I want to draw attention to the elephant in the room.
Leading up to the election, and perhaps even more prominently now, we’ve been seeing droves of people on the internet displaying a series of traits in common.
- Claiming to be leftists
- Dedicating most of their posting to dismantling any power possessed by the left
- Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
- Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
- Attacking anyone who promotes defending leftist political power by claiming they are centrists and that the attacker is “to the left of them”
- Using US foreign policy as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the US political system
- Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism
When you look at an aerial view of these behaviors in conjunction with one another, what they’re accomplishing is pretty plain to see, in my opinion. It’s a way of utilizing the moral scrupulousness of the left to cut our teeth out politically. We get so caught up in giving these arguments the benefit of the doubt and of making sure people who claim to be leftists have a platform that we’re missing ideological parasites in our midst.
This is not a good-faith discourse. This is not friendly disagreement. This is, largely, not even internal disagreement. It is infiltration, and it’s extremely effective.
Before attacking this argument as lacking proof, just do a little thought experiment with me. If there is a vector that allows authoritarians to dismantle all progress made by the left, to demotivate us and to detract from our ability to form coalitions and build solidarity, do you really think they wouldn’t take advantage of it?
By refusing to ever consider that those who do nothing with their time in our spaces but try to drive a wedge between us, to take away our power and make us feel helpless and hopeless, we’re giving them exactly that vector. I am telling you, they are using it.
We need to stop letting them. We need to see it for what it is, get the word out, and remember, as the political left, how to use the tools that we have to change society. It starts with us between one another. It starts with what we do in the spaces that we inhabit. They know this, and it’s why they’re targeting us here.
Stop being an easy target. Stop feeding the cuckoo.
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This post is beyond delusional. It’s like the meme about everything I don’t like is woke. The liberal version basically being everything I don’t like is a Russian/MAGA bot. Is it really that hard to believe that left leaning people don’t agree with the Democratic Party platform? You’re deeper in your bubble than you realize my friend.
Oh look, someone who’s generalizing op then tries to discredit them! Way to prove their point
They didn’t make any type of platform or political argument to even debate against. Basically saying that everyone who dislikes democrats is secretly a republican. That’s all I’m calling them on. Total nonsense.
Misdirection, nice! That’s cuz this is not about platforms or any political argument, dr Troll
You’re goofy man. I don’t even know what your point is. OP said something. I said I disagreed with it. Epic troll by me I guess.
Go to a politics or platforms community if you’re looking for a politic argument or stuff about platforms
Thank you for the suggestion.
Maybe we want politicians who will actively work for us, economically as well as socially.
Sounds great. Vote them in.
I would love to see a push to the left in US politics and in the Democratic party. I voted for Sanders, and I think the kind of arguments he’s been making consistently for decades would be a great perspective to see gain traction. The rallies he’s been putting together with AOC and the responses he’s gotten at town halls even in very red districts have been encouraging.
I fully support primarying Democrat politicians who fail to offer real solutions. 100% get them the hell out of office and replace them with people who will reconnect the party with the people and fight for affordable housing, medicare for all, and living wages. Let’s chuck Schumer out on his ass.
But our approach needs to be viable. It won’t happen by splitting the vote. That’s just math. I don’t like first past the post, and I’d love to get rid of it at the first available opportunity, but it’s the system we’re working with right now.
You can’t play chess using only your knights because you like the way the horsey looks. You have to know what the pieces do and use them to their fullest extent. By all means, make your pawns into queens, but to do that you have to think about which moves you’re actually capable of making on the board.
So here’s the thing, on my state ballot last November, I had TVs corporate Democrat who votes with the Republicans half the time (the time it matters), and a new Dem who could or would not articulate a platform for or against anything. Bet I voted third.
So run for office or find a candidate who might and help them get to that position.
Voting for a third party, unless it’s in a small local election where they might actually have a shot, will do literally nothing but get us a Republican.
If you’re still sitting here in April of 2025 and saying that the Democrats are the same as the Republicans, though? Get the hell out of our nest.
stop saying this stupid shit about third parties. you could argue the same point for Conservatives who didn’t vote Trump. also which is it—are leftists so numerous they are a problem and ruin everything or are we small and useless and unimportant?
Pretty ironic that Millie here is concerned about insincere trolls, yet they come off as the biggest troll here. I have blocked them and I suggest any leftists here do the same.
