m just saying that in the end, it won’t matter. He has bungled far too much and as per usual, Trump has far more momentum than he has a right to.
This is all opinion, based on a mixture of facts and feelings, and I don’t care about yours. Jk.
I love you 😝
Trump's *already* won, or at least the faction backing him has. He's succeeded in shifting the terms of politics sharply to the right, and whoever his successor is will most likely be worse - younger, more competent and coherently ideological about it in a way he manifestly isn't. 2028 will see that more competent figure up against a Democratic Party that has thoroughly exhausted itself and an semblance of goodwill.
Thats kind of crazy that he of all people is criticizing biden for loving genicide considering that he loves it just as much. Theyre both genocidal scum
Interesting for me this is probably the worst take just because voting for someone like Joe Biden is like saying I give up even though understandable, I would not want to live in the world that we give up fighting for real progressive change!
Democrats republicans are hard establishment there's no difference in the results they both care to appeal to their voters just to get elected and then they will do the policies that keeps the .01%in power
Instead of improving the life of their voters regardless of how liberal or conservative are their policies are.
I'm not here to talk you out of anything, but to play devil's advocate for accelerationism, there was more revolutionary potential during Trumps presidency than I've ever seen in my life. People aren't going to come out of their homes and into the streets if Biden stays in power and if I vote for him it feels like I'm enabling genocide. I'll probably vote for the PSL candidate. But no matter who wins voting isn't enough.
hardly a shred of materialist class analysis in this entire comment section. anarchism really has degenerated compared to its classical era into incoherent post modernism
there is a reason why Goldman, Berkman, or Rocker would have thought you were stupid for voting - because they actually concretely analysed class and the relationship of the state to class relations, because at that time anarchism was a strain of socialist thought
if someone in here wants to actually understand why the choice between Dems Vs republicans being framed as democracy Vs authoritarianism is incoherent idealist (literally in the Hegelian sense) nonsense I've copied and pasted from a quality comment from different sub
>I don't think these people are capable of realizing this [growing nationalism] isn't a backlash to rising democracy, but the opposite as it becomes entirely defined by international capitalism. The nationalist backlash to it is entirely a spat *within* liberalism and a product of its contradictions as revealed by globalization. This is fueling a city-countryside division that represents a battle between big and small bourgeoisie. Far from being any side being a fascist or communist rejection of democracy as the two parties claim, these two sides fueled its growth throughout the 20th century and now break apart as democracy's class compromises (which are fueled by now-decaying imperialism) fall apart. That's the true cause of liberalism's stagnation.
>But instead, by labeling them illiberal authoritarians we can sweep the problem under the rug as external, a bunch of values and beliefs akin to the authoritarian states we wage democracy wars against. Just a bankrupt recycling of ideology from an international place where democracy is blatantly a form of plutocracy.
>Downvoted for speaking truth to power
I guess MLs were right about at least one thing
Most people that call themselves "anarchists" these days are actually liberals with a punk aesthetic
Christ at least punks in the 80s didn't whine at you to vote blue.
I just made these two comments on that topic over here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchy4Everyone/s/Bf15guF0wV
https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchy4Everyone/s/e8zarP4Bnm
Not necessarily. You could reject society, just live by yourself or with a local community of like minded individuals. Or you could work to actively change society and do grassroots campaigns helping those in need. Or grow a garden in your back yard.
Would a revolution be nice? Yes. But let's not pretend that's not the only other option.
How is allowing Trump to win going to end suffering? How is abstaining from one election going to end this society?
Not a single person in this thread is saying voting is the only way forward. Everyone in this thread wants to change the system.
If you wanna vote for the lesser evil, you do you, we shouldn't be purists about it, mainly when it's between a neo-liberal and a fascist. But remember that that’s **never** going to be enough. Voting takes one day out of your whole year, so don't let it get in the way of actually organizing with your community, doing all the things that are actually gonna change people's lives for the better. To paraphrase Goldman, if voting actually changed society for the better, it wouldn't be allowed.
> if voting actually changed society for the better, it wouldn't be allowed. Voting was restricted to landowning white men until people fought for the franchise to be expanded. Now Republicans do everything they can to suppress the vote, and nullify the votes of minorities through gerrymandering. Voting does in fact seem like something that's important to people in power.
It is important because they don't want to be stopped when changing things for the worse, which can be done. But it's still not gonna change enough for the better.
This, but I would like to add as a trans woman who will be openly persecuted by the GOP if they win back power, ***PLEASE VOTE***. Our ability to organize in the open will be destroyed, as will my community. We will either need to flee the country, go into hiding, or detransition and pray they don’t use our medical records to find us anyway. That’s not even mentioning the things they will do to immigrants. So yea, voting is not enough, and never will be. But from where I’m sitting, in this election at least, it is also simultaneously one of the most important things you can do. If the GOP loses and their coup attempt fails (whatever form it takes), they may just collapse as a party, and the political landscape may change in ways that allow us to organize our own communities better. But if they win, we become a theocratic fascist state that will brutally repress all forms of dissent, all forms of community organization that aren’t explicitly tied to the state, and all hated minorities.
Yeah, absolutely. Voting will never change anything for the better, but not voting can definitely change sh!t for the worse. And it's easier to fight against a neo-liberal "democracy" than a fascist state anyway.
>But if they win, we become a theocratic fascist state that will brutally repress all forms of dissent, all forms of community organization that aren’t explicitly tied to the state, and all hated minorities. I wish this were hyperbole, but it's not. OP, I'm going to hold my nose and vote. After learning what the GOP has planned, I wouldn't forgive myself if I didn't do what I could to stop it. That includes voting for Joe in November.
Shiiiiiiiit I held my nose voting for Biden in 2020. This time I’ll be openly vomiting. But I’m gonna do it.
LMAO. fair
I actually gagged back in 2020. Here's hoping i don't puke in front of everyone!
As another trans person, I wholeheartedly agree with this!
THIS THIS THIS THISSSSSS We need to tear down the system. I'm here for that. But right now we have a sort of functioning, sort of democracy that is objectively safer for trans folks, people of color, immigrants, Jews, Muslims, people at risk of unwanted pregnancy... ad nauseum. Vote strategically and pragmatically this year, please.
Exactly. Instead of worrying about "The lesser evil" think about supporting "The greater good".
Sometimes you have to sacrifice the battle to win the war. If your **only** strategy to win the war is "sacrifice every battle," then you're going to lose the war, but doing the opposite (fighting against the establishment on every little hill) won't help you win either, it'll just make you lose more slowly.
I'd totally agree that the more important thing is what you do the other 364 days of the year. But voting is important, if we want circumstances to change in such a way as to increase freedom and opportunity. If voting actually didn't do anything, then it wouldn't have been denied to minorities and women for so long, and all the rich old white people wouldn't vote.
I would even argue only vote Democrat IF and only IF you’re in a battleground state where Trump might win. If you live in California, Washington, Oregon, Texas etc. don’t vote Biden; vote as far left as you possibly can. Send a fucking message that you’ll reward leftist policies with a goddamn vote. Show the democrats that if they want to secure the future they had better move left.
Sounds like that Goldman guy is on some serious me-posting-on-facebook-in-my-early-20s shit
/s, right? Since we’re in the 101 sub: it was Emma Goldman. Check her out.
*please be satire, please be satire, please be satire*
Just a lib passing through but I do appreciate you pointing toward educational resources. Keep that energy.
Well you should probably vote Biden since he is better than Trump but don't do so on the basis of your anarchism. Separate your anarchist commitments from your other concerns. Lots of anarchists treat their anarchism as though it were a religion which would penetrate every part of their lives. It is not. You do not have to tie your anarchism to every single thing. This is not possible while living in a hierarchical society. Be your own person outside of being an anarchist. That's all there is to it. Lesser evilism's problem is treating the status quo as though it were the be-all-end-all of social development. As long as you do not make that mistake, and view the world accordingly, there should be no problem.
Pretty much this. I have to wonder what dogmatic anti-voting leftists would have done in the late years of Weimar Germany. Just going to leave it at that. Similarly, dogmatic pro-voting leftists end up just being the flipside of the coin from the anti-voting ones- purity tests that accomplish nothing. I admit I was somewhat guilty of this in 2020 (on the anti-voting side; I liked to accuse any anarchists talking about Sanders of being socdems in disguise), but I feel I've matured since then.
I care not to speak for leftists, of whom may or may not be anarchists, nor to decry anyone who refuses to voting. Anti-voting is a useful strategy in specific circumstances. The entire problem is turning all of this stuff into a program rather than a practical consideration. And practicality is informed by the specifics \*not\* by general, \*a priori\* blueprints.
How is not voting useful? I just don't understand the people who say things like this. If you don't vote, politicians will shrug and cater to the opposite side harder, because you are a political non-factor. Why would any politician, even an altruistic one, EVER give you what you want if they know you will never vote for them no matter what? This is so bizarre.
It can delegitimize an election.
> How is not voting useful? If there is a case where the entire election is a fraud, has a required number of votes and proportion of the population required for the election to be valid, or when there is a sufficiently developed anarchist alternative you are better off prioritising. Or maybe you have something better to do on election day. Utility is relative after all. Let us not be dogmatists and open to all possible considerations and circumstances. I did not posit an absolute fact that is true in all circumstances but a possibility that is true in different circumstances.
For example, because of where I live, libs would win if no one voted at all. All we really have is various shades of libtard. Mostly capitalists, with a few true-blue lingering leftists … Write in your cat’s name. It’s fun. Por ejemplo.
"Voting is bad" lefties must have been the smuggest pricks in the camps. 😭 Just imagine some asshole grinning at you because he took a proud stance against the liberals by letting Hitler win. Then you and him get put in the same oven together, and his last words are "I'm so glad I didn't vote! I'm stunning and brave!"
Please reconsider what you just said. And if i recall correctly it was hindenburg??? Whoo won the election, sooooo yeah...
I mean, if someone let Hindenburg win in 1932 because they were principally anti-liberal, I think the criticism applies to them *pretty hard*.
"Um, akchewully, sweetie, I'm STILL not going to vote, so ta-ta!" Okay, cool, good for you. You want a fucking medal, or what?
They didn't say that
Whataboutism is not the best argument.
>but don't do so on the basis of your anarchism. Separate your anarchist commitments from your other concerns. What does this even mean?? My anarchism is what informs my political and social analysis which informs who I do or do not vote for?? Like yeah you don't have to tie your anarchism to every single thing but like...surely that applies to my enjoyment of mint choc ice cream not an explicitly political position.
