- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/15032962
Alt text: a screenshot of a microblog post with the text “you walking down an alleyway with a gram of weed in your pocket, who would you rather catch you?” Below are two pictures side by side. One of Kamala Harris and the other of Batman.
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Better than an dumbass orange fascist any day
My ball sack is too. I could use the money.
Are you electioneering?
Are you?
Have I told you vote for candidate X?
#bandname
Don’t vote for candidate X is still electioneering?
Have I told you don’t vote for candidate X? Or did I criticize a politician? Did I say tactical voting is the big poo poo? Why does criticizing a politician cause so many to reflectively defend them?
why does criticizing a politician cause so many to [reflexively] defend them?
Probably because they disagree with you?
To be clear I agree with your criticisms, Kamala is 100% a cop. I disagree with you banning anyone who uses the word “vote” in their disagreement.
Kamala is the democratic candidate for president, anytime we talk about her we’re implicitly talking about the election. You can’t then turn around and ban anyone who then brings up the election. You brought it up first!
If you think “Kamala sucks” posts aren’t electioneering then I don’t know how to help you.
I’ve not been banning people just for the word vote, I’ve been banning people for telling others to vote or who to vote for.
Do you really expect an anarchist space to have a rule against criticizing members of the political class?
This community was created because users where concerned an other community was going to drop a similar rule, this community has been growing since it started so there are people that I’m assuming do approved of the rules.
I will throw you a bone, I’ve rewriten the rule & it will include telling people not to vote. I’m not going to tell anarchist they can’t criticize a member of the political class.
As someone who was a politico/political activist(seeing the sausage cracked out made me an anarchist), minding the people who are already committed supporters, phone banking to remind people to vote, taking people to voting polls, & calling people who’s mail in ballets have been rejected so they can fix it, is going to be far more effective then browbeating randos online about the lesser evil.
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Nobody here is promoting the orange fascist, that would get a ban.
Nice whataboutism, however I don’t think this post mentioned orange man.
It absolutely did, and your response is disingenuous…the only reason to try and say she is a shitty cop is to discourage voters, which helps a fascist. Assuming your not a troll you’re stupid or lying with your willfull ignorance of the statement underlying messageEdit… I am an Idiot and didn’t realize I had stumbled into Anarchism…
Ah yes the lemmy.world user reminding us that making fun of the “left-wing” candidate makes you a right winger. Have you considered that making fun of Liberals is one of the most left wing things one could do, unless the only reason why you’re in this Anarchist community is to spread Liberalism and tell people to vote for the “right people”. Yeah im sure if you bootlick the capitalists and blindly obey them like a puppy they’ll give you their tablescraps and a pat on the head.
Hey White flag…my dumbass absolutely didn’t look at which community I was in, you’re absolutely right especially in Anarchism…I was out of line and an absolute asshole. My apologies, I am the stupid one.
That’s fine, next time if you see that you’re in a left wing community avoid talking like a Liberal.
Said this to the other poster of this shit before getting banned. Who in Russia sent you this? Just wondering where the propaganda farms are there
This is an anarchist community. Anarchism has a long history of advocating for abstentionism, so I don’t see why it should be shocking to see it here.
The Case Against Voting - Colin Ward
Who in Russia sent you this?
Death to the Russian government lol. But seriously, assuming that everyone who doesn’t know down to your politicians is a Russian agent is needlessly conspiratorial.
Fair, but this feels like it’s really grasping for anything to try and paint Kamala in a bad light and that screams bot farm.
it’s really grasping for anything
Absolutely not! It’s like the lowest hanging fruit of a bountiful tree of evil she’s a part of. Anarchists also have a long history of advocacy for the abolition of police, so again this kind of rhetoric coming from actual humans should not come as a surprise.
In most communities, I’d agree. But in an anarchist community, especially this C/, the only thing I’d be surprised at is that the meme is stale. This place is usually pretty fresh on the meme train.
Tbh, most of the blahaj political C/s, you can essentially not worry much about farming. There’s really not going to be any posts of the usual propaganda subjects that would be out of the norm for the various communities. I’m mostly a lurker on blahaj, but it’s pretty damn lefty friendly overall.
No bullshit, just lurk for a while and it’ll be easy enough to see.