It’s pretty fn hateful couches in “polite, concerned” language. Phillipthebucket is the wolf showing the snarl, millie is the smiling fox.
https://kbin.earth/m/chat@beehaw.org/t/1270160/Brood-Parasitism-in-Leftist-Politics/comment/6448892#entry-comment-6448892
There’s your answer.
no thanks lol
You see this comment? https://lemmy.world/comment/16774478
That’s the attitude that drives away voters. Now, I do have a degree of higher education and thanks to the internet and not arrogant users who helped me continue informally learning, I’d say I’m decently literate, and well-informed. And that attitude in that comment pretty much guarantees I’m probably not voting D again in my lifetime, unless someone really in touch comes to be on my local ballot. The attitude in that comment is what many disenfranchised D voters have gotten from the last five national election cycles. I’m absolutely not voting R for the rest of my life either, but HRC, Biden, Harris and all the Democrat candidates when there were primaries did not inspire hope, let alone confidence. Sanders did, until the DNC routed him out and he rolled over for them that cycle and the next. The last time before that was Kucinich and he had reservation-causing concerns, but I would have voted for him and many of my friends would have, too. I voted Obama, not because I thought he was better, bit that he was less odious. Never. Again. If Democrats really want our votes, let them earn them. Cavorting with war criminals and their daughters while ignoring issues important to me ain’t it. And for the record, socially left and economically right isn’t left. We crave leftist candidates, socially, ecologically, and economically. It’s our money, give it to us.
So run for office or find a candidate who might and help them get to that position.
This is literally 100% the answer. It could be within the Democratic party, it could be outside it, the details are details.
The point is that someone who comes up to you saying “I’m not voting for a DEMOCRAT, how could that ever help?” and also “I’m not voting! That will help, that’s the answer, you should too.” is definitely either lying or badly confused.
Like, yes, our system is corrupt and a lot of Democrats are a huge part of the problem. That won’t go away if you refuse to engage with it. It will get worse.
Again, it takes money and transportation. If one is a city dweller, transportation may be easier. Rurally, not so much.
“I would have overthrown the bourgeoisie, but I couldn’t find a ride.”
That’s pretty much it. Most of my rides have died due to preventable causes, and they were lifelong D voters. There’s one left and they’re not in great shape. The others are busy working several jobs and caring for children or elderly family members. We worked hard, even up to death, when jobs were available.
The corporate Dem won and is still voting the Republican agenda. 🤷♀️
ETA: I would need funds to campaign and a means of travel. I also lack experience but am willing to learn. Suggestions?
just do a little thought experiment with me. If there is a vector that allows authoritarians to dismantle all progress made by the left, to demotivate us and to detract from our ability to form coalitions and build solidarity, do you really think they wouldn’t take advantage of it?
This is the same kind of argument that the tankies use to dismiss anyone who disagrees with them as a CIA plant. At least they name the CIA, you seem to be pointing to an even more ambiguous “they” that are out to get us. This is a conspiracy theory, dress it up all you want but your pointing to some ambiguous “they” and blaming them for your problems with no proof.
Occams razor is that they are leftists who hate the democratic party. They critique them more then the Republicans because the liberal side of lemmy covers that pretty well already, half the front page is shitting on trump right now. That’s good but at a certain point your beating a dead horse, everyone here already hates trump and thinks he’s bad, no point in reinforcing that past a point. A lot of people on here still have loyalty to the democratic party though that far exceeds the democrats loyalty to the left, so pointing that out can be effective and help change people’s minds instead of posting/commenting trump is hitler for the millionth time.
Your interpretation of Occam’s razor is that no one ever lies? Do you really think all human beings being honest about everything they say requires the least number of assumptions?
In a sense yes, people generally tell the truth more than they lie so the default assumption should be that someone is telling the truth, otherwise you enter into paranoia. That assumption can be broken when there is a clear gain from lying. Eg. You catch a thief outside the store they robbed they have a very clear reason to lie and say they were just walking by.
You’re explanation on why they’re lying isn’t very clear. First off, you fail to name who these people are and leave it ambiguous to let the person reading fill it in with their enemy (maga, nazis, russians etc.) just like every other conspiracy theory. Since the subject isn’t clear neither is the motive, you just sort of fill that in with "they hate the left, why do they hate the left? What are they gaining from convincing maybe a couple dozen liberals that the democrats suck on a very marginal social media? This isn’t the politburo for the comintern, there is barely any power on here to diffuse, so why put effort into doing so when there are far larger platforms to influence.
I’d like to draw a parallel to data security. Why make a strong password if nobody’s out there trying to break into accounts? Why secure your server’s ports if nobody’s going to attack them? Why take precautions against malicious collection of data to sell to third parties if we’re not sure who or how that data would be used?
These are behaviors that we don’t know the specific motivations for, we don’t know the individual bad actors in question or who they’re working for or what their specific plans are. But we know that if someone calls you claiming to be Geeksquad and tells you to go buy a bunch of gift cards to read to them over the phone, you’re being scammed. We know that if someone pretends to be a representative of a company and comes asking for your password, you shouldn’t trust them. We know that if certain kinds of traffic are spamming your ports looking for vulnerabilities, they don’t mean well.
Why? Because we are aware of the threat vector and can move to protect it before knowing the details of who in particular is planning on exploiting it. I don’t need to know specifically which hacker wants to break into my server to limit open ports. I don’t need to know who wants to steal my Steam account to know setting up 2fA is worthwhile.