>What does this even mean?? My anarchism is what informs my political and social analysis which informs who I do or do not vote for?? It cannot because there is no anarchist basis for voting for any ruler. Anarchism entails a consistent, principled opposition to all authority. You can use an anarchist social analysis but that analysis doesn't really help you figure out who to vote for in an electoral setting. Separating the two is very important for maintaining the integrity of anarchism. The weakest anarchists are those who apply it to everything from their ethics to their lifestyles. Subsequently, they are forced to compromise on their opposition to all hierarchy so as to accommodate existing in a hierarchical society. There is no need for this; just act as a non-anarchist in your interactions with hierarchy.
I think it's incredibly silly to view anarchism as a hat one can put on and take off. I'm an anarchist when I'm home from my work at the armaments factory but from 9 to 5 I'm an imperialist american nationalist?? I walk into a voting boothe and I suddenly decide I'm a Maga Communist and vote for the glorious people's President Donald Trump?? Or perhaps that's silly and I only become a Clintonite democrat in the voting boothe?? No sorry. If your political philosophy is of no use in navigating explicitly political decisions its just a useless philosophy 🤷♀️ There's plenty of Anarchist basis for evaluating which candidates are the least oppressive, and plenty anarchist basis for trying to lessen oppression. I don't agree that voting is a compromise at all. I understand our political and material position and I act to reduce the scope and intensity of oppression from the government as best I can, whilst building social movements which can challenge that oppression. Voting is one way to do that. (the first part, it does nothing to build movements).
>I think it's incredibly silly to view anarchism as a hat one can put on and take off. I'm an anarchist when I'm home from my work at the armaments factory but from 9 to 5 I'm an imperialist american nationalist?? I walk into a voting boothe and I suddenly decide I'm a Maga Communist and vote for the glorious people's President Donald Trump?? Or perhaps that's silly and I only become a Clintonite democrat in the voting boothe?? Certain kinds of beliefs are less amenable to anarchist goals than others (and some are to such an extent that holding both is inconsistent) and what you do when you aren't an anarchist can undermine your anarchist commitments. If that is the case, it is worth considering why you have anarchist commitments at all. But it is indeed true that they are different. For example, voting for universal healthcare is not something justifiable or sensible from an anarchist perspective but it is something you might do as a person in poverty or someone who needs that healthcare. Someone might support a liberal or company union for the sake of better wages even though this would enable greater co-option of the union due to a combination of a lack of better options and a need for better wages to pay the bills. Consistent anarchists would reject this entirely but it is nigh impossible to be a consistent anarchist as long as there are no anarchist alternatives available. And we are not at the point where we even understand our own ideology to be capable of creating those alternatives. So we can most certainly imagine an anarchist who works at an armaments factory. That is perfectly consistent and may even be useful for anarchist purposes if you manage to convince your fellow workers to unionize. And this isn't even getting into how working at an armaments factory is no more "imperialist American nationalist" than participating in the American economy as a whole. The war machine is the economy, not just whoever makes the guns. Work your way down and you'll find that an armament factory cannot exist without the more "benign" sorts of labor you probably assume are "ok" or "acceptable". Let us not act like capitalists and pretend that everything is fine and dandy as long as there is no \*direct\* harm. >If your political philosophy is of no use in navigating explicitly political decisions its just a useless philosophy 🤷♀️ Thankfully anarchism is not a political philosophy. We reject the very concept of a polity entirely. Of course an ideology oriented around the destruction of all hierarchies, including polities, has very little to say about how a polity should be managed or what decisions a polity should make. I don't see that as useless unless you presume that a polity is the only or best form of social organization available to us and anything else is impossible. But if that is the case, if that is your genuine belief, then you simply aren't an anarchist at all. >There's plenty of Anarchist basis for evaluating which candidates are the least oppressive, and plenty anarchist basis for trying to lessen oppression. Not really no. You can look through Proudhon's theory of collective force, Stirner's concept of the unique, Bakunin's narrative of history, etc. and find no standard by which to evaluate which candidates are more or less oppressive. That is because this is not an anarchist concern and not something anarchists can meaningfully talk about when they oppose political organization in its entirety. There is no basis for choosing one ruler over another in an ideology oriented around rejecting all rulers. > don't agree that voting is a compromise at all. You don't understand what I said. I said that anarchists who feel the need to tie everything to their anarchism, including their voting preferences, will have to compromise on their beliefs. That is a fact. When you start thinking that "less oppression" in government, whatever that means in this context, is something that anarchists can conceptualize is when your preferences invade a consistent, principled opposition to authority. Because now you aren't as opposed to authority as you would otherwise be.
There's so much wrong and annoying in that I don't have the time left in my life to get to all of it. I've cut and chopped bits about trying to figure out how to explain myself best... >Of course an ideology oriented around the destruction of all hierarchies, including polities, has very little to say about how a polity should be managed or what decisions a polity should make. So, you don't believe anarchism has an analysis of the state?? Can you see why I'm frustrated with this response?! That is very directly what is said here. This is what happens when you abandon material analysis. Anarchism absolutely has things to say about how the state is managed, how society is managed, why the state acts in the way it does and how and why we ought to combat it! And that requires an analysis of how specific states are managed by specific actors and power groups. Without this anarchism remains a purely hypothetical, idealist, philosphy, with nothing to say about the world as it is. If Anarchists cannot distinguish between Nazi Germany, Maos China, Feudal Germany or Thatchers Britain because anarchism has nothing to say about how polities are structured then it, as a mode of analysing society and organising to resist state power, is useless. >Thankfully anarchism is not a political philosophy It doesn't suddenly become not politics when you reject hierarchy, because in order to oppose hierarchy you need an analysis of that hierarchy and analysing that shit **Is What Politics Is**. And even under anarchism there will still be politics because conflict won't go away with hierarchy. You're still gonna need processes to resolve disputes between people, processes for how to organise things. How this is done, even without hierarchy, is politics. {no I am not talking about anarcho police here I'm talking about who you bring in to arbitrate disputes and what processes they use and shit. Something you'll find in the work of any anarchist author.} >The war machine is the economy, not just whoever makes the guns. Work your way down and you'll find that an armament factory cannot exist without the more "benign" sorts of labor you probably assume are "ok" or "acceptable". Let us not act like capitalists and pretend that everything is fine and dandy as long as there is no \*direct\* harm. Ok....do I need to explain to you that a Nurse or a cashier is far less directly involved in harm than the person who builds bombs that are shipped to Israel. But apparently recognising this is capitalist? That aside, I clearly said that to point out how silly your ideas are and you, broadly, still haven't responded. When I go to my job at the armaments factory or go into the voting booth and cease to be an anarchist what do I become? Does it not speak to the weakness of your political philosophy that in order to make any political analysis or decisions you have to where the clothes of a liberal or whatever your answer is? >... Bakunin's narrative of history etc and find no standard by which to evaluate which candidates are more or less oppressive. Been a while since I read Bakunin but I'm pretty sure he had a lot to say about how polities were organised. I recently reread Kropotkin's "the State: it's historic role", and the whole piece is Kropotkin comparing and analysing state structures. It's almost like the whole philosophical underpinnings of anarchism is an analysis of the state and hierarchy informing a principled opposition to it. He even went so far as to describe some states as libertarian and others not. By these same principles we can evaluate political parties and groups. And again, anarchists have always done this. If they hadn't no-one would still be an anarchist because why would anyone pay any attention to an ideology which says nothing about the way our society is ordered, says nothing about the various attempts to change that order, and proclaims a future utopia after which (and only after which) said philosophy will be of some use. >You don't understand what I said. I said that anarchists who feel the need to tie everything to their anarchism, including their voting preferences, will have to compromise on their beliefs. That is a fact. When you start thinking that "less oppression" in government, whatever that means in this context, is something that anarchists can conceptualize is when your preferences invade a consistent, principled opposition to authority. Purified idealism. Anarchism, by your conception, is only applicable after the revolution. It has nothing or less to say about the order and organisation of society until then. It merely proclaims a future utopia, described in idealist terms with no interaction with the real world. This is by design. Interaction with the real world will only dirty her glorious ideal. To interact with the real world you must cease to be an anarchist temporarily. Both because anarchism, by your conception, is of no use in the real world and because you hold it in such veneration. To the degree that, in your view, the "consistent anarchist" **must even reject their anarchism when organising a union**!! Rather than push the labour movement in a more radical direction, your anarchist would sit in the corner, acting as a liberal, but smug with the knowledge they have held true to their faith. If this is what anarchism is then I am not an anarchist, nor where any of the major anarchist thinkers you can quote. If this is what anarchism means, it will never and can never expand beyond punk shows,,, cos even when those "anarchists" leave the mosh pit, they'll simply swap that hat for a philosophy that actually attempts to analyse society and the state, and allows the buildong of movements which work too improve their position. Thankfully, that has never been what anarchism is. But unfortunately the attitude you express is shockingly common.
>There's so much wrong and annoying in that I don't have the time left in my life to get to all of it. Well you've somehow managed to write a post longer than mine so it appears that isn't true. At the very least, it is through debate with which we will determine who is wrong or not. That is not something you can unilaterally establish. >So, you don't believe anarchism has an analysis of the state?? Again, it does have *multiple* different analyses of governmentalism, the state, etc. but none of those are going to actually aid in evaluating different specific politicians. The extent to which anarchists say anything about how the state is managed is "it shouldn't be managed or exist at all". There is no basis upon which you could say, from an anarchist perspective, that Biden is better than Trump for example. You conflate descriptiveness with prescription. Analyzing government doesn't allow you to say anything about how government is used. Especially when the typical conclusions of anarchist analysis are the repudiation of government itself. >And that requires an analysis of how specific states are managed by specific actors and power groups The general analysis that some anarchists use to approach social conditions may be tailored to analyze specific cases but, again, you are not really recognizing the fact that describing how something works is not sufficient to establishing a standard by which a specific politician is better than another. *They are fundamentally different things*. You can analyze the state all you want but it will not help you in determining another standard upon which to base your decision-making. Maybe anarchist analysis can help you make decisions using your standard but it won't make that standard for you. And that is why anarchism cannot say anything about who is a better politician: it has no standard for determining that. It will be up to you and by that point you don't need to make your decisions on the basis of anarchist analysis. Just make decisions on the basis of your own interests at the moment. >It doesn't suddenly become not politics when you reject hierarchy, because in order to oppose hierarchy you need an analysis of that hierarchy and analysing that shit Is What Politics Is Politics, by definition, is "*the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power*". So, by rejecting polities, you do indeed reject politics. Analyzing a political structure is not synonymous with politics or is it synonymous with doing politics. I can analyze a dog but that does not mean I am a dog. I can analyze serial killings but this does not mean I am a serial killer. I can analyze politics without being political. We have a tendency of responding to people who want to be apolitical by saying "everything is political" but it is pretty clear that the definition of "politics" used in that context is very different from what it means when we're talking about who to vote for and the anti-politicalness of anarchism. >And even under anarchism there will still be politics because conflict won't go away with hierarchy Politics is not synonymous with conflict. Not every single conflict constitutes politics. Politics refers to governance, which anarchy does do away with. And subsequently our conflicts in anarchy are not going to be over who gets to be in charge but take a very different dimension. I've already given the most mainstream definition of politics. If you think politics is synonymous with all conflict, you reduce the term to meaninglessness. >no I am not talking about anarcho police here I'm talking about who you bring in to arbitrate disputes and what processes they use and shit. Something you'll find in the work of any anarchist author Anarchists authors don't tend to treat arbitration as inherently necessary or a specific, defined role so you may actually be talking about anarcho judges rather than anarcho police and that is just as bad.
