You're viewing a single thread.
Even if you're voting Harris et al., don't you think they should be called out for supporting genocide? Have you even tried to convince Biden or Harris or your reps in Congress to stop supporting genocide?
Moreover, once they know that they can get enough votes and win while supporting genocide, then they'll know they can do anything and have enough votes to win. While all paths lead to increasingly fascistic governance in the US, the path you're advocating is the most accelerationist scenario.
Even if you're voting Harris et al., don't you think they should be called out for supporting genocide?
Yes. Full stop.
Have you even tried to convince Biden or Harris or your reps in Congress to stop supporting genocide?
Yes, and not just on the Internet. I am fortunate enough to have some influence, but to be fair Gaza is one of the subjects and not the only subject matter I push for.
Moreover, once they know that they can get enough votes and win while supporting genocide, then they'll know they can do anything and have enough votes to win. While all paths lead to increasingly fascistic governance in the US, the path you're advocating is the most accelerationist scenario.
This is a tough one, not gonna lie. First, if it was anyone other than Trump and the guarantee of a fascist dictatorship under his rule (and it would be "rule") running, I would not vote for Harris. Second, and much more important, is that nowadays I have far less influence than in the past. Ten to fourteen years ago I would have the opportunity to sit and talk with politicians in Texas and I even used to have the occasional chat with Obama whenever he visited Austin. Now I have none of that AND amongst my colleagues in the tech sector I seem to be the only one who cares about Gaza and Palestinians in any measurable form. The ugly truth is that I do not see a good way to enact pressure at the moment. What I do know is that under a Trump administration the complete obliteration of the Palestinian people is guaranteed. Under Harris I could at least make some calls without getting jailed or falling out of a window.
This is a tough one, not gonna lie. First, if it was anyone other than Trump and the guarantee of a fascist dictatorship under his rule (and it would be "rule") running, I would not vote for Harris.
Then I am happy to inform you that Trump would never be a fascist dictator. There is no crisis of capitalism in this country that requires such a thing, the capitalist class that actually dictates the terms likes the system working exactly how it does now. They are in the heart of empire that provides them with super-profits through financial schemes and militarism.
Trump is rude and hamfisted and reactionary, but he cannot take a seat as a proper fascist because fascism is about restoring capitalist interests under major threat, namely an insurgent left, itself responding to a crisis of capitalism like loss of imperialist status and transformation into a further and further imperialized country.
Unfortunately, the US basically has no left. This is pretty obvious from how well normalization of genocide is going.
But given your statement, so long as you understand, correctly, that Trump will not be a dictator, then you will not vote for Harris, and I assume that you won't advocate for her, either.
So that really just leaves one question: can you find any fault in my logic on Trump becoming a dictator?
Except the bottom track loops around to run over everyone else when the Supreme Court decides it wants to hurt more people.
Let's say the Supreme Court decides to end gay marriage at a federal level and send it back to the states. Harris won't do shit to help people in red states, she'll just tell them to vote for Democrats in 2026/2028 but otherwise ignore them.
Controlled opposition parties like the US democrats love to dangle these carrots during election seasons. Roe v Wade in red states was unrolled under Biden, while he held up his hands and said there was nothing he could do about it. But as soon as election season rolls around, they're suddenly champions of women's rights. If they were to actually do something about it, they'd no longer be able to campaign on it.
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
Tell me again how a Trump administration will save the Palestinians. I haven't had a laugh in a bit.
You are a genocide supporter. You will never be clean again, and the rest of humanity sees you for the snivelling nazi that you are. There's no coming back from this.
The last four years have utterly shattered any illusions i'd had left about the true nature of democrats. Me too, blm, covid, yemen, and now gaza. They are serpents.
It almost certainly won't, but that doesn't justify voting for a fascist who is exterminating children.
You're oh so willing to let millions die to get your preferred politician in power, but I bet you'd be singing a different tune of the millions included you and yours.