Assuming good faith in bad actors is a vulnerability. The exploit vector is an attack on the political power of the left. I don’t need to know specifically who is behind it. I could speculate. Maybe it’s MAGA, maybe it’s Russia, maybe it’s some foreign bot-farm being hired by some other authoritarian regime, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that allowing the threat vector to remain open disempowers the left.
Why Lemmy? Why a small niche leftist platform rather than a larger platform?
Let’s say you’re a time traveler who hates punk music. What would be more effective to stop it before it starts? Sabotaging the planning for the Warped Tour in the 90s, or burning down CBGB in 1973?
CBGB was a small club at the time, barely notable at all. The Warped Tour, on the other hand, was a massive endeavor involving dozens of bands and thousands upon thousands of punk and ska fans. But if you know your history, you know that CBGB was a small venue with a massive impact on the American punk scene. It was a place where a lot of the bands that we know today got their start and came up. The Warped Tour, on the other hand, while probably influential on 90s teenagers who got to go see 20 bands in person for 20 bucks, was mostly just riding the wave of punk’s popularity and capitalizing it.
Targeting leftist spaces, especially small leftist spaces, could potentially be much more effective than targeting more general spaces. Lemmy in particular selects not only for leftists, but for anti-corporate, anti-establishment people with enough of an interest in tech and enough social media presence to jump on the bandwagon of a relatively unknown protocol just so they don’t have to rely on corporate social media. It has a barrier for entry that most of the public find to be either too daunting to bother to surmount, or that involves enough obscurity that they’re not even aware of it to begin with.
Beehaw in particular has human-vetted signups and even has a history of defederating with instances that have open sign-ups in order to be able to deal with moderation. A lot of that moderation is literally just contending with social conservatives who show up spouting racism, queerphobia, sexism, and ablism.
In other words, we are a small space that caters to a particular crowd of people well outside the mainstream politically, socially, and technologically. Small, niche spaces have a tremendous potential for resulting in wider-spread influence.
It’s not about convincing us that democrats suck. Most of us aren’t particularly happy with the democratic establishment anyway. It’s about demotivating us and frustrating our internal communications. It’s about trying to sabotage a potential locus for resistance.
And it isn’t just Lemmy. It isn’t even just the left that’s being targeted. We know social media is being used to pollute discourse and manipulate politics. We know there’s an artificial rightward push going on, and we know that it isn’t just the United States that’s being targeted with it. But anyone who wants to advance this artificial rightward push has a strong motivation to exploit any vulnerabilities that can be found in the US because of our position globally. Now that that position is crumbling, they have a strong motivation to make sure it doesn’t recover.
We have a responsibility to address that threat vector no matter who those parties are.
This isn’t data security though. In a cyber security context, yes paranoia is a valuable attribute. It can let you catch threats before they happen which is good.
In a political context though, paranoia, especially directed within the organization, is a corrosive and reactionary attribute. It divides and causes factionalism in political organization and brings energy away from making positive change and fighting the actual oppressors and puts that energy toward testing and purging your “allies”.
If a group out of power gives into paranoia and conspiracies they just divide into smaller and smaller factions who don’t trust each other and can’t work together to gain power. If a group in power gives in to paranoia, the majority group tends to start purging whoever they can claim are “fakes” conveniently along with everyone else they disagree with.
I can’t think of a single time in history where paranoia directed at secret enemies within has ever helped a progressive cause. Meanwhile I can name tons of instances where it destroyed a progressive cause, or at least it’s credibility and popularity: the reign of terror, stalins purges, mao’s cultural revolution, even in modern day Maduro loves to claim the CIA is out to get him.
It never helps the cause, it is just used as a way for the leaders of the group to offload any anger directed at the people in charge of the organization towards some, often imagined, sabotoeurs. Collectivization failing and causing mass starvation? Is it stalins fault?, no it’s the kulaks and the trotskyists sabotaging the revolution.
The democrats have failed us, twice now. Instead of recognizing there failure and changing tack they’re trying to direct anger at the enemy within, progressives and Palestinian activists who they claim are sabotaging the democratic chances and are probably agents of russia. Pelosi literally told a group of pro-palestinian activists protesting on her lawn to “go back to russia”.
We need to stop focusing on finding the “Russian assets in our midst” and focus on reforming the democratic party and defeating trumpism with a positive plan for change.
One disagreement. Dems have been failing us since FDR left office.
You’ve successfully clustered a bunch of trolls, time to block a bunch?
I had more I wanted to say on this topic when I first read it, but at the time I also had more energy. Had I not had other obligations, I would’ve written out my more detailed thoughts then. As it is, however, I’ll have to settle for the (relative) shortform, as I find this thread exhausting from the outset and the sheer quantity of incredibly angry back-and-forth here has only made it worse.
To suffice the ideas of mine that I still remember, then:
- I have a feeling that while you may not consider me specifically to be a “cuckoo,” that this post was still partially aimed at people like myself, since I’ve spent a fair chunk of time arguing to the immense faults of the Democrat Party, some of which was in discussion with you.