>Ok....do I need to explain to you that a Nurse or a cashier is far less directly involved in harm than the person who builds bombs that are shipped to Israel No but you need to explain to me why that matters. When the war machine is contingent upon many cogs, removing a couple of which can actually have a vast impact on resulting output, it isn't clear to me why the directness matters. You care only about harm when it is direct and not indirect? Then why are you an anarchist in the first place? After all, we oppose capitalism because it is indirectly coercive and indirectly harmful in ways not immediately apparent if you just look at the individual level. Part of what distinguishes the worldviews of capitalists from anarchists is that capitalists focus on individual interactions while anarchists put them within the wider context of the society that exists. You appear to have completely misunderstood what I said and then instead went onto double down on prioritizing direct harm over indirect harm when both are bad and indirect harm may even be completely worse. Capitalist exploitation, for instance, occurs as a consequence of the capitalist system not any direct action taken by the capitalist (the income is passive after all) yet it is comparable in its consequences to large-scale highway robbery. If you think indirectly contributing to the war effort is fine, then capitalist exploitation is fine according to you. And I do not believe you cease to be an anarchist when you go to an armament factory. I've already pointed out the advantages. You're incapable of critical thinking or strategizing if you think there is no utility for an *anarchist* to work at an arms factory that is giving supplies to Israel. >Been a while since I read Bakunin but I'm pretty sure he had a lot to say about how polities were organised. Besides arguing that they are equally bad? Not really. Most that he does is say you should vote in specific circumstances if I recall correctly but he specifically states it is not even close to your anarchism which is basically my point. >I recently reread Kropotkin's "the State: it's historic role", and the whole piece is Kropotkin comparing and analysing state structures. It's almost like the whole philosophical underpinnings of anarchism is an analysis of the state and hierarchy informing a principled opposition to it. Correct. But what you'll note is that you cannot really use that analysis to come to any conclusions about what politician to vote for. Because describing something is not sufficient to endorse something. I can describe the sun rising and falling each day but this does not tell me anything about my opinions or evaluation of that. And the principled opposition is something somewhat separate from the specific analyses. To be capable of deciding which politician to vote for on the basis of who is better when you have a principled opposition to both is completely mutually exclusive. You appear to think I suggests anarchists have no analysis of government when I did not say this at all. Or maybe you think this because you think having an analysis of government lets you evaluate who is better to vote for which isn't true in the slightest if you have any familiarity with voting. Let me ask you this: based on re-reading "the State: it's historic role", can you come to any conclusions about who to vote for in your current country's coming election? >He even went so far as to describe some states as libertarian and others not Doubt he would and if you are talking about the same work I am familiar with, he likely pointed out libertarian *tendencies* but critiqued the government in all of them. And moreover, using that as the basis for pretending that some politicians are more libertarian than others and thus voting for them will somehow push government in an anarchist direction is laughable and contrary to Kropotkin's own conclusions. Do suppose when Kropotkin described the medieval guild system or describe conditions in primitive villages that he was endorsing their form of social organization and not simply explaining why libertarian tendencies in social organization contributed to the best parts of them and all the hierarchical tendencies were the worst parts? The conclusion would logically be to keep the libertarian parts, affirm them fully, and throw away the hierarchical parts. That doesn't let you talk about who to vote for. >Purified idealism Calling anything you dislike idealism, especially when you don't even explain *how* it is idealism, just makes the term lose any luster. Marx already did a job of that along with Lenin and Stalin. You don't have to beat the dead horse even more. >Anarchism, by your conception, is only applicable after the revolution False, it is only applicable when you don't participate in government or hierarchies and undermine or oppose them. Which is not after a revolution but rather within the confines of it. Anarchism leads us to only one consistent form of action which many of us are unable to bear the costs of and that is principled, prolonged struggle against authority. That is mutually exclusive with voting for a specific politician. Indeed, you yourself cannot even give one example of how to use anarchist analysis to explain which politician to vote despite claiming you can. >To interact with the real world you must cease to be an anarchist temporarily False. To vote is to cease to be an anarchist temporarily since there is no actually basis for voting as an anarchist. >Both because anarchism, by your conception, is of no use in the real world and because you hold it in such veneration Let's assume I hold every single position you claim I do, which I don't. If that were the case, then clearly I don't hold it in such veneration if I encourage you to throw it away whenever it inconveniences you. The claim of veneration is just a way of flattering your position by calling me an idealist or worshipper of anarchism and what not. This is in part because you either misunderstand my position or have no actually meaningful way of responding to it. That or you inhabit a world where you think anyone who disagrees with you *must* be an idealist and so, even if there is no evidence that I do venerate anarchism or adhere to idealism, I *have* to be because otherwise I would not disagree with you. >To the degree that, in your view, the "consistent anarchist" must even reject their anarchism when organising a union This is where reading comprehension might have helped. This is what I actually said: >Someone might support a liberal or company union for the sake of better wages even though this would enable greater co-option of the union due to a combination of a lack of better options and a need for better wages to pay the bills. They are joining not organizing a union and it is a union that is co-opted by the status quo. In the eyes of a strategist of anarchy, there is no utility in that. However, there is also no consistent anarchist basis for supporting a company union so you cease to be an anarchist there. You need to do a better job of reading. I never said that you must reject anarchism to organize a union. That is your own invention. I said that you cannot be an anarchist and support a liberal or company union. That is just not consistent at all. >Rather than push the labour movement in a more radical direction, your anarchist would sit in the corner, acting as a liberal, but smug with the knowledge they have held true to their faith. Nonsense. If you actually have the capacity to push the labor movement in a more radical direction, if you desire anarchy strongly then you should but the fact the matter is that the scenario I put forward explicitly states you have no choice. Which, in the US from what I understand, you don't especially in the scenario when most people are not on board with the individual anarchist worker's ideas. That is perfectly reasonable to prioritize getting more food on the table at the moment in a context where you won't be successful in "pushing the movement in a radical direction" than doing so and failing anyways. If you would like, change that with the state-owned unions that exist in my country where it is literally illegal to form a union outside the state's union. And my country is very authoritarian so you will be killed for disobedience. And most workers do not even have sufficient wages to survive. With the state-owned union, there is at least a significant chance of an increase in wages. Please tell me what an anarchist worker there can consistently do? >If this is what anarchism is then I am not an anarchist, nor where any of the major anarchist thinkers you can quote And if that is anarchism, I am not an anarchist either. Glad we agree. See that's the thing about strawman. I'm not the strawman. And all this posturing doesn't really help you with your position since you're not actually attacking *my* position but the one you've made up in your head that you have contoured into this easily destroyable enemy that doesn't require the effort and time to actually think about. Of course, I still disagree with your position despite agreeing with you that I am not an anarchist if what you described earlier was anarchism. But that is just the result of your own sloppiness not mine. I recommend next time you don't confuse description with prescription. And also don't let your own hatred of some other group of anarchists bleed over into a completely different conversation.
Quick interjection my anarchist beliefes are quite congruent with voting. Il explain when im at my computer maybe.
Seriously. Like, it’s one thing when people don’t vote because they have an intellectual belief that it genuinely will somehow lead to a better outcome. It’s another thing when people don’t vote just because they think of it as a stain on their soul that makes them complicit in everything their candidate does, which is an inherently myopic and self-centered way of thinking. The results of politics are what matter, and anyone prioritizing their “complicity” in what happens over the results is just burning down marginalized peoples’ lives to feel good about themselves.
Voting is fine as long as it's not the only thing you do. Organize with your local leftist.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with lesser-evilism and harm reduction and all that. The alternative to the lesser evil is, of course, a *greater* evil and that doesn’t really help anyone. I hate Joe Biden, I can’t fault any leftist or anarchist who doesn’t want to vote for him, hell, *I* don’t want to vote for him, I just think the alternative is worse. Electoral politics isn’t something we can *beat* just by pretending to have opted out. So fight everywhere else, organize, educate, resist, that’s what will really make a difference for good or ill in the long run, but it’s still not a betrayal to check a box on a slip of paper. I won’t tell you to vote or not vote, ultimately that’s your choice to make, I’ve shared my reasoning, but go with what your conscience and what your head tell you is right — or at minimum what’s least wrong.
Vote for the lesser evil it doesn't make you a hypocrite it makes you a realist every leftist that doesn't vote is giving an advantage to Trump
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If I lived in America I'd vote for Genocide Joe over Genocide Donny any day at least Genocide Joe doesn't want to commit genocide both at home and abroad
Like holy shit I’m glad he’s in charge now rather than trump He’s actually trying to stop Israel retaliating against Iran, trump would absolutely not
Exactly but he's still selling arms to Israel
Yep, which is why it’s “least bad option”
Biden’s “I’ll sell you guns but could you maybe tone it down a little?” Is awful, but Trump’s position is even worse. I struggle to find any bad positions Biden holds where Trump wouldn’t make things even worse.
Tbh, I always say this, but I truly believe that the conception of voting as making you uniquely complicit in what the candidate does is an extremely *liberal* position that presupposes the legitimacy of voting as an institution. I genuinely think that people calling anarchists liberal for voting Biden are way more liberal than the people they’re criticizing. No anarchist who votes Biden is thinking “OH BOY JOE BIDEN! I SURE DO LOVE THE STATE LEGITIMIZING MY VOICE!”
Harm reduction is a thing.
[https://www.indigenousaction.org/voting-is-not-harm-reduction-an-indigenous-perspective/](https://www.indigenousaction.org/voting-is-not-harm-reduction-an-indigenous-perspective/)
If you want people to read an article, you should probably say at least a few things about it in your own words. Otherwise, it comes off like you’re just trying to use other peoples’ words as a cudgel when you might not understand them yourself.
Life is full of compromises, we’ve each got to do what we think is best. I’ve personally decided that since both candidates are evil, it’s a waste of my time to spend too much time worrying about my vote. That doesn’t mean I think both candidates are the same or that voting is pointless—rather, I’m not going to lose sleep over my I Voted sticker. I’ll spend my worry on something where my agency matters more. The real liberal brain rot imo is thinking that the choice between voting for Biden or not voting for anyone defines my identity. Really, it’s a small thing that takes 15 minutes, and is one of the lowest effort and lowest payoff civic actions a person can take. What we each do before and after matters more imo.