...that doesn't justify voting for a fascist who is exterminating children.
100% agree, which is why I am not voting for Trump, the actual fascist, and I am doing everything in my power to make sure he and his cronie do not win, INCLUDING not wasting my vote by abstaining or voting third party. This shit is too important to fuck about.
Do you know who the president is right now while the US gleefully enables the murders tens of thousands of children?
Idk, some old guy who's not on the ballot. Do you know who's calling Netanyahu every day to undermine the current administration's ceasefire efforts?
Ceasefire efforts? Is that what you call vetoing ceasefire at the UN twice?
The "ceasefire" efforts are a bad faith smokescreen. If you follow the claimed contents of the "ceasefire" they are pushing, it is actually conditions of surrender. The purpose of their "ceasefire" propaganda was to coopt the "ceasefire now" rhetoric of those opposed to genocide. Just to inflate my ego a little, I fought very hard locally to avoid ceasefire rhetoric because I knew it was weak and easy to coopt. I, along with my orgs, successfully promoted that we demand an arms embargo instead, and that is the more durable demand being made by these groups (I probably only had a minor impact on this outside where I live).
Anyways, one clue for how the "ceasefire" line is bullshit is that Israel has assassinated the people they were allegedly negotiating with, to Biden-Harris applause.
Genocide is no longer fascist in the liberal lexicon. Obama dropping bombs on the ME and north Africa, the Biden regime giving more money and aid to Israel than any year in its entire history, is now considered an "anti-fascist" option by liberals.
Most of the horrors assigned to fascists, as understood in the liberal canon, had precedents among liberal governments, often on much larger scales. Most genocides around the planet, and most people killed in genocide, were carried out by liberals in liberal democracy. They are the genocides of colonialism, including settler- colonialism, inckuding the genocide of indigenous Americans still in living memory. Nationalism is a liberal campaign, it emerges from capitalism and its primary ideology, and liberals celebrate it constantly. Scapegoating and creating marginalized groups has always been something liberals engaged in, though there has also always been a split between those they consider gauche and unacceptable (and they are the "good guys" for opposing) and those that they find acceptable (they are still the "good guys" for this), like their current siniphobia, russophobia, and islamophobia.
Point is, genocide is making a return in liberal discourse to being something they accept. They already did before and were very racist about it. They just took a break, at least in their PR, after they had their sole actual "good guy" war in WWII and needed to rhetorically distance themselves from Nazis and work around the popularity of the left in Europe after the defeat of the Nazis.
If you give your vote to Kamala Harris you are endorsing the genocide of the Palestinian people.
This is an undeniable fact and no amount of mental gymnastics on your part is going to change that.
Hmmm, you're using an electronic device, which means you endorse the brutal child labor that contributed to manufacturing that device.
This is an undeniable fact and no amount of mental gymnastics on your part is going to change that.
Hey everyone! Ram here endorses forcing children to mine rare earth metals in third world countries! Shame them for their endorsement of exploitative labor practices
the fact that you thought you made a clever argument is equal parts sad and hilarious
The fact that you think your fascist enabling methodology does anything but jeopardize what democracy we enjoy is mostly just sad.
You're literally the one enabling fascists who are committing a genocide as we speak while bleating about some sort of a democracy.
the fascism is coming from inside the house my clown. u are going to vote for the sidekick and supporter of a self proclaimed zionist. She IS a fascist, she supports genocide.
The genocide is being committed now and Trump isn't president.
He won’t. You have two evil options. Your country is evil.
Why does this have to be about Trump? Biden has been a president for the past year and he enabled the genocide. No one is pretending Trump will be better. We just don't want to vote for a pro-genocide party be it red or blue. Democrats deserve to lose votes over their support for Israel.
Why do you support a system that repeatedly makes you choose between mega hitler and giga hitler? Surely you recognize that such a system is evil and participation is an endorsement of it.
That's a very difficult concept for them to understand. The mental gymnastics I've seen them use to excuse or defend genocide has been wild.