Anarchism has a long history of [advocating for abstentionism]
Yup. And a long history of being ineffectual in making changes on a societal level because of it. Statistically, it’s equivalent to supporting the worst outcomes and building roadblocks to achieving the sustainable systems necessary to support humanity while dismantling unjust hierarchies. Anti-electoralism is so fallacious with the data for context that it nearly seems like a right-wing ploy to suppress leftist voices.
In fact, this meme is really on-point for this perennial problem and regular Denying the Correlative (“vote third party”). The realistic version would be “which person would you rather meet in an alley when you have drugs on you: a former prosecutor, a nazi, or an imaginary character bourgeois character with Superman Syndrome that isn’t a real choice but counts in favor of the Nazi.”
Too many fellow anarchists are happy in their ivory towers, pretending that inaction isn’t a choice, and choosing ideological purity over using every tool in the box to keep the patient from dying while treating the sickness. There’s more than enough of us to overwhelm the Right.
I don’t tell people to vote or not, people can make that decision themselves, I’m not their master(I keep that in the bedroom). I was a politico/activist, I did a hell of a lot more then vote every couple of years. I became an anarchist because of all of the subtile out in the open corruption that I saw. If voting could produce substantial reform it would have been made illegal. There is never an appropriate time for holding anyone accountable, during the primaries everyone says we can’t support a reform candidate because they’ll loss in the general, we have to support the nominee because other side bad, & we can’t have change next election because other side bad. If you never hold anyone accountable for their actions why would they ever change? I’m not saying tactical voting is useless but blind support for a political establishment is dangerous. People are so afraid of other side that they bend over backwards to not view their politicians critically & the two parties in general are a lot closer on policy then people like to think. The fact I get so much angry push back for even minor critisism is evidence that people have let themselves be cooped. The more corrupt & brutal police departments are in Democratic strongholds. We just had the largest most sustained anti police protest in history & all of the reforms have been largely cooped or underminded & rolled back & now we have a former prosecutor who defended corrupt police & other corrupt prosecutors who has been ordained the new candidate with no real candidate electoral process. An across the board Democratic landslide would have it’s own pitfalls. The Democrats efforts on gun control will disproportionately effect marginalized people because gun control always has. The Stop & Frisck program is a good example of the harm gun control policies have. Only two percent of the stops found guns, POC & trans women where grossly over represented & NY cops were allowed to arrest women in possession of condoms for prostetution. Harris as a prosecutor prosecuted non violent gun possession cases harshly, a subset of those cases would have been marginalized people who had a gun only for self defense. I honesty think mutual aid activism is far more productive then spending time trying to get people to vote.
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If voting could produce substantial reform it would have been made illegal.
The right consistently acts to disenfranchise voters who might vote against them.
There is never an appropriate time for holding anyone accountable, during the primaries everyone says we can’t support a reform candidate because they’ll loss in the general
Who says that? Primaries are the perfect time to support a reform candidate, I’ve never heard anyone oppose that.
The fact I get so much angry push back for even minor critisism is evidence that people have let themselves be cooped.
It’s much better evidence that people are, rightfully, concerned that the both-sides rhetoric minimizes the very real differences and increases the appeal of abstentionism in a close race with serious consequences.
The more corrupt & brutal police departments are in Democratic strongholds.
Cities. Police departments are much more corrupt in Republican strongholds, it’s just that the scale is smaller because the departments are smaller. Additionally, the corruption is less apparent because it’s so pervasive that it never sees the light of day. Cities show more corrupt departments because the departments are bigger, and they’re more likely to be exposed.
I honesty think mutual aid activism is far more productive then spending time trying to get people to vote.
Sure, maybe. But they’re not mutually exclusive. And discouraging people from voting is entirely counter-productive.
You have some really valid points and things that I would like to address but need to try to focus my ADHD brain elsewhere at this moment. I will try to reply to you this evening.
Understandable.
Sorry for taking a while - family that we’ve not seen in a while.
This is kinda stupid though. Neither of those sources give a particularly compelling practical justification for abstentionism.
Sure, neither party represents the end-goal. But we exist within a system which centrally incorporates a mechanism for change. Voting for whichever administration is marginally better, harm reduction, is a vital tool in the toolbox. Sitting idly by while the right systematically entrenches authoritarianism yields objectively worse results for anarchists.