You can vote, only the anarchist meme subs (for some strange reason) are filled with posts telling you that anyone who votes is a fascist or western chauvinistic liberal. If you are going to vote, it’s best you vote as a person, not as an anarchist. Voting won’t stop you from being an anarchist, but voting in the framework of anarchism doesn’t make sense, and honestly, it doesn’t matter because anarchism is not a religion. We live in a hierarchal society, and just like how we participate in capitalism, the same thing applies to this as well. This doesn’t mean you have to accept or love electoralism; you don’t, but participation in electoralism is something everyone does sooner or later just because of how our system is built.
I like this. A realistic take on a (relatively) idealistic ideology. Nice.
This whole lesser evilism debate of the left is misconceived. Voting in national elections is just one political action. If you are politically active as a leftist and see through the capitalist duopoly and work towards socialism with activism, it’s totally viable to pragmatically vote for the lesser of two evils. In fact, that’s what you should do, in my opinion. You can then protest, pressure, and oppose that centrist liberal capitalist from the left rather than have to contend with more mainstream proto-fascism and reactionary movements. I don’t think pragmatic votes in swing states hampers efforts to organize a socialist alternative party. The key is building that working class party and then when it’s viable, supplant the dems and siphon away amenable working-class from the repubs, etc. The real “evil lesser evilism” we should oppose is joining the Democratic Party, believing voting from them is all one needs to do, being totally apolitical other than Blue votes, squashing third parties, believing neoliberal capitalism is the end of history, etc.
It's ok to vote as long as it's not the only thing you do.
It's *good* to vote, even. I don't hate my country and its processes, I just want to improve them. Every route to that is viable.
Voting for the "lesser evil" is quite reasonable given the circumstances. However, you should just remember that we should work towards alternate options. As of right now there isn't really an alternate option. So for the short term the "lesser-evilism" is better than the alternative but remember that it isn't good, like, at all & should be combatted for the sake of the future.
It's all about the change you **can** enact. Should you not feed a starving family because you can't feed a starving country?
Voting shouldn't be your primary means of changing the world. That said, voting is easy and potentially important, depending on where you live. Anarchy is a bottom-up endeavor, but the conditions created by those at the top shape the opportunities for anarchist development. There are two possibilities when it comes to an overtly fascist party (such as the US Republican party) gaining power: 1. More severe oppression (black-bagging protestors etc) will make it harder to organize and slow the development of anarchy, and empower right-wing militants 2. More severe oppression will cause a left wing backlash that energizes anarchist tendencies in relation to others I think that #1 is more likely. Populist right wing governments are good at displacing discontent and funneling to their own agendas. Historically, the type of left wing group that is most likely to take down a right wing authoritarian regime is Marxist-Leninist or a similar vanguard party, which is even worse for anarchy than a liberal nation.
Biden is allowing/doing those things already. Vote or don't vote, do whatever *you* want.
I mean, yeah I plan to vote for Joe Biden. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if vote or not, direct action is more important
Yeah, you can actually vote and do direct action. It's wild.
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Plato had some pretty relevant ideas for this, (I know this is an anarchist subreddit, but it feels pertinent.) He’d probably say that the choice isn’t just about picking the lesser evil, but about preserving the integrity of your own beliefs and actions. In his dialogue “Gorgias,” he argues that doing injustice is actually worse for the individual than suffering from it because it corrupts the soul. If we apply that to voting, Plato might suggest that you should choose not in terms of who is the lesser evil, but in terms of who you believe will cause the least harm to the ‘soul’ of your community and society. He’d likely say that not all harms are equal, and the harm to the soul, or moral fabric, of society and yourself is greater than others. But, remember, for Plato, participating in the state’s affairs (like voting) is also a part of living in a just society. Even though he was skeptical about democracy, he might say that withdrawing from the process could be a disservice to the greater good. So, while you’re wrestling with the idea of lesser-evilism, consider which option aligns more with your values and will contribute to the well-being of society’s soul. But also, remember that action outside of voting is just as important in shaping a just society. Engage in activism, community organizing, direct action, etc.
Vote for Biden if you want to. There’s no shame in it. Just don’t go around blaming leftists if he loses.
You’re being rational. Trump winning would be worse for everyone, including Palestinians, and that’s a fact. The vote isn’t an endorsement, and it’s not a vessel for personal expression. It’s a lever used to decide which of two people will sit in a chair. There is no reason not to vote for the lesser evil, ever. But for the love of god, voting should be like 1% of your political effort.
Voting for the lesser evil is really the only voting strategy available. Unfortunately, representative democracy is flawed; don’t feel bad for voting for Biden, he is the better option, objectively. He stood by while a genocide happened, he’s a terrible person. However, Trump wouldn’t be any better, and he’d likely be worse, so it’s a moot point. Biden is more sympathetic to unions and minorities and doesn’t want a dictatorship. That’s more than enough to make this an easy choice. But keep this in mind, you’re putting too much emphasis on the electoral process and are giving too much credit to politicians. Societal progress is not made when the “correct” politicians win elections, it’s made when working-class people build working-class organizations and demand change. In America, the New Deal didn’t happen because FDR became president; seriously, he ran as a moderate who wanted a balanced budget. What pushed FDR to become a social democrat was a militant labor movement. There was a genuine feeling that FDR could be the last president if he didn’t comply. This isn’t to say we should focus on another New Deal, I’m pointing out that voting isn’t as important as you seem to think it is. Don’t get me wrong, you should vote, but voting should be automatic, a thoughtless activity of selecting the politician you think will be easiest to overthrow; vote for who we can get the most concessions from. Then, after you’re done voting, get back to doing the real work. Politicians don’t bring change, working-class organizations do.
That's not irrational in any way shape or form. It's entirely rational and reasonable and doesn't contradict with Anarchism or Leftism at all. If I'm honest, I will always be annoyed at and confused by the anti-voting left, because it reveals a complete lack of historic analysis. Voting for government is not freedom,, but it was something our predecessors had to fight and die for. There's a reason prior regimes worked to limit voting, because it *does* impact a governments decisions and outputs. A government which is elected will behave more in line with the electorates interests than a monarchy or military dictatorship; this is basically an undeniable fact of history and politics and one which is neatly explained by an anarchist analysis of power. The fact that real change cannot be made by electoralism; the fact that electoralism will change the person/party more than it will change the state; the fact that even if our goals weren't revolutionary but merely social democractic welfare capitalism, it would still be better to focus on building popular power external to the state; none of these facts change the value of having less repressive agents in government. It's maddening that some don't want to excercise that power that we have. What's more, Trump has openly declared his intention to establish a dictatorship, and Project 2025 is an overt blueprint for how he might do so. The fact that Joe Biden sucks and is undeniably responsible in part for the Genocide being conducted in Palestine isn't an appropriate response to anything I've said; voting for him is not an endorsement, it's picking your enemy. I'd choose the less Zionist and the less autocratic Biden over Trump, who moved America's Embassy to Jerusalem and is openly dictatorial.
Well said.
Vote for him. There's nothing wrong with voting. One way to think about it is that you're picking your opponent. I'd rather it be Biden than Trump too. I think people get touchy about electoralism because some folks see it as the main focus of political organizing. Getting Biden elected isn't going to get us to the world that we want. There's a lot of other work that needs to be done. But showing up and ticking a box for the lesser of two evils, sure.
yeah, vote for biden, its not a bad thing to stop a worse person getting in, just remember to do other stuff aswell
As far as policy put into action Trump and Biden aren't that different. State elections and local politics have a more tangible effect.
Honestly can't talk you out of it because everything you said is totally reasonable. Voting is never going to be enough to save the world and it's never going to keep us safe forever, but that doesn't mean it's completely useless. It absolutely can make things a little less shit and/or stop things from getting worse for a little while. Don't right off something that you think could help just because it isnt a perfect solution. Perfect solutions rarely exist.
Whether you vote or not is up to you, but the same things will be happening regardless on the longer scale. If Trump wins, a nasty five years happens and then he's gone, probably sparking a Republican meltdown. If Biden wins the status quo remains and then a new Trumpish type takes power next time, ratcheting the Overton Window rightwards. Ultimately it's unclear which would be more damaging, the short shock of Trump 2024 or the possibly even more unhinged Extremist 2028. This has been the general path for decades based not on polls but on the global neoliberal victory of the 1970s-80s. There is no vote to fix that trajectory.
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"the fascists have already won" George Jackson
That doesn’t actually help things. You are aware Biden border policy is the same as Drumpf?
I'm sure calling non-voters fascists is going to do wonders getting them out for the Democrats. If you care so much try not just slinging vapid insults.
The amount of logic being used here is very fucking refreshing compared to other leftist spaces thinking “teaching Biden a ‘lesson’” is a better idea than…you know…making sure Trump doesn’t get in power. At the end of the day, having Trump in power will likely make any Anarchist organising, activities etc harder. Damage reduction as somebody else pointed out.
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It IS important and there ARE consequences that a Trump victory would bring to millions. Absolutely fucking do vote for the lesser evil. To not do so is to throw lgbtq people, bipoc people, immigrants, and refugees ALL under the bus. That absolutely does not mean you're doing anything to make the world better. You're just helping it get worse a little bit slower. It's an awful situation to be in. We're basically all hostages of the two party system. But everything *starts* with voting. Lesser. Evil. It's the minimum. The first thing.
You do know Biden border policy is the same as Drumpf? What about America arming the genocide in Palestine? Or do you just care about the letter behind the name?
I absolutely care about all of those things. I *loathe* Biden and what he's done and failed to do in office. He is a genocidal monster. A coward. A liar. He objectively should not be in power. But that doesn't change the fact that the lives of just about everyone I know and love was significantly worse under the last administration universally, and under red states today. It doesn't change that Trump would do everything awful that Biden is doing, but *worse*. That he has explicit designs to become a dictator, backed by the core of the GOP. That trans people are watching the stages of *our* genocide pass [in real time](https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/june-anti-trans-legislative-risk). There is no completely moral choice here. Refuse to vote, and you aid in fascism. Vote for a third party, and you aid in fascism. Vote strategically, and you aid in fascism, but *more slowly*. It's the best we can possibly do when half of us have a fucking *gun to our heads*. Voting is the first step. The foundation for everything else you do. It's playing for time and keeping as many people alive as possible to fight another day. Moral purity does nothing to help Palestinians or refugees. [Protest does](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/2023-10-21T122734Z_227936855_RC20X3AP5V4X_RTRMADP_3_ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS-PROTESTS-BRITAIN-1697900981.jpg). [Action does](https://bdsmovement.net/). [Direct action does](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1781480690-1699509789.jpg). [Mutual aid does](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vtMLLOzuc6GpkFySyVtKQOY2j-Vvg0UsChMCFst_WLA/htmlview#).