By just saying, "I don't want to endorse a genocide." sends them into a frothing rage, with arguments immediately fired against the right. They see it as 'us vs. them', but fail to see that people don't want to endorse a genocide no matter the color of the party.
Non-participation is simply letting the greater evil win.
They're not suddenly going to ditch first past the post because of some protest voters/abstainers.
Dem supporters have been holding their noses for 50+ years and voting for the "lesser evil". If that has brought us to this election, where your choice is between "genocide" and "genocide +", isn't it obvious that voting for the "lesser evil" just inevitably trends towards the greater evil over time? It is not a successful strategy at mitigating harm.
This guy gets it
isn't it obvious that voting for the "lesser evil" just inevitably trends towards the greater evil over time? .
What's obvious is that multiple election cycles of non-participation lead to people who want the greater evil winning the vote more often.
It is not a successful strategy at mitigating harm
Counterpoint: literally any of the things that happened under Trump that Hillary almost certainly wouldn't have done.
Like nominating three of the judges that overturned roe
We've been down that road before
What doesn't happen is non-participation leading to the abolishion of America's two party system.
"Over time" being the crucial detail. I'll take every opportunity I can to buy time to slow the trend toward greater evil. Gives us time to get actual leftists into positions that will actually make them viable presidential candidates.
Those 150+ years of bourgeois "democracy" (IE capitalist dictatorship) got the US to where it is now. Don't worry tho, keep doing the same thing over and over again, the US just keeps improving. /s
Since you just did the thing they described but without addressing it, let me repeat them.
Why do you support a system that repeatedly makes you choose between mega hitler and giga hitler? Surely you recognize that such a system is evil and participation is an endorsement of it.
So you've stopped paying taxes then? Since "such a system is evil and participation is an endorsement of it"
It's those tax dollars that build bombs for Israel. If you're paying them, you're paying for genocide.
So you’ve stopped paying taxes then? Since “such a system is evil and participation is an endorsement of it”
The MIC is funded through financial magic and imperialism. If tax fraud would oppose them, I would probably do it, but it really does not.
It’s those tax dollars that build bombs for Israel. If you’re paying them, you’re paying for genocide.
The "tax dollars" for the bombs are invented out of thin air. However, the people that make the bombs and deliver the bombs and drop the bombs are doing all of those things and we should organize to stymy those efforts.
Because if Giga Hitler wins, then the Overton window shifts even farther, and the next election is between Giga Hitler and Hyper Giga Hitler Zero.
It shifts right under both because the population does not build leverage against either but both Hitlers eschew anything vaguely left.
That's incorrect.
Biden-Harris is the "Mega Hitler". It is doing a genocide right now. The party moved right under them.
I'm pretty sure the party has done a genocide before, so IDK about "moved right".
I agree the status quo is fucking awful, I just don't agree that pouring gas on the fire will help.
What would you call a machine that routinely and predictably produces evil outputs with marginal differences between them? How reliable of an evil-producer does this machine have to be before you recognize that the production of a certain type of evil is the machine’s purpose?
Ukraine? Lol good fuck those Nazis.
The rest? The Dems had 4 years to codify any sort of federal law protecting those groups while states rolled those protections back, and didn't. So yes by you pretending that voting blue is some sort of moral high ground despite their constant failings in actually protecting queer and trans and black and women's rights you are choosing to support more death of those people. That's you. You're doing that. Congrats I guess?
Also the Dems literally caused the genocide in Palestine by pledging, and supplying, unlimited support to Israel.
Basically this is you
Never think that geocentrists were stupid. They were wrong, certainly, but they were not stupid: while it doesn't take much intellect to initially conclude that Earth is the center of the solar system, it does take a very great amount of intellect to rationalize away the mountain of evidence to the contrary.
This is not a comment about people who voted or are planning on voting for Kamala Harris — this is an entirely unrelated observation about a completely different topic.