- If the above is true, I feel dehumanized and find this topic incredibly depressing.
- Regardless of the above, I find jumping to assumptions of bad faith on the part of those with whom you disagree on this topic understandable, but needlessly conspiratorial.
But to end my comment, I’d like to point out an area on which you and I can find common ground: Your point of “Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism” suggests you feel that the people arguing against voting / the Democrat Party are doing a poor job of offering alternative solutions. On this, I agree. Solutions for that scenario are hard to come by and often complicated, and where people do have things to suggest a portion of them are very flawed; voting Green, not voting, and the occasional implicit suggestion for violence, etc. All of those have huge problems that I know I don’t need to explain to you.
For that, all I can say is that I agree that leftists can do better and should. I’ve seen the good suggestions before. Things like mutual aid, education, organizing, joining events — all of these are very useful things that are significantly more important than one vote in a broken electoral system. Unfortunately, as you’ve noticed, frustrated and angry people tend to be bad at mentioning these things.
I only ask that you consider that these people are frustrated, angry, and restless, rather than actively fake.
If you read down to my comments down below, you’ll find some examples of people doing specific fuck-ups that strongly indicate that they are non-American fake accounts, and not someone who is frustrated, angry, or restless.
I do think that a lot of people on far-left-Lemmy are in fact genuine accounts who also do the things OP is saying, and that maybe calling them fake accounts isn’t productive. I actually think fake accounts on Lemmy is also a huge problem, but the tells that I consider are a little different than the ones OP talks about.
For that, all I can say is that I agree that leftists can do better and should. I’ve seen the good suggestions before. Things like mutual aid, education, organizing, joining events — all of these are very useful things that are significantly more important than one vote in a broken electoral system.
Yes. Whether or not someone is fake, talking about those things constantly would be a much better (and also less suspicious) thing to talk about, as opposed to incessantly talking specifically about how important it is not to vote and not so much about those other things.
A lot of the accounts I’m talking about are still talking about how important it is not to vote for Democrats, and haven’t bothered to say more or less anything about joining the protests that are going on right now. Actually, I’ve seen a little scattering of the current generation of fake commenters who are talking about how dangerous the protests are, how some might be “false flags,” how we need to be careful or they’re going to sit this upcoming one out. Things like that.
It’s like making banana bread. Everybody has their own recipe, but it’s still banana bread. The Trump administration is the continuation of the Biden administration. And America is an imperialist empire that rapes and pillages the world. We are also heading to a precipice, where we will be fooled into fighting another world war, war because of course blame it on the Muslims. Fascist are the useful idiots of empire, and sometimes fascists don’t realize their fascist. Neo-liberalism is a right-wing ideology, and that’s what we’ve been dealing with when it comes to the Democrats. Because they all take money from foreign powers, and they do not work on our behalf. They also use the intelligence department to divide this nation. since education has been under fire for so long, that most of the people in America don’t understand World War II or the world that they live in today. Russia defeated the Nazis, America came in to take the credit as they were also funding the Nazis, similar to what is happening in Ukraine today. But what is different is that communism is dead and what we have now is global capitalism. With our own capitalist class that fights amongst themselves for their interest while at the same time understanding their place in the hierarchy and keeping us all down and stupid. China is a capitalist country. Russia is a capitalist country. Liberals or the Democratic Party will try to rebrand themselves in order to keep voter engagement because that’s all it is. It’s a suggestion. It’s a temperature. But what I’ve seen is that voter turnout keeps getting smaller and smaller because people are starting to catch on …things will just get worse, I can guarantee. But you’ll just turn a blind eye, because you’re playing Tribalist Games. Red Team vs the Blue Team. It’s all the same, it’s still the same game. You should Google the imperialist Boomerang. What goes around comes around. What they do overseas will come back to you and me. I would think with the Snowden and Julian Assange leaks that would have woken up a lot of America, but America is… That.They’re literate, or they lack reading comprehension and the ability to pay attention. As somebody who is liberal arts educated, I really do think that America is one of the most servile nations in the world. Because we’ve been fat and happy, eating the spoils, well relative crumbs, but spoils of our imperialist wars. Unfortunately, I live in this country and I am struggling. I really want out. I do not identify with this culture and everyone around me seems crazy. And they lack the patience to listen. All I ask for you to do is listen. I plant seeds. Eventually, if you get enough of those, you have a garden of reality. We really do lack critical thinking skills. And then the sofist, Uno card, is something that just drives me mad. Either way, if I live or die, justice will be served, and Yankee gets what they deserve. Justice is coming, either by the nations of the world sick of your shit, or by your own hands. I mean, haven’t you figured it out yet? The whole good cop versus bad cop thing. You are the most gullible nation in the world. America is similar to North Korea. America is like North Korea with Disneyland. You’re in a theme park that you can’t afford and you can’t get out. It’s a small world after all.
Russia defeated the Nazis, America came in to take the credit as they were also funding the Nazis, similar to what is happening in Ukraine today.