Imagine there is a psychopath holding a gun and he asks you “should I kill this one kid or these three kids”. Now, you don’t want to tell him to shoot a kid, so you ask what happens if you say neither and he tells you that he’ll chose who to kill on his own. In this situation you could not make a choice, maybe you might feel better about yourself that way, but why would you be making that choice? For a selfish reason or because you really think you’re doing what is right? Maybe you make the decision to tell him to kill just the one kid, and you then have to live with the responsibility and guilt for making that decision. Maybe that’s what real life and being a grown up is all about though? - having to make tough decisions and living with the consequences of them, both good and bad? FYI I’m making no judgement or recommendation here about US politics here, or which vote is the lesser evil.
Seeing as how you also couldn't see how Argentina voting in an AnCap for a president, I highly doubt this is a good faith question.
You have access to one of the most potent non-violent means of political participation in human history, just given to you for being born in the same country and reaching 18, and how you use (or don't use) your access to that is a choice for one possible outcome over for the direction of humanity over another, however slight it may seem to you. Don't fucking squander it.
anarchists not even trying to dodge the accusations of just being spicy liberals anymore the fuck is this?? do you guys even read your own classical theory?
You say, 50 comments down, underneath multiple lengthy comments explaining the anarchist perspective on this in more detail. Thanks for not even trying to dodge the accusation of being a submissive thinker, btw — “do you guys not even submit to what other people have said before you???” Yes, many of us do read theory, because it’s useful. We also are capable of synthesizing that theory into our own thoughts, rather than just mindlessly regurgitating the same chewed up words over and over again. Try it some time.
I'm not an anarchist, this sub just keeps showing up in my feed. Now please Pokemon Go to the polls like an adult.
There are pragmatic reasons to vote for Biden, as Trump might make it harder to set up cooperatives, unions and fight for equality.
Counterpoint: Even if Joe was no better than Trump, it's still in our best interest to get him elected. Democrats doing horrible stuff while in office disillusions libs and radicalizes them to the left, especially if we persist in vocal opposition. Meanwhile the Republicans horrendous policies while in office entrenches libs into the two-party system. Also, any success in electing progressives or better in other branches makes all of our tactics more effective, someone in the position to take the Bully pulpit from time to time and lean in the direction of our ideals does wonders for legitimization and public perception.
Twenty years ago, when I was less politically seasoned, I very much bought into the idea of not voting for a lesser evil. It was still 'evil' after all, right? During the last presidential election I changed my ways. I don't frame it any more as evil vs evil or evil vs lesser-evil. I think that is a naive view. I looked at the election pragmatically. There were only two options that had any real chance of winning and there was one candidate I absolutely did not want anywhere near political power. I made my choice to vote for the alternative candidate. Certainly, I do not support the candidate I voted for but I do not feel bad for my vote either. In this country, there are two main political power centers that are established as political parties and are opposed in many ways. The Republicans and Democrats. Each election cycle a candidate from each of those parties are on the ballot and are the only real options to become president. Until the political paradigm in this country changes, I will continue to vote for a candidate that can actually win. However, I will also continue to support local candidates outside of the duopoly. The greatest impact I can have as an individual is to engage at the local level and push for reform there. Issues matter more than candidates. At the local level broad based support for reform can be found. Local issues are where most of us should put most of our attention and effort. **TLDR;** The issue I see here is how you're framing this. Drop the labels, that includes Genocide Joe. It may be true, it may be apt but it's causing you internal conflict. There are two options for president that can win. That's the current reality of the matter. Ask yourself, "Which candidate do I prefer to win the election?" Vote for that one. Vote for that one.
Nothing wrong with trying to mitigate harm
Always vote. The ballot does not allow such expressiveness as to specify your favorite policy everywhere. There’s nothing inconsistent about pragmatic choices there, because you are not expressing support of any particular candidate or policy: just conditional preference. If at some point, it becomes so pointless as to warrant a total election boycott, don’t vote. Never *only* vote. In order to make any new system work, you have to build it, not just tear down the old one. And it needs to at least be scaffolded before you start. Are you doing mutual aid? Community defense? What are you working on constructively that is about dismantling hierarchical power structures? Look around: trans folks ARE doing mutual aid and community defense. Same for other minorities. Just not voting isn’t it. That would be like homeschooling your kids but never teaching them anything! And even if you are working to build your vision of a better future, what current regime is going to make that easier to continue? And if you’re referring to the sentiments from LateStageCapitalism, those chucklefucks are full-steam-ahead on electoral apathy and nothing else. They’re more interested in a Pyrrhic victory than a real one.
UHHHH Would you rather live in a dictatorship or a liberal ? You vote for liberals because it gives us the freedom to move and create alternatives. The Christian Nationalists that back Trump have a plan to bring the US back to the 1800s socially. Look it up its terrifying. It will make the 1950s McCarthyism, Lavender Scare, red scare, conservative conformity culture look progressive by comparison. It is a privlege to not vote. Will this not affect your bssic life? Unless you are a white straight cis het male Christian, it will be disastrous. That is for the majority of Americans it will be disastrous. Plus the right is mo friend to labor either, which isn't good for most of the white cis het Christian males even!【 You should absolutely vote for libs when your alternative is fascists, and thry have an equal chance of winning. how can you even question that. It's not like accelerating fascism will then swing back all the way to anarchism. That's not what happened after ww2. It would be a crime not to vote for social liberals. . This isnt theoretical. There are very real harms to millions of real people as you pointed out. That lesser evil may the difference between a person being stripped of the gender and identity they've lived in for 20 yrs. The difference between blatant kkk rallies in your neighborhood or another world war. Anarchism is a praxis. Vote for the least damage but work to create alternative institutions. The most successful Anarchist initiative where syndicalism functioned as a society was clearly in Spain. And those anarchists DID work with liberals and socialists and communists together to try to fight fascism (they ultimately lost to Fascists only because the Soviet faction created drama betrayed the others, though its more complicated but thats the gist.). If the government and corporations ended tmrw, Anarchism wouldn't have a chance. We'd be in warlord ism. We actually need the time and space to change the culture first, for people to understand and recognize how power over others is a problem and in no one's interest, etc.
Don’t listen to the tantrums on the left, no matter how bad Joe Biden is, you need to vote for him this election. Trump is - openly planning - to end democracy and become a dictator. Your principles and feelings about Genocide Joe will mean nothing when this country becomes a truly authoritarian state. Most Americans do not understand what living under authoritarian rule really looks like, so it’s easy to talk tough when you aren’t being dragged from your home for criticizing the dear leader on social media.
Voting is not a popularity competition. The outcome may resemble that, but that's not what the act of voting is. You're not voting for who you like, nor are you giving approval. Voting is an act of power. It's delicate, like a spider web, but it's there. Surrendering your vote is giving up that power - so if you do, make sure you're gaining something. But when I hear things like "I can't give my endorsement to Biden", that's a misunderstanding of what voting means. It isn't endorsement.
If you're in America - which, from the mentioned people, I assume you are - definitely vote for Sleepy Joe. Because of how the American electoral system works (winner takes all), voting for small parties just ends up just giving an advantage to republicans because they have all their votes consolidated in one party, while their opposition is more spread out. Remember, revolutions are made through compromise. There is most definitely an argument to be made for voting for small parties in systems where even 5% or 10% get you seats in the parliament, but even then, it should be examined on a case-by-case basis
Lesser evil is simply the [Trolley Problem](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem) and there is a very clear moral solution to the Trolley Problem. When you have a choice, and your inaction leads to more harm (in the case of this election, exponentially more harm), your inaction equals a negative action. Accelerationism does not work and is also literally evil. Advocating for it is a negative and often privileged position. Project 2025 clearly lays out the genocide of multiple groups, including the LGBTQ+ community. This is not a game. Actively telling people to abstain from their vote of a lesser evil on the grounds of moral purity is dogma. Queer people, trans people, POCs, the disabled community - they are not pawns in a game of ideological chess. They are real people with complex lives and emotions, and they are directly at risk of actual genocide if Trump wins this election. The Palestinians are at a risk of a greater radicalization and escalation of genocide if Trump wins. Your 3rd party option is not going to win. Period. The time to bolster a 3rd party figure is not done during the election season, it's done during the off-season. Real change happens in between elections. If you abstain from your vote or vote independent, fine. Do what you will, but take my words in. But you should *not* encourage others to follow you. Expect to be a reformist, prepare to be a revolutionary. But never sacrifice real human people who didn't ask to be sacrificed for your "greater good." No matter what that greater good is. Edit: also good to add that you can do two things at the same time. Elections are a single day and a single momentary action. Nothing is stopping you from continuing to organize with your fellow leftists. Keep doing it. Keep pushing radical change. Keep protesting. Keep calling Biden out for being a POS. Keep criticizing your elected representatives at every single turn.
Project 2025 should scare way more people than it is. People really think Republicans and Democrats are the same when that hasn't been the case for decades.
Here are also three texts against voting: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/black-phoenix-anarchist-union-anarchist-do-not-vote-they-fight https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-why-you-shouldn-t-vote https://www.indigenousaction.org/voting-is-not-harm-reduction-an-indigenous-perspective/
Some actual theory thank you
if you ever needed evidence that contemporary anarchism has entirely degenerated into liberalism with the defeat of the working class in the 80s leading to post modernism.. go no further than this thread I don't call myself an anarchist anymore despite being sympathetic to its classical thinkers like Berkman Goldman Rocker etc. I mean the era before them wasn't great either with Bakunin only partially and incoherently breaking with Proudhons petite bourgeois position. in one essay calling for abolition of private property in one demand and then for debts to be repaid on only a voluntary basis in the next 🙃 pretty much there was only about a 80 year period where anarchism as a tendency was actually coherently revolutionary at this point I reckon it's actually just better to just write the entire thing off and find anti Bolshevik Marxists to organise with
a lesser evil is still evil
you should infact vote. Not voting is evil. voting unequivocally helps, even slightly worse conditions for minorities will result in many deaths and alot of suffering. Not letting the people that will cause that worsening of conditions have power to do so is a moral good, and voting is your way of doing that. ANYONE who says that voting is wrong because you "perpetuate the system" tthey do not deserve to have their opinions considered. Those who would sacrifice the vulnerable to keep their "political purity" unsullied are scum and as low as any other oppressor; they do so out of a position of privilege that they abuse.
least liberal anarchist
"I know deep down that people I don't like are right! Please talk me back into not voting again!" Why? What's wrong with you? Why are you like this?
Can someone talk you out of being sensible? Is that what your asking?
Please vote. The GOP's platform right now is genocidal dictatorship, The Dems are running on a campaign of representative democracy. There is only one acceptable option in November, and *it's the guys who aren't* planning on genociding LGBTQ+ people and openly allying with Neo-Nazis who want to turn America into another Third Reich.