Stupid tankies. Don't you see the trolley problem clearly proves that genocide is fine
I love the faith that the new Cheney DNC won't turn on any non-muslim or immigrants minority... I'm old enough to remember the '92 campaign's promises and then Don't Ask Don't Tell, Welfare "reform" and "The Death of Big Government." A rightwing DNC is a greater threat than the GOP because the MSNBC and NYT set will applaud them, and the 70% of the DNC base who are partisan sheep will move their own politics to justify the party's execution of "republican" policy
I'm old enough to remember this week when Trump promised Netanyahu free reign.
I'm old enough to remember today when Israel's genocide continues with free reign under the current regime and the war criminal Anthony Blinken who will remain in power if Kamala wins and continue his Jewish supremacist campaign to eradicate all other races.
Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: Breaks Community RulesI don’t think “Jewish supremacy” is wrong here, but it’s a slippery term that can easily be taken as anti-Semitic if one isn’t very careful, or even if one is, because Zionists will always look for an excuse to call anti-Zionists anti-Semitic.
Just seems like one should call a spade a spade, it's not some abstract academic concept, it's a subgenre of white supremacy
Indeed. “Jewish supremacy” is another subgenre of imperial core chauvinism, like “white supremacy.” It is a settler-colonialist and imperialist ideology. Not every Jewish person is a Jewish supremacist, just as not every white person is a white supremacist.
I'll believe it when I see it. If Kamala eeks out a win with a popular vote minority strategy like she's running, a GOP house and senate is baked in, which means no confirmations, so if you don't want to have an acting secretary of state for four years...
Plot twist: Kamala kicks out
von NeurathBlinken and gives his office toRibbentropPompeo.
Do you think the outcomes for minorities at home and abroad will be better under Trump than Harris?
I honestly don't know, I could see it go either way. Do you think it would have been substantively better under Hillary than Trump 2016-2020?
Yeah. I think Hillary also wouldn't have set the stage for fascist take over with judge appointments, endangered abortion rights, moved as far backwards on climate, and would have handled the pandemic better.
None in an ideal way, but better than the RNC.
You might not say that if you lived in [insert countries where Hillary would have started a destabilizing regional war]
Foreigners aren’t people, my friend. — Mitt Romney, I think.
I think Hillary also wouldn't have set the stage for fascist take over with judge appointments
Why not? Dem appointees do fashy things in a regular basis.
Everyone knows you should never havecaaked RBG to say anything about indigenous Americans.
endangered abortion rights
Dems endangered abortion rights under Obama by not crystallizing them in federal law or doing any fighting whatsoever for the Supreme Court. The overall Dem strategy actually benefits from this precarity. They want to use it to campaign on forever. Hillary was this kind of person.
Remember, under Obama, abortion rights had already been de facto removed in many red states. The Dobbs decision just added clarity to what was already the status quo, giving it ancillary legal weapons.
moved as far backwards on climate
Dems are just as bad on this. They push fracking and greenwashing and Biden has caused a crisis in solar panel availability with a sinophobic trade war. Both Obama and Biden prioritized oil and other fossil fuel production, making the US a better exporter. They just use different weapons to send money to the ruling class. One greenwaages it and the other doesn't bother. Hillary was lockstep in this.
They are in many ways more effective because they keep you complacent and accepting of scapegoats.
and would have handled the pandemic better.
Biden demonstrably handled it worse. He normalized the ongoing pandemic (yes it is still happening), deconstructed the monitoring apparatus, and ended benefits. What would Clinton have done better?
Trans people, LGBT people
Harris just said "I believe we should follow the law" when asked whether trans people should have access to gender-affirming care. This is leaving it to the states, which is essentially banning the existence of trans people in large segments of the country. She does not care about trans people or LGBT people as a whole.