I feel like at this point you’re just inviting someone to say something so you can pitch a fit about “how DARE you” and write more screeds to jam up the conversation that’s going on, and accuse the other people of being victims of propaganda.
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Glad to have you with us. We’re talking about David Hogg below, who is one of the people who is trying to do this. Let’s rock.
Please stop strawmanning us (I’m sort of assuming that this comment can be aimed at me, which I think is accurate) for long enough to get behind some kind of effort like that. Our main complaint about one certain subset of the “3rd party leftists” so called is that, on Lemmy, the sum total of their efforts seems to be not producing any success for 3rd parties, or for the left, or for reforming the Democrats, or against the Republicans, or anything like that, but actually interfering with the “revamping” as you say. By shitting on people like Bernie, or Elizabeth Warren, or David Hogg, or encouraging people not to vote letting Trump get in office which now makes things much harder, or encouraging them to vote for someone who definitely won’t win, and so on.
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Yeah, I sort of saw talking with t3rmit3 that me and OP do actually see things a little differently maybe in some important respects. I actually don’t think everyone who fits a lot of OP’s criteria is necessarily (or even probably) a fake account. I definitely think there’s a huge problem of fake accounts but the way OP has framed it I think also includes some people who are just speaking their mind.
Some of the accounts that I would place in that category also hate Bernie. They call him a “sheepdog” or say that he is controlled opposition designed to siphon off support that could productively go towards some 3rd party candidate that 99% of the country has never heard of, and that’s who we should be voting for. I mean sure, that viewpoint could be legitimate from some kind of person who’s got a comprehensive master plan I’m just too thick to understand, how doing that will tie in with the left finally seizing power in this country if we can all dump Bernie, but you surely should understand that me (and presumably OP) will be skeptical.
It’s a psyop
They appeal to leftists by saying electoralism won’t bring revolution, which is true… But then say don’t vote.
Makes no sense to me. Use any lever you have. You can advocate revolution and pull the lever for lesser evil. It reduces the concept to black and white thinking while appealing to people’s sense of self righteousness and laziness.
The same tactics and arguments are deployed on maga, only they’re encouraged to vote
As a leftist:
- True, It’s a piece of paper. If you think that will save us, you’re a dumbass.
- Mostly True, Look up the ratchet effect.
- Mostly False, we’ve had due process. It’s been unfair to minority communities, but in general it’s existed.
- Mostly False, He was mildly better. This is faint praise given he was a demented fossil facilitating a genocide.
Mildly better. Well, if this post accomplished one thing it was self-identification of the people it is about.
Neat how you ignored the rest of the sentence there. Probably because those aren’t contestable points huh?
“Mostly False, He was mildly better.”
Does that help?
This is faint praise given he was a demented fossil facilitating a genocide.
You know what I meant. Being obtuse doesn’t help your case, it just makes you look like a debate pervert.
And my point was that Biden was worlds better than Trump.
None of this shit matters anymore jfc. There won’t be real elections in 2026. Stop drinking Democrat collaborator diarrhea and start preparing for mass street level resistance. In case it somehow isn’t glaringly obvious, when the mass protest encampments shut down cities the Democrats will be the ones telling people to go home and vote instead. And when Trump nationalizes the national guard and sends them in to break up the encampments at rifle point the Democrats will wring their hands and put out a milquetoast statement about how they support peaceful protest but that disruption can’t be tolerated. Were none of you alive yet in 2020? Did none of you get guns pointed at you by national guard sent in by Democratic governors?
The Democrats are sitting in congress making word-shaped noises that gesture at displeasure with the ongoing fascist coup. A Republican Nazi could walk around congress putting them down with a cattle gun and the remaining ones would smile tightly and put out a statement about how “this is a serious violation of democratic norms” and then vote in favor of the next Trump nominee. These people are collaborators. They will do nothing to stop the fascist coup because they don’t want to.
Whether or not there are propaganda accounts actively trying to disperse and confuse resistance is absolutely pertinent to what we do from here.
It’s definitely true that 95% of the Democrats haven’t really been doing shit now that the horrors have started, and that talking about the election and how Trump shouldn’t have won is kind of a lost cause now. The propaganda accounts I am more concerned with at this point are the ones going into /r/50501 and doxxing and confusing people, trying to drown out useful organization, generally trying to defeat anything that might oppose the fascists. I haven’t seen those ones on Lemmy too much although I’ve seen a few. And misleading people about the bigger picture “in politics” as opposed to out of politics is still certainly a problem. They’re both problems.
Happy International Worker’s Day. Every single leader of emancipatory movements in the history of labor rights would disagree with you, having fought and been very vocal against the different flavors of oppression in order to get the liberal concessions that you seem to cherish today. Hopefully if you participate, you might find some leftists celebrating in the crowd. Please don’t get too angry at them for not defending genociders, I’m sure a lot of them ended up voting for Kamala anyway, but at least they got the confirmation that even opposing genocide is too great a hurdle for them.