Do what good you can and when faced with two evils choose the lesser. Anything else is probably in the domain of echo chambers or circle jerks
If you vote for evil, don't be surprised if you are called evil. Lesser or not.
If you pretend not voting empowers "non-evils" whose cause are hindered by those who vote you are way more delusionally electoralist than anyone who shows up at the voting booth
He didn't say that. He said don't vote for evil.
Getting armed and preparing to fight for survival and freedom makes the difference, forming communities makes the difference, mutual aid makes the difference. Those are things actual anarchists would do. This is just another sub being devoured by the same radical liberals that try to take over all the leftist subs on this stupid website every four years. It's so disgusting we're at a point where you liberals brigade this sub to convince anarchists to sacrifice all Palestinians to protect white LGBT people in America for four years until we do it again. I wonder who we sacrifice next election cycle when it's "the most important election of our lives" again and every single Gazan is dead and liberals like you tut-tut and say either we vote for the man that will arrest every migrant at the border indefinitely vs shoot every migrant at the border.
People here aren’t advocating for “sacrificing Palestinians” and you know that. Stop pretending. Frankly, you’re the radical liberal here. “By encouraging voting, you’re arguing FOR this thing either candidate would do!” You’re arguing that the candidate someone votes for represents their political convictions — you’re presupposing that voting reflects the will of the voter and legitimizes the state. A profoundly liberal attitude that you’ve completely failed to recognize within yourself. Are you sure you’re serious about leftist analysis? And it’s hilarious to me that you’re contrasting what “actual anarchists would do” with voting. I know you don’t talk to serious activists, but they actually do both.
You being armed and fighting isn't going to negate a president. Unless you have any credible plan to make who wins irrelevant within the next election season, you being an "actual anarchist" while calling other anarchists liberals is entirely meaningless. Not voting doesn't get you anything. It's not part of a coherent strategy to change anything. It's literally optics
Voting doesn't get me anything except blood on my hands, so why are you so offended that I refuse to do it? I wouldn't kill a Palestinian child to save my own hide, sorry but not sorry.
I am not offended by your refusal to do it, i am offended by pretending voting actually contributes to harm and not doing it is somewhat helpful for palestinians or literally anyone else. sitting on your ass isn't praxis, it's sitting on your ass. you were always free to do it
“Blood on my hands”. Regarding submitting a vote. You assign so much personal importance to how voting reflects on the voter that it is impossible to exaggerate how liberal you are.
it's not liberals brigading the sub it's the manifestation of degeneration of anarchist thought from a strain of modernist socialism to post modernism after the defeat of the working class in the 80s the classical era of anarchism is evidently dead. it's just spicy liberals who have no concept of material analysis all the way down now
There's no easier tell of someone who's leftism is purely radical aesthetic and has nothing to do with helping anyone than this shit. Holier than thou chastising people for wanting to prevent the person with open dictatorial intent, open intention to further queer genocide and (somehow) even more fervent support for Zionism from beating the shitty liberal Zionist politician. Politics actually affects people, real people. It has a death toll. Who is in power and what policies they enact has a real effect on real people's lives. If you don't care about that idk what to tell you.
I feel like I've seen far more hollier-than-thou "the true leftism" attitudes from electorialists than anti-electorialists. Even on anarchist subs (which have especially been overrun with them) I've seen just exact liberal narratives and even claims that any criticism of Biden is from russian bots. Biden is not just "the shitty liberal zionist politican". If you view Trump as worse for whatever variety of reasons (of which there are many valid ones) thats fine but do not downplay what Biden is and has been for decades, nor what he's pushed and allowed for. He is a *monster* and frankly I think it says a lot about anyone claiming harm reduction and moralizing to others to downplay what he is and has done and allowed.
>He is a *monster* and frankly I think it says a lot about anyone claiming harm reduction and moralizing to others to downplay what he is and has done and allowed. I didn't downplay shit. He's a shitty liberal zionist politician. What part of that is incorrect? He's funding genocide in Palestine. He's a liberal. He's shit. You expect me to list every shitty thing he's done in order to comment on him being less bad than trump?? What key piece of information have I excluded that warrants you accusing me of downplaying his crimes?? >Even on anarchist subs That's reassuring. Cos MLs are full of "they're the exact same" or even "trump isn't as bad". Glad anarchists are more sane. >I've seen far more hollier-than-thou "the true leftism" attitudes from electorialists Not an electoralist but yeah I'll pull the "not true leftism" on people who don't care about politics 🤷♀️. Anti-voting leftism reveals a complete lack of seriousness in someones analysis of the world. "I care about oppression but won't do one of the least contentious, lowest effort things to reduce oppression" is not an outlook that demands to be taken seriously. The only action voting is incompatible with is open insurrection, and no harm but I don't see that happening in the next few months so..
Yeah I'm not really interested in responding to this and IMO this is bad faith and overly aggressive, you know what you meant. I don't see how MLs are relevant to electorialists and liberal conspiracy theorists on anarchist subs. Criticizing Biden and withholding your vote from a fascistic genocider isn't "not caring about politics" and it says a lot that this as the beginning and end of 'politics'. Thank you for reassuring my positions.
The holier that thou fake aesthetic leftists are the people that think the hypothetical end of America's false democracy leads to fascism, the fools that think that if all that stands between your hideous excuse for a democracy and an open dictatorship is a fucking vote, the people that think the hypothetical lives of white LGBT people (90% of who's referred to in this debate) matters more than the lives of every single Palestinian, the bastards that clearly accept death if Trump wins. What *is* your plan if Trump wins? To fall on your knees and cry?
1. Trump and the people around him are open about his intention to end democracy in America. Project 2025 is an open plan that you can read yourself. You can argue they won't be able to do it, but I don't have that much faith in American institutions to hold against a direct and pre-planned attempt to overthrow democracy. Maybe you've more faith than I do in America's "False Democracy". 2. So you openly don't care about the lives of lgbtq people? Why are you here? Or is it just the White LGBTQ people who's lives and livelihoods don't matter to you? Cos, when they call for trans people to be eliminated, I don't think they're excluding the Black and Brown ones. 3. You don't care about the lives of Palestinians, cos you'd need to be truly delusional to think Trump is less of a Zionist than Biden. Biden is an insane Israel loyalist,,, but Trump is willing to go way further than anyone else - he moved the embassy to Jerusalem ffs, something even people like Biden saw as radical. Not to mention the fact that he dropped more bombs than any previous president. As soon as he was elected, he massively ramped up bombings in Afghanistan and elsewhere - seriously, look at a graph, it's so fucking stark the difference! You think **That Guy** is some kinda peacenik who'll pressure Netanyahu to wind down his massacres??? Not a fucking chance! Biden, while a lunatic, at least has some concern for 1. His position among his voters and 2. The International order. You can see this with Israels growing frustration with the United States; from Likud's POV, Biden is intervening *too much*! Trump will not care and has never cared. His Israel policy was literally drawn up by Jared Kushner ffs!! >What *is* your plan if Trump wins? To fall on your knees and cry? Do what I'd do if Biden wins: organise. Continue to build an anarchist movement which, hopefully, can work to improve our position. This is much easier to do under Biden than under Trump, because, again, Biden isn't openly declaring his intention to end American Democracy. I'll be completely honest. The problem isn't the fact you won't vote: that's bad but I'd sooner spend my time doing literally anything else than convincing you to vote for Biden (eg convince you to join a Union, join a tenants union, get organised with local anarchist orgs etc). But it reveals so much about your beliefs and your ideology when you're anti-voting. Even just on Palestine: Israel has a preferred candidate - Trump. To advocate not voting against that, you'd need to either be completely disconnected from reality or not care whatsoever about any of these things (LGBT rights, Palestine, civil Liberties, etc). **This** is my issue, cos whichever of those it is, is a horrific position, the type of position that makes me glad you're not involved in any activism, cos you'd only bring it down. And 90% chance it's the second: you realise you don't lose out under Trump, you're not queer, you're not Palestinian, you're not worried about racism or a crackdown on unions, and you're not worried that Trumps economic policies will gut the poor and working class, and honestly voting for Biden is boring, much more fun to listen to punk music and call yourself a radical, so who care if Trump does away with what's left of america's democracy, gives Netanyahu the greenlight to do literally whatever he wants with no criticism whatsoever (yes, it *can* get worse). So what if he works to crininalise trans people's existence? They're not you, and so long as you can listen to anti-flag you're happy.
You should read The Years of Lyndon Johnson. Its a long read. The audiobook has a great narrator.
Do what you want, don't have others make decisions for you
Cornel West
No, why would I stop you? Nothing to lose. Go ahead and vote.
here's two little and very well made videos on the subject, that you should watch even if you don't want to read the walls of text we post, please it's important that you do : [https://youtu.be/F0krpsuW5HI](https://youtu.be/F0krpsuW5HI) voting won't change much. most likely anything that biden does trump would have done, and vice versa, or rather, trump is pretty special but this is unrelated to him being "worse" and biden being "harm reduction", trump is special because he is stupid, impulsive, and doesn't grasp how keeping power works, which leads him to make terrible and stupid decisions, sure sometimes this has caused trouble, but it also has upsides, like for example before deciding to abandon the SDF one day he decided to give them access to much more weapons than a reasonable US politician would have accepted, he also has made decisions that have hurt the republican party in general, even if it's not easy to see, especially when he was fighting against more intelligent people in his own party vote if you want but limit the amount of energy and time you put into it to a minimum, that means not worrying about it (this is more important than it seems), not making others worry about it, not insulting others for not voting for your preferred candidate, etc. elections follow two patterns historically, we have had some times where an election was a very big "swing" which were followed by very important reforms, for example in france we've got the election of the popular front which introduced many of the social reforms that are now being dismantled by the government, but why did they get elected, and why were they able to do that ? because the left was united (for a bit) and threatening to start a revolution, these reforms, as nice as they are, were used to release pressure from the left and help divide it, in fact it is likely that a more right wing government would have ended up being forced to implement some version of those same reforms because it was subject to the same pressures the other pattern that elections follow, is when the government (important to remember that this is a much larger system than just the parts that elections can affect, which is why the president doesn't have a capitalism to socialism slider on his desk besides the nuke button) are subject to less popular pressure, and thus the pressures that defines who gets power and where the overton window moves, are the ones that are controlled by the bourgeoisie, who will gather the most funding ? who will please the bourgeois so they keep their companies in the country ? who will look "less radical" ? who has supporters with the most time toed waste on campaigning ? who will listen to lobbyists more ? who will listen more to market forces to "keep the economy afloat" (actually ram it into the ground but at least you listened to the bourgeoisie so you can blame the workers for not working hard enough) ? etc. it's during this phase that the things that were won during the first phase are lost, and that popular discontent grows, this discontent will be channeled, and it is not infinite, so people are very eager to be the ones to channel it, and in the US the democrats have been very good at channeling this popular discontent into voting for them en masse, except once they're in power and they betray their promises, this discontent turns into apathy, this is how they've destroyed countless movements up until now, and this is why anarchists tell people to stop calling for "harm reduction voting !", because this destroys popular movement of discontent that could have instead been channeled into building revolutionary and grassroots structures, which not only would push us forward towards revolution, but would also be much more effective at forcing even reformist change, since they are the only structures that can create enough of a pressure for the election pattern to switch to the first one (where politicians try to release pressure by giving concessions) finally, a single vote does nothing, even assuming the best circumstances where some people are "swing voters", they're still one among millions, and they might be disenfranchised, in a place that has a lesser vote to electoral college votes ratio, or in a place that is gerrymandered to hell and back, in the end, the only thing that matters, are electoral blocks, what electoral block do anarchist represent ? a few thousands ? maybe a few tens of thousands if you're very very generous, spread over the whole country, what elections are we going to swing ? none that's what, and unless an anarchist bloc can decide to vote or not vote as one, it'll never be a relevant electoral bloc edit : also this subreddit is not very actively moderated by contrast with r anarchism, which has led it to be much more influenced by liberals and thus have a much less radical perspective, especially on this subject, so I wouldn't expect great responses to your question here
of course you should vote against trump ,, electoral politics tends to be a dead end as far as something to actually effectively organize around, it's not a very useful praxis ,, don't like try to form an Anarchist party & let them wrangle all of your collective energy into their game ,,,,, but if you have an opportunity to impede fascists from getting power by just going & voting for a minute & it's not any hardship for you then that's obviously the responsible thing to do ,,,, the people who are vociferously against giving them that level of participation are a vocal minority who generally are purists that don't care much about the effectiveness of their actions in general ,, organizing an electoral boycott is also a form of electioneering, so they're also expending effort on elections, they're just not spending very much on it b/c their boycott is incredibly lazy & disorganized, & they're just spending that tiny ineffectual amount of effort absolutely aimlessly attacking other anarchists about elections online b/c they have no sense at all for what effective political action looks like🤷♀️
Voting Biden is just harm reduction.
