You know what causes more harm than Democrats? People not voting for them because they’re not far enough to the left, and therefore moving the entire country to the right.
What teaches the Dems to move to the right is that those on the right actually get votes.
Correct. What caused the Democrats to move right over the last 40 years were the retirees who continuously voted for centrist conservatives in primaries. They’re the only ones who always show up, hence the <15% congressional primary attendance.
Mamdani got the NYC primary up to a record 30%. That’s all it takes for us the move the Overton Window back to the left.
Because the corporate Dems are scared when people actually show up to vote in the primary. That’s why we need to keep doing it to replace the Democratic leadership.
Why are you trying so hard to keep people from doing that? Are you an idiot, or are you a troll and actually want things to stay as they are?
What kind of fucked up, Stockholm syndrome shit is this? Keep giving more money and more power to the organization that resents your participation in the process?
Jfc, and gringos think they can tell anyone else what a democracy is.
All they can do to him is withhold funding. He won the primary with a grassroots campaign. The part you really don’t understand is that short of voter suppression or ballot tampering, we control the election.
Do you eat fast food everyday because of advertising or do you choose to be self-informed and eat healthy? Do you blame Big Lettuce for not advertising salads enough?
Whenever I come across one of these lemmy.ml posts where this general topic of leftists shitting on western libs comes up, it always makes me curious.
I understand what y’all hate. I regularly hear what doesn’t work (voting). But I never hear a concise, specific, tactical thing that I as an individual could do.
Sometimes I’ll see very generic notes about how “nothing’s ever going to change until a unified, violent, upheaval happens”, but that’s about the closest I’ve ever seen.
So please. Indulge me. I’m a US lefty lib. What should I be doing if I want to help leftist causes (pro-labor / break up corporations / etc).
Because I swear to gods. According to folks here:
voting? Doesn’t work
donating? You’ll never outspend
grass roots whatever? They’ll stomp you out
acts of coordinated violence? We’d never say that explicitly
What then? I hate the current trajectory of my country and feel helpless to change anything with the tools I have at hand. Give me one practical thing I can do to help unfuck this mess.
(And to the FBI listening in. I’d never do anything illegal based on advice of Internet strangers. I just wanna hear them say, out loud, what I think they really want to say)
Join an org like PSL. Organizing is step number 1, reading theory is arguably step number 2. The working class’s greatest strength is in unified action, so joining a good socialist party, one that is revolutionary but still connected to the people, is the primary task. Revolution isn’t something you just do, though, the working class party has to be seen by the working class as their party, which is accomplished by genuinely working to improve their lives. When revolution happens, it’s the party’s job to lead, forming the tip of the spear.
No, the DSA doesn’t have a better strategy. PSL gets more done per member, and actually has the cohesion to get things done. PSL is at the forefront of the ongoing protests against Trump, Israel, etc right now.
Maybe if Red Star Caucus became the only caucus in the DSA, they’d finally develop the cohesion necessary to wield its size properly. It’s certainly better to join an org than not, but if there’s both a PSL chapter and DSA in your area, you’d be far better off with PSL.
PSL’s primary advantage is that it’s a revolutionary party that doesn’t shy away from participating in elections. It isn’t focused on electoralism as the only strategy. The Democrats are a party of capital, they cannot be truly taken over.
All meaningful positive change in the US happened outside of the theatre piece of electoral politics. These include:
Socialist armies like vietnam’s bringing the US to heel ended the US draft.
Large numbers of people protesting internally, brought the end of the vietnam war, rights for workers like the 8 hour day, women’s rights, etc. The US has one of the bloodiest labor histories of any country, and unfortunately the US state did defeat it, but all of the gains for US workers come from this historical period of anti-capitalist organization.
US electoralism is a distracting theatre piece, where both sides act as capitalist puppets. All positive change comes in spite of that system, when ppl start organizing outside of it.
Because it accomplishes nothing. It’s not good strategy to play a rigged game, where acheivements were only made when people refused to play it, and went around it.
You’ve given me no reason to play your rigged game.
All Debbie Wasserman-Schultz succeeded in doing was shorting Bernie on ad revenue. If we did our civic duty in learning about the candidates on the primary ballot and voted in every election, that wouldn’t have mattered at all.
That’s a form of cognitive distortion, not a political strategy. Mamdani won against 10 other candidates because we showed up. We have literal evidence that’s all it takes. Quit with the victim mentally and take your country back.
i hope mamdani succeeds and all, but that’s literally what happened the last few us presidential elections. electoralism is historically incapable of defeating fascism.
if you are counting on it to fix the us, like all we need is hope and rainbows, i have some bad news for ya.
Typical all or nothing response. Let’s forget the 535 members of Congress have primaries every 2-4 years so we can complain that ‘it was either Fetterman or Dr. Oz’ when Fetterman beat three primary contenders, two of whom were progressive, in a primary that saw <9% turnout.
If you think abstaining is the solution, why has it only made things worse for the last 40 years?
Nobody says abstaining is the solution. Electoralism in general is not a solution. Organizing, joining working class parties with revolutionary intent, is the only solution.
and none of that system has solved the issue for us in the various decades it has existed.
you think abstaining is the solution
no i don’t, that’s not what any of us are arguing for.
why has it only made things worse for the last 40 years
because most people have insisted for that time that voting is the only solution worth pursuing. its not, that system works against us making it one of the least effective solutions.
Oh, then by all means. Maybe show up to a Democratic primary once in a while and you’ll get your chance.
Friend, what a pointless waste of time with the uniparty, they will do whatever is needed to manipulate away any real change
You know what causes more harm than Democrats? People not voting for them because they’re not far enough to the left, and therefore moving the entire country to the right.
What teaches the Dems to move to the right is that those on the right actually get votes.