Neither of those sources give a particularly compelling practical justification for abstentionism.
I don’t agree with you. Ward’s piece talks about how compromising on voting helped cost the CNT-FAI the Spanish Revolution.
Sitting idly by while the right systematically entrenches authoritarianism yields objectively worse results for anarchists.
Not voting ≠ sitting idly by. Quoting a different section of the same Anarchist FAQ:
We do this by organising what Bakunin called “antipolitical social power of the working classes.” [Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 263] This activity which bases itself on the two broad strategies of encouraging direct action and building alternatives where we live and work.
But more importantly, I really wanted to demonstrate in my previous comment that we’re not fucking bots, which I’m so tired of seeing, and that we’re real fucking people and our perspectives are just as valid as yours. I don’t give a fuck whether or not you agree with me on going to the ballot box because I’m not interested in debating whether or not you or anyone else go to the ballot box. You do whatever makes you comfortable.
But I’m not going to do it myself because I’ve been there and done that. I’m not going to debate it because the possible good that can come out of it, almost zero, is not enough to justify the vigorous debate it attracts, sucking bandwidth away from actually important stuff. And I’m not going to lose any extra sleep over my nonparticipation in the election if Trump or Harris wins because ultimately, elections serve to ratify decisions already made by capital. And I refuse to be guilted over choosing not to participate in the ratification of our own oppression.
Ward’s piece talks about how compromising on voting helped cost the CNT-FAI the Spanish Revolution.
“Helped”. Maybe it played the pivotal role, maybe not. It’s hard to draw concrete analysis about what could have happened, even with cherry-picked examples.
Not voting ≠ sitting idly by.
It is in regards to utilization of this specific lever of praxis. Voting, and encouraging others to vote, is in no way incompatible with whatever other engagement activities you partake in. In fact it is a powerful tool to enable and empower all other actions. The only rational choice is to strategically vote to select the landscape more amenable to the organization and implementation of direct localized alternatives.
When an autocrat runs, you vote against the autocrat because they do more damage to the people and the cause than the alternative. This is obvious. The only reason you wouldn’t want marginally better is if you’re hoping for things to get worse, like an accelerationist. Accelerationists are sociopaths.
The links I have cited have addressed the rest of your response in sufficient depth IMO. What I really find irritating is this suggestion:
The only reason you wouldn’t want marginally better is if you’re hoping for things to get worse, like an accelerationist.
I fractally reject this statement:
- I absolutely do hope for things to get marginally better (as a weak case of “much better”). I am not in the business of causing chaos for its own sake (“Anarchy is order”).
- I am not an accelerationist, and neither are any anarchists worth their salt. I reject that epithet, and the suggestion that I want things to get worse.
- I reject the notion that voting is a “lever of praxis” at all, except in rare cases of local elections (but even then, the person I vote for is more likely to be “made useful” to the State than to radically stand for their voters).
- I reject the notion that voting for the “least worst” figurehead has any impact on the decisions already made by those in power.
- I reject the idea that one can only hope for things to monotonically get better or worse. Usually, decisions have tradeoffs. IMO, the “marginal benefit” of voting against an autocrat (1) does not actually exist and (2) debating its existence clogs up radical spaces and time (like I am doing right now! but my time isn’t very valuable to me lol) to debunk, taking this time and space from doing actually important stuff.
I reject the notion that voting for the “least worst” figurehead has any impact on the decisions already made by those in power.
This is abject paranoia, and observably false. Yes of course a lot of policy is captured by capital, but not all. There is a wide range of actual variance between candidates. If there wasn’t any difference and they were all on the same team, they wouldn’t spend so much money trying to get you to pick them.
IMO, the “marginal benefit” of voting against an autocrat (1) does not actually exist and (2) debating its existence clogs up radical spaces and time
I reject this opinion on both counts. It’s an extremely privileged worldview.
taking this time and space from doing actually important stuff.
Like what, exactly?
Bro I’ve literally donated my own money to people killing Russian invaders. But yes everyone who criticizes your favorite politician is a Russian bot & using that card to try to shutdown even the smallest critisism of those in power doesn’t have a corrosive affect on political discourse in the west thereby serving Putin’s aims.