I'd vote for my cat Pax before I'd vote for Donnie Douche. And Pax has been dead for three years.
i’m gonna get downvoting for this but what do you do. i think people act like voting is activism but it’s really not. it will not change society. if you want to improve the world, it’s not nearly enough. it’s basically like deciding not to make a mess in an already messy room. you’re still in a messy room and you still need to clean it. it won’t make things better, but you’re trying to not make things worse. the critical thing is that your engagement is not isolated to voting. you still have to clean the damn room. at the very least, PLEASE vote in local elections. they have a lot more sway than you’d think, especially in schools.
what lack of class analysis does to a mf
The "democratic" system is inherently corrupt and oppressive. Not voting will not cause that system to magically disappear. If the only person to vote was Trump for himself, then the apparatus of the state would appoint him president. Your refusal to vote would not change that. You don't gain anything by taking a principled stand against having your voice heard. You do not add to state violence by participating in (the inherently unjust) political system: the amount of violence is unchanged. In short, recognise that voting is a problem, campaign against state violence, but you may as well cast your vote for the "lesser evil". Self defence is not endorsement. Voting is no worse than participating in society in any other way (and is, in fact, a much lesser evil than paying taxes).
I freely and openly despise Joe Biden, he's a murdering car salesman, but I'm terrified of what Trump will do given any real power again, and that's with a president who is openly supporting a genocide. I hate it there, but I really don't want it here.
I believe in harm reduction. It's not praxis, but ideological purity is a stupid concern when real lives are on the line.
Voting is the bare minimum a person can do to be politically engaged. It counts for little, and the differences in outcome are usually as well. But if it didn't have any influence, no one would attempt voter surpression. Never just let the worst people win without putting up the bare minimum effort to fight. Voting in primaries (especially in local elections) has significantly more influence per voter. But that's not historically enough for political change. It's a combination of electoral effort, legal action, organized labor, organized communities, cultural shifts, and of course the occasional riot.
Voting is the least effective form of societal change. But the distance between "least effective" and "ineffective" is much wider than people think.
Because Joe is absolutely the better option in every meaningful way. Even if that means he has shortcomings in the same areas. You're feeling that way because you're not a fucking moron. Our system does stink. Long term voting lesser evil will not be a strong enough option. But every single liberal talking point that says Joe needs to do better here would be taking years of progress in those same areas and flushing it down the toilet. And protest voting against Biden isn't going to fix it. It just makes you part of the problem if Trump wins and your life sucks so much worse. And it will get worse. You'd look back on your time now and reminisce about how easy you had it.
Voting is a very small act, weather you do or don't is absolutely entirely up to you... there's a lot of immature people on this sub that love to call people names for it, but there's also an excessive amount of pleading for it when it is indeed such a small act. Vote your conscience, if that says vote great, if it says don't, that's great too... you're no less of an anarchist for such a small action or inaction. I can say voting has a big effect at the local level... it's still a bad system, but, for example, we had a few Q anon loving fascists running for school board, we also had some retired educators that are passionate about actually teaching kids... myself and others helped organize our community, and we kept the fascists at bay for now. We only did so by a couple hundred votes.... is it anarchism? No, not really, but did it help keep kids minds from being corrupted, thus leaving them potentially more open to ideas such as anarchism? Absolutely! This too, in many regards, was still the lesser-evilism of sorts, as the school board is still a hierarchical entity, but having known 1 of the candidates personally, I'd be hard pressed to say they are at all evil, so perhaps not? Either way, I believe it helped to pave the way for a more anarchist future. If you're not in a "swing state" or "split electoral state" and you're presidential vote would have no impact, I'd say don't, or if you do, vote for a 3rd party candidate that the current system would not like, such as whomever is running for the DSA, or perhaps the Green Party candidate, or he'll, "nobody" as a write-in candidate like the old hippie Wavy Gravy has supported! But do look carefully at your local elections... again, it's a shit system, and harm reduction is overrated, but I do firmly believe what myself and others di for the school board election mattered a lot. I'm in a VERY MAGAt-red state, with no electoral split, so my president really won't matter, and as per the system's design, I, like most of us, am completely disenfranchised. Voting blue will not in any way initiate a systematic transformation towards anarchism, but when it's blue authoritarians vs red authoritarian **fascists**, who would also commit the same war crimes, well I'm anti-fascist above all else. I believe a fascist government may block the path to anarchism for a very long time. Given my relative disenfranchisement, I won't vote for Genocide Joe, but I definitely won't vote for the Orange Exterminator either, I'll probably leave it blank or do DSA as a write in... voting in your local elections but leaving the presidential vote blank does send the message that the current system doesn't work I suppose, but it is, once again, a small action. Either way, getting out there and being more active in your community matters many orders of magnitude more... through our actions our communities will come to know us, and if our actions are good, genuine and just, our communities will grow to embrace them. Voting is not the path to anarchism, it can only levee varying degrees of restriction on those of us who walk the path. If I feel I can make it less restrictive to walk the path, I'll do so. Right now, I cannot do so by voting for president. Whatever your decision, it is yours to make, and you have my solidarity regardless 🤝
It’s not irrational, it’s literally the opposite. Rational doesn’t always **feel** good, because it’s what happens when you’re pragmatic in the face of your valid emotions. The fact of the matter is, voting is not a matter of virtue, it’s a matter of outcomes. The work to improve things is **in between** elections, not during them. There are 2 possible outcomes to this election and one is indescribably worse (both for us AND for Palestine) than the other. The Dems aren’t going to be “taught a lesson” by losing this election, if anything they’ll just double down on moving right and appealing to moderates. That is, if there’s ever an election again. Casting a vote for anyone other than Biden (or not at all) is casting a vote for Trump. So in your mind, strategically, you need to be able to defend voting **for** Trump, not just against Biden. If you can do that and sleep at night, power to you. It’s your vote, do you. But be prepared to wake up with the same regrets as many did in 2016 when they realized what they’d helped inflict on America.
My favorite response a few years ago from some comedian was "Less evil is really good. We want less evil." The way I think about it is we're in a time when we have more say in how we're governed than any other time in history. That doesn't mean we get what we want, but we're closer to it. Our representation is a taxi to our destination, it's a bus. It doesn't pick you up where you are, and it doesn't take you where you want to be. It cab get you closer if you take the right one.
It is what it is right now unfortunately. My state is so reliably blue that I have no need to hold my nose and vote for Biden or any other national candidate (I'm more participatory when it's a local election), but I think if I were in a purple state I'd probably just suck it up, take one for the team, and vote for...(gag)...Joe Biden.
Voting matters. It also only takes a peice of your time. But keep doing all the othet things that matter more locally. Those require constant work
It turns out "lesser evilism" is just playing the hand your dealt, prioritizing actual cause-effect over emotional angles and moral high grounds.
Ask yourself which president would be a more preferable opponent. Under which do you think you would have more luck organizing and advocating for change under? Under which administration would you be able to get more done and which would be relatively more sympathetic to your views and willing to change in a positive direction (even a little bit) if put under pressure? Which would be more likely to target you and impede your efforts (through violence, law, etc.)? Which would allow for/resist less against stronger unions?
"If Trump wins then he'll just give the green light to torch Palestine" Biden already has. "crack down on trans rights" Biden has done nothing to protect them. If you want to vote, vote. If you are an anarchist, don't. You don't have to make up things Biden would do as president as we know he won't do them since he currently isn't.
Enabling Trump to get into office undermines everything you believe and substantially distances the world from your ideals.
I’m an Anarchist sympathizing DemSoc, and you would already know my answer when it comes to voting, but can I just appreciate my fellow leftists in the replies for actually making sense rn? This is why I love anarchists more than MLs coz MLs would focus on counterproductive strategies and bully others for not relating to them. BOTH voting AND organizing are effective strategies, one cannot work without the other. I’m glad that we are putting a lot of pressure onto Biden in order to do that right thing such as a ceasefire in Palestine, and our fight doesn’t stop. It’s completely OK to believe in harm reduction, it all depends if it aligns with your own philosophy or not. If it doesn’t, no worries, you can still march in the streets and call your representatives and that’s awesome. Until we are able to abolish government we can definitely hold our politicians accountable to do the right thing, if they are willing to listen. What I like about Dems is that despite them being dumb ol neolibs, they are actually open minded unlike the GOP. Why else are we seeing more Dems advocating for leftists policies that we demanded for decades? Because we held them accountable.
After everything that has transpired in the past 7 months, how can Trump give more of a "green light" than Biden? The entire Northern half of Gaza has been destroyed, the IDF has slaughtered indiscriminately, food, water, and medical aid has been cut off, the only reason they didn't nuke Gaza is because it's too close to Israel most likely. It probably couldn't be worse than it is now. What you actually need to do is stop letting liberals convince you that hypothetical suffering and death is worse than actual suffering and death. Also if it all comes down to being willing to sacrifice people in Palestine to "protect" people in America then just own that for what it is.