What teaches Democrats to move left is to mobilize for them and stifle criticism as they move further to the right.
Sure friend, just keep voting for the ratchet! Im sure the genocidal zionoists like AOC will have a change of heart any day now!
Correct. What caused the Democrats to move right over the last 40 years were the retirees who continuously voted for centrist conservatives in primaries. They’re the only ones who always show up, hence the <15% congressional primary attendance.
Mamdani got the NYC primary up to a record 30%. That’s all it takes for us the move the Overton Window back to the left.
Because the corporate Dems are scared when people actually show up to vote in the primary. That’s why we need to keep doing it to replace the Democratic leadership.
Why are you trying so hard to keep people from doing that? Are you an idiot, or are you a troll and actually want things to stay as they are?
What kind of fucked up, Stockholm syndrome shit is this? Keep giving more money and more power to the organization that resents your participation in the process?
Jfc, and gringos think they can tell anyone else what a democracy is.
All they can do to him is withhold funding. He won the primary with a grassroots campaign. The part you really don’t understand is that short of voter suppression or ballot tampering, we control the election.
Do you eat fast food everyday because of advertising or do you choose to be self-informed and eat healthy? Do you blame Big Lettuce for not advertising salads enough?
Whenever I come across one of these lemmy.ml posts where this general topic of leftists shitting on western libs comes up, it always makes me curious.
I understand what y’all hate. I regularly hear what doesn’t work (voting). But I never hear a concise, specific, tactical thing that I as an individual could do.
Sometimes I’ll see very generic notes about how “nothing’s ever going to change until a unified, violent, upheaval happens”, but that’s about the closest I’ve ever seen.
So please. Indulge me. I’m a US lefty lib. What should I be doing if I want to help leftist causes (pro-labor / break up corporations / etc).
Because I swear to gods. According to folks here:
What then? I hate the current trajectory of my country and feel helpless to change anything with the tools I have at hand. Give me one practical thing I can do to help unfuck this mess.
(And to the FBI listening in. I’d never do anything illegal based on advice of Internet strangers. I just wanna hear them say, out loud, what I think they really want to say)
Join an org like PSL. Organizing is step number 1, reading theory is arguably step number 2. The working class’s greatest strength is in unified action, so joining a good socialist party, one that is revolutionary but still connected to the people, is the primary task. Revolution isn’t something you just do, though, the working class party has to be seen by the working class as their party, which is accomplished by genuinely working to improve their lives. When revolution happens, it’s the party’s job to lead, forming the tip of the spear.
I’m a member of DSA, and they have a far better strategy than trying to rally around a third-party. It’s all about the Democratic primaries.
No, the DSA doesn’t have a better strategy. PSL gets more done per member, and actually has the cohesion to get things done. PSL is at the forefront of the ongoing protests against Trump, Israel, etc right now.
Maybe if Red Star Caucus became the only caucus in the DSA, they’d finally develop the cohesion necessary to wield its size properly. It’s certainly better to join an org than not, but if there’s both a PSL chapter and DSA in your area, you’d be far better off with PSL.
PSL’s primary advantage is that it’s a revolutionary party that doesn’t shy away from participating in elections. It isn’t focused on electoralism as the only strategy. The Democrats are a party of capital, they cannot be truly taken over.
Im impressed by your willingness to argue with crayon eaters those past couple days
Thanks i try 😁
they are flooding this instance lately for some reason
Maybe something to do with the whole epstein thing going on?
If you’re honestly expecting a three-party system to emerge from FPTP, you need to work on your mathematics.
Liberals : “Play my rigged game”
Communists : “no”
Liberals : 😭😭😭
I don’t care if you play. I’m merely saying how continuing to do nothing is pointless. Good luck complaining the government out of power.
All meaningful positive change in the US happened outside of the theatre piece of electoral politics. These include:
US electoralism is a distracting theatre piece, where both sides act as capitalist puppets. All positive change comes in spite of that system, when ppl start organizing outside of it.
Why must it be one or the other? Do you really believe the best strategy is to focus all of your efforts in one direction?
Because it accomplishes nothing. It’s not good strategy to play a rigged game, where acheivements were only made when people refused to play it, and went around it.
You’ve given me no reason to play your rigged game.
Honestly at this point even a two-party system would be better than current one.
Then show up and vote in the primaries🤷♂️
Leftist here. We do. Remember Bernie. We still doing shit like that.
All Debbie Wasserman-Schultz succeeded in doing was shorting Bernie on ad revenue. If we did our civic duty in learning about the candidates on the primary ballot and voted in every election, that wouldn’t have mattered at all.
and get sabotaged by the party in favor of some old conservative fart like joe biden?
That’s a form of cognitive distortion, not a political strategy. Mamdani won against 10 other candidates because we showed up. We have literal evidence that’s all it takes. Quit with the victim mentally and take your country back.
i hope mamdani succeeds and all, but that’s literally what happened the last few us presidential elections. electoralism is historically incapable of defeating fascism.
if you are counting on it to fix the us, like all we need is hope and rainbows, i have some bad news for ya.
Typical all or nothing response. Let’s forget the 535 members of Congress have primaries every 2-4 years so we can complain that ‘it was either Fetterman or Dr. Oz’ when Fetterman beat three primary contenders, two of whom were progressive, in a primary that saw <9% turnout.
If you think abstaining is the solution, why has it only made things worse for the last 40 years?
Nobody says abstaining is the solution. Electoralism in general is not a solution. Organizing, joining working class parties with revolutionary intent, is the only solution.
and none of that system has solved the issue for us in the various decades it has existed.
no i don’t, that’s not what any of us are arguing for.
because most people have insisted for that time that voting is the only solution worth pursuing. its not, that system works against us making it one of the least effective solutions.