I’m tired but I guess I’ll still address some of the traits you identified:
Claiming to be leftists
I’m a leftist
Dedicating most of their posting to dismantling any power possessed by the left
Okay that doesn’t sound like leftist behavior, you’re totally right. I just hope you don’t mean that “power possessed by the left” is the democratic party, but sure, that broadly sounds like liberals or feds.
Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
There’s a point to which you can push liberal concessions for damage control or for actually gaining some more concessions. I think criticizing voting is healthy since it’s still playing the capitalist’s game and a liberal “democracy” with almost no wiggle room anymore, but considering how little effort it takes to vote I’ll always advocate to both play their game and also assume that nothing will come out of it without actual pressure.
I’ve mostly seen people advocate for withholding their vote in the favor of some concession (please don’t do genocide), I’ve never seen someone say “don’t vote and also don’t do anything else”, but I’m sure they exist, you find all kinds of confused people online.
Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
Is genocide disqualifying for a political party or not? I’m asking you, specifically, if you think that a party that commits (funds, arms, protects, justifies, excuses, does constant propaganda for) a genocide in the face of their own atrocities, while actively silencing the voices within their own ranks that speak out, is worth defending? Again, I think the idea was to hopefully change the democratic party to the radical position of “anti genocide”. That failure is on them, not the people who threatened not to vote for them.
Not highlighting that issue is frankly criminal.
Attacking anyone who promotes defending leftist political power by claiming they are centrists and that the attacker is “to the left of them”
Yeah that’s leftism, that’s always been leftism, but again I hope to god you don’t mean that “leftist political power” here represents the democratic party, so I’m gonna assume you mean more broadly what they call “purity politics” and constant division in the left. I think it’s fair to criticize people to the right of you, I’m to the right of anarchists and I welcome their criticism, even when I don’t agree with it. If I spent my time shitting on them I think they would be completely legitimate in calling me out for someone with ulterior motives, or a reactionary shithead.
Using US foreign policy as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the US political system
I want you to examine your own sentence just for a second. To disempower an attempt at legitimate engagement with the political system. Opposing genocide isn’t used as a moral cudgel against whatever 10 steps removed version of power this is (and I’m not criticizing the way you put it, quite the opposite), it’s used AGAINST GENOCIDE.
People are out in the streets and criticizing liberal complicity because we talk about GENOCIDE not some vague questionable US foreign policy.
Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism
So that’s the democratic party, right? That’s why I’m confused because leftists are out in the street, even the most liberal ones with their “fight oligarchy” campaign, while the democrats are still out defending genocide, doing filibusters without a cause, and generally trailing so far behind the average population that it’s mind numbing. So I don’t know what you mean when you say “leftists”, because you seem to refer to two groups at the same time.
Anyway, voting goes both way, you can’t pretend to vote in a vacuum for the lesser evil without recognizing that you empower them and their genocidal endeavors.
And I’ll be a little more incisive: If you criticize a leftist of not caring about minorities (which I’ve seen a lot and is deeply ironic considering who did and didn’t vote for the dems) you open yourself to be criticized for having proudly voted and called on everyone else to vote for a party that does genocide, and having attacked the ones that tried to actually make a difference in shifting their position or using that moment to show what their true colors are.
and generally trailing so far behind the average population
I put it to you that this is a gerontocracy problem. It’s easy to fall behind where the general public is at when Congress is a grotesque take on Weekend at Bernie’s (no, not that Bernie, and yes, I’m aware of the irony).
I think that can often be a problem in political structures, but I don’t think this is the main issue. It might explain how their messaging is so terrible, but the republicans have clearly managed just fine and the average is almost exactly the same in both.
I think it’s primarily that they see support for Israel as an absolute necessity because it would (1) be another massive loss of support and political funding, and (2) a very difficult pill to swallow. Admitting to having supported a horrible genocide in full conscience and trying to convince that they have now learned their way might still look like a steeper hill to climb than the time-tested tradition of genocide denial.
It’d be great if it was the main issue though, I think you’re right in that at least they would have better messaging, unfortunately I don’t think the actual policies would be much different. In Europe for example fascist parties tend to be pretty young 🤷♂️
In Europe for example fascist parties tend to be pretty young
When you didn’t grow up with any exposure to people who lived through WWII, and then you’ve seen quality of life go down your entire life, it’s somewhat of a logical conclusion to go with “anything would be better than this.” Obviously not true, but the baseline is low.
Let’s just get a few facts out of the way:
- Genocide is the worst crime humanity is capable of
- The US has a direct hand in multiple genocides
- Record levels of homelessness in the richest nation on earth is unacceptable
- Death from preventable illnesses in the richest nation on earth is unacceptable
- Highest infant mortality in the western world in the richest nation on earth is unacceptable
- Democrats are not interested in changing the status quo
- Republicans want a return to chattel slavery
- Neither party is willing to help us, nor will they ever allow us to vote third party by adding ranked choice or anything liek that
- Therefore, our best bet to break the cycle is to collectively vote for, say, the green party
You think leftists are unrealistic for being disgusted with Democrats? The genocide was live streamed to the world. Did you not see any of it? Did it not move you?