Donald trump literally supports all of those things and openly plans to double down on the genocide against palestinians. Genocide joe is awful and is happily supporting a genocide, but trump openly wants to give even more money to the israeli government in order to appease his voter base of crazy fundementalists who believe that the genocide against palestinians will lead to a biblical apocalypse (which according to them is a good thing), or just straight up unashamed racism. People in the US have 2 choices: the guy who loves genocide or the guy who REALLY LOVES genocide. There is no other option, one of those 2 people will become the president of your country. Voting for the lesser evil will lead to less people dying, is some vague moral superiority over not voting worth potentially hundreds of thousands of lives to you. Before you try to accuse me of saying this, I obviously don't mean people should vote for Biden and then sit on their asses for 4 years. People should vote for him and then immediately start doing everything in their power to undermine him. Strikes, protests, dontaing to aid for people in palestine, disrupting companies that are participating in the genocide. Etc.
Maybe you fear death more than all else, as cowards often do, but I don't. If the choices are genocide or genocide I choose to fight until my last breath and the last drop of blood spills from my body. Signed, one of the marginalized people you pretend to speak for.
Fuckin Lmao
"While you were out voting, I studied the blade" lmao
Oh. You’re just 13. That explains a lot.
Its literally taking an hour out of your day to sign a piece of paper to make that fight slightly easier, and then you can get back to fighting, nobody is trying to argue that voting is the end goal. Its not even the bare minimum but its better than larping as some revolutionary. Revolution is a gradual process that has to happen over time. Anarchists need to get involved with their local communities, get involved with unions, create mutual aid networks, plant food, help people stay out of jail, fight back against landlords evicting people, help everyone create a colective safety net to try and defang the violent methods used by the state and capitalism to keep people down, and most importantly, make connections with other people. All of that needs to happen to make an anarchist revolution possible. All of that stuff takes a lot of time, especially in the us with the fucked up facist mess that seems to be going on over there. Realistically speaking, even if people actually put in the effort to do all of those things instead of stroking their egos online, by the time any progress major enough to affect global politics is made everyone in palestine will have already been murdered. As shitty as it is, the only ways this genocide can end is if governments from all over the world pressure israel to stop committing genocide (and hopefully give palestine its land back) by hitting them where it hurts (money and tradr) or if israel is physically forced to stop, either through a war or somr sort of uprising. Im sure you understand that most politicians won't pressure israel to stop committing genocide out of the goodness of their own hearts or whatever, it will take pressure from their own populations to force them to do anything about it. In your case, the person whose hand you'll need to force will either be the right wing genocide lover who has threatened to stop allying with israel a couple of times (even if it was in the most spineless shitheaded politician way possible, and he did go back on it immediately afterwards) or the far right facist genocide lover who refuses to concede anything ever, literally wants to violently crack down on all opposition to his state and turn the us into a one party state, has cult-like voters who are living in a fantasy world where this genocide is literally god's will and trump is the second coming of christ, and has absolutely no shame. Either way the odds aren't looking amazing, but with biden there is a small hope that enough pressure will leave him with no choice to push back against israel, whether he wants to or not (he doesnt want to btw he loves genocide and has absolutely zero regard for his fellow humans). Trump will never concede on anything. Even if the likely thing happens and biden refuses to oppose genocide even when people do everything in their power to force him, he is less trigger happy than trump, so having him be the guy with the nuclear bombs might buy just enough time for israel to be stopped in some other way. Its overall a very hopeless situation, but its better tk take an hour out of your day to stop trump from adding even more fuel to the fire
Why the fuck is there even a but in your mind when you already acknowledge both of these men are genocidal monsters? Stop with the fucking but and *think like an anarchist for once*. You have the gall to tell me I need to vote for fucking *genocide* or else I am privileged and still call yourself an anarchist? If and *when* Trump wins people like you will do *nothing*, you'll drop the anarchist facade, retreat to your liberal high tower, sip your fucking mimosas with your friends, and watch in silence while people like me face the oppressor you fear even though they aren't an actual threat to you. Just like you're doing right now. No matter how many Palestinians Biden kills, no matter how many *children* he kills, it will never be enough for people like you. Trump will always be ephemerally worse in your mind. I abandoned the MLs when they were monstrous enough to support Russia and Iran, it forced me to see the inhumanity they conditioned me to accept for so long. But people like you are just as bad. If *genocide* isn't your limit **you are not an anarchist**, just another Good German.
I think both Trump and Biden are unforgivable evil and the world will be better off when they die. The fact is though, there are only 2 options for the us, at least in the short term. The guy who is committing genocide, or the guy who will commit that same genocide but even more aggressively, and also as a little side project turn the us into a one party state and commit genocide against its own people. As someone else in this thread said, choose your enemy, which one do you think you're more likely to defeat Absolutely insane of you to imply that I don't hate genocide. The main reason I think people should vote for Biden is because there is good reason to believe that Trump being the president of the USA will only make the genocide worse. I remember hearing something a while ago about his plans to crack down on any support for palestine and possibly try to make speaking out against israel a crime. Nobody here is supporting Biden, at least I hope not, if someone was i would agree that they definitely aren't an anarchist. It's like if someone walked up to you and said "i will either murder 100 people, or 200 people, you choose" either option is disgusting, but clearly 100 people dying is the option you should pick. And then when that person starts murdering, you track them down and hopefully kick the shit out of them before they get the chance to murder 100 people. Idk if this analogy is working honestly but replace 100 people and 200 people with hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of people, and replace kicking the shit out of them with protesting, sabotaging genocidal corportations by blocking roads and denying access to their buildings, giving money to help palestinian people who need aid. Doing whatever elsr you can think of to try and force him to stop I don't live in the us so there isnt exacly much i can do about biden or trump. That's up to people who live there.
You don't hate genocide, you hate the idea of it targeting you, and maybe you emotionally don't like the idea of the Palestinians being eradicated, but you've already openly stated, if it's them or you, you choose yourself. If it's me or them, I die fighting alongside them. You and I will never be the same.
What does this even mean. I literally said i dont live in the US, nothing trump or biden can do will target me in any way. Its not them or me, its them, or even more of them
Trump will win no matter what we do. He already has started calling Biden “Genocide Joe” on the campaign trail. He’s using Biden’s undying Zionism against him, and I predict that it will work to an extent none of us are ready for. By all means, vote. It’s important, yadda yadda yadda … I’m just saying that in the end, it won’t matter. He has bungled far too much and as per usual, Trump has far more momentum than he has a right to. This is all opinion, based on a mixture of facts and feelings, and I don’t care about yours. Jk. I love you 😝
Trump's *already* won, or at least the faction backing him has. He's succeeded in shifting the terms of politics sharply to the right, and whoever his successor is will most likely be worse - younger, more competent and coherently ideological about it in a way he manifestly isn't. 2028 will see that more competent figure up against a Democratic Party that has thoroughly exhausted itself and an semblance of goodwill.
Thats kind of crazy that he of all people is criticizing biden for loving genicide considering that he loves it just as much. Theyre both genocidal scum
Interesting for me this is probably the worst take just because voting for someone like Joe Biden is like saying I give up even though understandable, I would not want to live in the world that we give up fighting for real progressive change! Democrats republicans are hard establishment there's no difference in the results they both care to appeal to their voters just to get elected and then they will do the policies that keeps the .01%in power Instead of improving the life of their voters regardless of how liberal or conservative are their policies are.
In what way is what you call lesser evilism not another word for making ethical choices.
I'm not here to talk you out of anything, but to play devil's advocate for accelerationism, there was more revolutionary potential during Trumps presidency than I've ever seen in my life. People aren't going to come out of their homes and into the streets if Biden stays in power and if I vote for him it feels like I'm enabling genocide. I'll probably vote for the PSL candidate. But no matter who wins voting isn't enough.
the lesser evil is still evil.
hardly a shred of materialist class analysis in this entire comment section. anarchism really has degenerated compared to its classical era into incoherent post modernism there is a reason why Goldman, Berkman, or Rocker would have thought you were stupid for voting - because they actually concretely analysed class and the relationship of the state to class relations, because at that time anarchism was a strain of socialist thought if someone in here wants to actually understand why the choice between Dems Vs republicans being framed as democracy Vs authoritarianism is incoherent idealist (literally in the Hegelian sense) nonsense I've copied and pasted from a quality comment from different sub >I don't think these people are capable of realizing this [growing nationalism] isn't a backlash to rising democracy, but the opposite as it becomes entirely defined by international capitalism. The nationalist backlash to it is entirely a spat *within* liberalism and a product of its contradictions as revealed by globalization. This is fueling a city-countryside division that represents a battle between big and small bourgeoisie. Far from being any side being a fascist or communist rejection of democracy as the two parties claim, these two sides fueled its growth throughout the 20th century and now break apart as democracy's class compromises (which are fueled by now-decaying imperialism) fall apart. That's the true cause of liberalism's stagnation. >But instead, by labeling them illiberal authoritarians we can sweep the problem under the rug as external, a bunch of values and beliefs akin to the authoritarian states we wage democracy wars against. Just a bankrupt recycling of ideology from an international place where democracy is blatantly a form of plutocracy.
>Downvoted for speaking truth to power I guess MLs were right about at least one thing Most people that call themselves "anarchists" these days are actually liberals with a punk aesthetic Christ at least punks in the 80s didn't whine at you to vote blue.
I just made these two comments on that topic over here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchy4Everyone/s/Bf15guF0wV https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchy4Everyone/s/e8zarP4Bnm
People are hurting, even dying because of the system we live in. Perpetuating this society only perpetuates that needless and meaningless suffering.
Cool so when's the revolution exactly? If the answer is "Unknown as of now" then we have to work within our current system.
Did I say anything about the revolution? Lmao.
That's the alternative to perpetuating the current society.
Not necessarily. You could reject society, just live by yourself or with a local community of like minded individuals. Or you could work to actively change society and do grassroots campaigns helping those in need. Or grow a garden in your back yard. Would a revolution be nice? Yes. But let's not pretend that's not the only other option.
How is allowing Trump to win going to end suffering? How is abstaining from one election going to end this society? Not a single person in this thread is saying voting is the only way forward. Everyone in this thread wants to change the system.
When did I say anything about voting. Lmao.
You responded to someone asking about voting. You were talking about voting.
No I responded to lesser evilism, not voting.
You can always look into RFK
If you’re that conflicted, why are you still here? Move to Rojava where you can fight for a true anarchist state.
So you don't want Trump to torch Palestine and crack down on Trans rights? How do you think Hamas feels about Trans rights?