Abortion rights
Roe was overturned under Biden, and Harris has not said she would stack the court or similar. She has said she would sign into law a bill passed by congress to restore reproductive freedom nationwide, but the dems almost certainly will not control the senate with a filibuster-proof majority, and even if they did they'd find some designated bad-guy who would turn coat to stop it (see: Joe Lieberman, Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema). Harris will not do anything to protect abortion rights.
Ukraine
Which will lead to more Ukrainian deaths: the war coming to an end because US aid ceases, or a meatgrinder continuing for years which the Ukrainians have no chance of winning anyway? Which is more important: lines on a map, or actual human lives?
Black Lives Matter
Harris was a prosecutor. She's a fucking cop. She's VP of Joe "We have to fund the police!" Biden. She wants to build Trump's border wall. Harris does not care about black people.
Palestine
Harris fully supports the Israeli genocide of Palestinians. Her VP, Walz, has said that Israeli expansion (IE Greater Israel) is key to US interests. They may actually be to the right of Trump on this issue just because Trump doesn't have any actual political beliefs other than "make Trump richer", while Harris and the dems are rabid zionists.
Walz, has said that Israeli expansion (IE Greater Israel) is key to US interests
So basically the same view as Trump
but with more decorum
And without outrage from Dem voters
Excellent writeup. If anyone wants sources for some of these, here they are: https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq#kamala-harris
I guess both sides are equal then huh
Dems can do a genocide without your opposition, so that us one difference.
I like how the trolley meme is peak liberal morality test
I'm starting to think now the trolley problem should be reframed as a catch-22 / false choice / manufactured consent.
Who constructed this trolley? Why are there only two options shown? Do these options actually match reality? etc.
More of an intelligence test. "Do you understand the fact that inaction has consequences?" Helps separate adults from children.
Makes sense. As a grown adult, I also require overly simplistic illustrations in order to grasp concepts.
When you are filtering out the young, the dumb, and those arguing in bad faith, overly simplistic is an excellent first filter. If they can pass that base level filter of rudimentary critical thinking skills, then you can feel free to enter into more nuance and subtlety.
No point in engaging with those who can't even grasp the simplest concepts.
Seems like a bigger waste of time to just end up engaging with people who can vault over pictures, but can't handle nuance.
Start the discussion on an intellectual level, and those who can't grasp it can go read until they're ready to talk.
Or they can go find someone else who will argue with cartoons or whatever, I'm sure they'll be happier there.
When it comes to battling fascist-enabling rhetoric, I prefer as comprehensive an approach as possible. In truth, the circle jerk tankies and bad faith actors won't be swayed by any amount of intellectual engagement. The goal isn't to convince them, it's to publicly counter their garbage takes in as simple and straightforward a way as possible, in order to avoid letting sincere but impressionable leftists fall for superficially reasonable looking moral imperatives.
Everyone needs a hobby, I suppose.
You can do worse for hobbies than fighting fascist-enabling rhetoric.
it's adorable that you think you're a leftist little fash
Forgive me for not valuing the opinion of a counterproductive tankie pretending they have authority to gatekeep effective leftists.
u think voting for california's ex head pig is gonna keep black people safe from pigs??? how does that work? how does continuing the "i think we can all agree what we need is to found the police" regime make black people safe from pigs?
Also how would republicans be worse than Palestinians than the continuation of a regime currently led by a self proclaimed non jewish zionists.
also also democrats could have and did nothing to protect womens bodily autonomy and they have done next to nothing for lgbtq people or any other oppressed peoples for that matter.
but non of that matters there is regime in power which is genocidal which has done everything in its power to support and aid a genocide, u can either support it or not, that is all.
This basically says that you don’t see Palestinians as people which I am not surprised by anymore.
That, and also they drew the picture in a way that makes genocide of palestinians inevitable. Genocide is not inevitable, no matter how much US democrats think it is, and tell everyone to get in line behind it.
Its so easy to construct trolley problems that have nothing to do with reality, and don't represent the options actually available, or even the problem / scenario correctly.
It is because deep down these white supremacists believe the inherent right of the US military to exist and stomp over the whole world.