I was with you but then you said vote green?
If you’re going to vote, vote against the Republican party. If you want change from status quo, the ballot box isn’t where it will happen
voting Green is voting against Republicans
In my case, I’m in a deep blue state. Otherwise I would grit my teeth and vote for the “lesser” evil. But we really do need a new party.
The current US voting system does not allow for a 3rd party to have a chance. If you want a new party, then you either need to replace one of the main two, or change the electoral rules.
From the outside, it doesn’t seem like either option is likely to happen peacefully, so things will likely need to get way much worse before they get any better.
Oh, I know. But imagine, if you will, if enough people collectively decided to vote 3rd party. It’s a minority of Americans who even vote at all. If a third party received the majority of votes, they would have to be put in office – hypothetically at least.
if enough people collectively decided to vote 3rd party.
Then it would either become the 1st/2nd party, or disappear into oblivion. If it could became part of Congress, where it could look for alliances, then maybe… but based on current sentiment, it seems unlikely.
Voluntarily disenfranchising yourself is complying in advance.
A broken tool still has its uses. A bent screwdriver can still be a prybar. A rusty sword can still kill, so don’t ask people to drop it before have something better. It is possible to explore and acknowledge the failures and limitations of a system – and to reduce overreliance on it – without abdicating all influence over it.
The Democratic Party is a disappointment. They follow popular (polled) opinion rather than sticking to principles, and that makes them vulnerable to Overton shifts. As public opinion towards trans people has been poisoned by the Jugendverderber libel, Democrats have largely thrown trans people under the bus instead of fighting back. Likewise, Democrats stick closely to corporate interests because money is power. These issues may never be fixable.
The solution to this is not to capitulate and discard what political influence we still hold.
The first half of the solution is to primary the hell out of Democrats. A left-wing caucus within the party could easily tilt things in our favor, just like the Freedom Caucus tilted the RNC in the opposite direction once before. Bernie Sanders (link) and David Hogg (link) are now spearheading multiple campaigns to do exactly that. Even if you have no faith in your ability to change the norms of the party, just think how much impact your resistance could have if you held an office, even a low one, even for just a week. Do you have any idea how much trouble a county clerk can make?
The second half of the solution is to build solidarity-based power structures outside government to reduce overreliance on a broken system. Economic desperation, social isolation, and cultural “other”-ing make people easy to exploit and oppress regardless of the type of government, so attack those problems directly. Unions, mutual aid networks, churches, you know the drill. Put in the legwork to find them in your area or your profession.
Embrace nuance. Embrace diversity – even political diversity. Political beliefs are not sacred, but the lives under those political systems are. Don’t try to reduce the vast complexity of politics to 120 characters. Don’t treat the ongoing wellbeing of human beings flippantly. If you think the problem is the existence of a state, then say so, but make your case for why making the state worse makes conditions for its subjects better. If you think voting third-party will teach the Democrats a lesson and drag them leftwards, then make your case and acknowledge the risks of what happens if you’re wrong.
Don’t just ridicule every positive effort you see. Doomer trolls (or cuckoos, if we’re going with that) are pithy, but reductive, and their criticism is never constructive.
This all day.
I think one if the big things that people miss is that while it may be the most prominent fights in the headlines, there are countless little fights going on all the time and they have a huge impact. They don’t make national news or sometimes even local news, but they still matter. It’s easy to dismiss them, but they still move the overton window and they still have a substantial impact on the day to day lives of people across the country. Every union steward in some small retail chain standing up to management makes an impact. Every judge who stands up for the rights of marginalized people makes an impact. Every city councilor who votes to fund programs for people in need. Every volunteer who shows up day after day to soup kitchens and food banks. Everybody who stops to give a few bucks to a person on the street. Everyone who sees someone struggling and takes the time to try to lift them up. Every advocate who spends their time helping people who are trying to find a way out of horrible situations.
The less visible stuff is much more wide-spread and makes a huge difference, maybe even more of a difference in many cases, than the big visible stuff.
It honestly drives me up a wall when people who seem like they never go out and connect with the real world around them spend so much time ranting about how everyone’s screwed and nobody’s doing anything about it. All they have to do is look outside or step outside themselves and lend someone, anyone a hand.
All they have to do is look outside or step outside themselves and lend someone, anyone a hand.
Touch grass, if you will.
I remember years ago watching a video – I desperately wish I could remember the channel – where the author shared his experience with depression and the early days of 4chan anime forums. He found it easier to browse forums about anime than to go out and actually watch them. Then the negativity piled in. That anime you like? “It’s shit.” Any hint of optimism or passion was an opportunity to get a rise out of someone or smugly ridicule them. The only unassailable belief was to doubt everything. The only winning move was not to care.
I’ve been thinking about that video a lot recently.