Pretty sire she’s not a cop sooooooo
Its still batman, he’s got bigger things to worry about
She’s not a cop anymore. She was the DA of San Francisco in 2004-2011, and she was the Attorney General of California from 2011-2017. She was responsible for prosecuting people, and lead an effort to police black and poor families harder. She also was directly responsible for transgender inmates having their gender-confirming surgeries withheld. Also remember that time she mocked people chanting “schools not jails”?
Which part of that was her being a cop?
Which part of that was ok?
Different argument.
Appreciate the links but that was 7+ years ago. What are her stances now?
She keeps telling us that we should vote for her because of her record as a prosecutor and Attorney General so apparently what she did in those roles is what she thinks is important.
You replied to the wrong person.
The part where she prosecuted poor black parents because their children missed school when they were sick in the hospital?
Cops don’t prosecute people. Lawyers do.
Do you have anything of value to contribute to the discussion, or is your sole issue that Kamala Harris has not ever actually served on a police force?
If somehow not serving on a police force makes you a cop then I guess we’re all bastards.
And yes, that’s really my sole issue. I didn’t think it was going to be controversial to point out that she wasn’t a cop.
You do understand that we say “ACAB” because it’s catchier than “I dislike the so-called justice system that does nothing but destroy lives for the state, and that includes cops, lawyers, prosecutors, etc.”, (IDTSCJSTDNBDLFTSATICLPE) right?
I bet you also say things like “You can’t call everyone you don’t like a nazi, the nazi party ended decades ago!”
I say this with all the kindness in my heart, please log off and go outside.
No, prosecutors prosecute. Prosecutors are not literally cops (duh), but they are a very important part of the criminal ”justice” system. Cops couldn’t put people away without their help
OK Poindexter does someone need to explain linguistics to you?
A gram of weed would get you a citation at most in SF back then, but most likely some “get that high school shit out of here” comment.
Source: I lived in SF back then and had friends who had nearly that exact experience.
What was their skin color?
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Oh OK I’m suppose to just ignore the statistically relevant disproportionate treatment of black people in the injustice system.
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Put what back in the deck? What does that mean?
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That is sadly a very valid question for SF cops at that time.
https://www.kqed.org/news/10454955/racist-texts-prompt-sfpd-internal-investigation
This didn’t come out until several years later, but I doubt racism in the force just suddenly popped up.
Are you electioneering? You’re getting a one day ban for electioneering.
Thank you.
No U
Do you micro analyze all memes?
OK Poindexter does someone need to explain linguistics to you?
Weird.
I pick whichever one isn’t a rapist
At least batman would break my spine so I can get disability
A true allie
How would either know what’s in my pocket?
You got stopped & friscked because you ‘looked’ suspicious
Harris isn’t (and wasn’t) a beat cop and since when does Batman stop and frisk?
Yeah she was a prosecutor which in many ways is worse, prosecutors are at the center of much of what is wrong with the system, prosecutors may not be the ones on camera beating people but they ruin a lot of lives, families, & communitoes. Because of various laws passed over decades that prosecutors pushed for prosecutors have far more discretion(& therefore power) then judges.
When we says she’s a cop we don’t mean she ran around with a gun & handcuffs(minus the exercise of power I’m all for people carrying both guns & kink exseseries, you gotta be prepared) we’re saying she was an integral part of a system of power that is central to the marginalization of vulnerable populations.
So she wouldn’t stop me “in an alley”. Got it. You can see how comparing her to Batman isn’t really very helpful for anyone, yeah?
Do you micro analyze all memes?
When they’re this misleading and incorrect? Sure.
You’re being needlessly pedantic, Harris isn’t a cop in the same way Trump isn’t a member of the Fascist party. I think you would know what someone means when they call Trump a fascist.
North American folks cannot dismantle the two-party system (TPS) by attacking just one side.
Criminalisation of drugs is older than the current climate of the TPS as its rooted in racism, classism and ableist healthcare.
Kamala H. and Donald T. don’t deserve this kind of detailled attention from or in the anarchist sphere, continent-rulers are at most tools or enemies.
I’d rather meet Batman than some politician.
Eh, I think I’d enjoy the conversation with the Bat more. Dude can be reasonable in most of his versions. If he’s coming at me over weed, which would just mean I was taking it to someone as a favor since I don’t/can’t use the stuff, I kinda doubt he’s going to be all physical right out of the gate.
Harris would be boring as fuck all.