Online activism has led to a handful of noteworthy victories. But the ease of online activism has also made people (myself included) rely too much on it, and get disillusioned by it, as if we’ve forgotten that online activism is pointless unless it leads to real-world resistance.
I don’t believe doomer trolls are right-wing plants (though I acknowledge it’s a potential avenue of attack in the future). I don’t think they usually have ulterior accelerationist motives (though I have spoken with a few). I think for the most part, they’re just people who’ve given up, or otherwise mistaken cynicism for maturity, and seeing anyone else expressing optimism or trying to organize real-world resistance just pisses them off.
I don’t believe doomer trolls are right-wing plants (though I acknowledge it’s a potential avenue of attack in the future). I don’t think they usually have ulterior accelerationist motives (though I have spoken with a few). I think for the most part, they’re just people who’ve given up, or otherwise mistaken cynicism for maturity, and seeing anyone else expressing optimism or trying to organize real-world resistance just pisses them off.
This is the attitude I want to see. Believing people are psy-ops, or bots, or being evil on purpose — none of that is necessary and almost all of it is conspiratorial thinking. It’s the kind of thing the right thrives on, and it’s gross.
But this? Saying there are people who have real issues and real grief, and that it’s driving them to bad but genuinely held beliefs? That’s sympathetic, it’s understanding, and above all else it does not divide us. This is what we need more of.
- Claiming to be leftists
- Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
- Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
- Attacking anyone who promotes defending leftist political power by claiming they are centrists and that the attacker is “to the left of them”
- Using US foreign policy as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the US political system
- Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism
Except for the one example you listed that I omitted here, you’ve just described, like, at least 1/3 of Lemmy, maybe more.
The obvious ones I blocked long ago. There were some I didn’t block, but a good chunk of those up and disappeared right after the election in November, so that was not suspicious at all.
Frankly, I’m just about done with anything “political” on social media and am just going to start employing keyword filters. I’ll just have to find some other void to shout into when I need an outlet lol.
Yep. It’s a damn mess.
I don’t claim to know how to make them be honest about their motivations or, in the case of those few who are genuinely being taken in by this garbage, wake the hell up and realize what they’re throwing away. But I know that having the idea out there in the open in a digestible way can at least help some people get a better view of what’s going on. Maybe they’ll follow suit and block some of the worst ones. Maybe they’ll rely less on social media for their perspectives on the world and realize that Lemmy isn’t the exception to its toxicity just because it’s open source.
We need to be more aware of them than we have been, though, because it’s getting worse.
I just don’t know a good way to deal with that, TBH. I wish I did.
how to make them be honest about their motivations
It’s tough. If I get a funny feeling about an account and think they might be a concern troll (I think that’s the term that applies here; if not, someone please correct me. I think “false ally” is a sub-class of that, but I’m shooting from the hip here),
I’ll typically look back through their history, try to put things in context, and get a feel from there. The ones I blocked were pretty much all one-trick ponies, so that was easy (though tedious as it took a while “vetting” each one).
The problem there is, yes, you’ve identified that person. But everyone else needs to do the same legwork and come to the same conclusion. You can’t just put up a sign that says “Troll” lol. Depending on the community/instance, you could report them, but that often puts mods in a sticky situation because they usually don’t want to suppress anyone’s viewpoint as long as it’s not violating any rules.
or, in the case of those few who are genuinely being taken in by this garbage
That’s even tougher. First, you have to figure out if they’re the troll or the one who was trolled (troll-ee lol?) . And one, very rightfully, can’t /shouldn’t just start calling people trolls or shills. For one, they might be the troll-ee; going out of the gate with name-calling and accusations is definitely not the way to convince them to re-evaluate their views. For another, it just sets a bad tone and gives the impression that “everyone who disagrees with me is a troll”.
But sometimes they are. What do you do then?
Wish I had an answer that didn’t involve writing multiple theses on a number of topics as they try to sealion me into submission lol.
So, everyone actually doesn’t have to do the same legwork. If most of the posters in a community block someone, that person won’t be able to post in most of the threads in that community and won’t get the engagement they’re looking for.
Whether they’re trolls or whether they’re useful idiots, I say block them. Not only that, actively encourage others to do the same. If we take to blocking these people on sight the moment they start spouting this bullshit, they very quickly will see threads full of “# additional responses” that they can’t actually see or respond to.
In some cases it might actually be worth reporting them, too. A lot of them go well beyond the rules of the communities they’re engaging with, but I’ve also seen at least one instance where a very prominent cuckoo-poster got chased off the instance by the staff. He was basically told to knock it off or leave and he chose the latter. Good riddance.
Don’t the people you block still see your posts?
I’m under the impression that they can’t reply to them directly.
They can still reply, you just won’t see them or get a notification.
So there is a bit of FOMO to get over when blocking, but it’s not too bad. Kind of like realizing you have no control over what people say behind your back. I’m just like, “If I cared what they had to say, I wouldn’t have blocked them in the first place”
Oh. Welp. At least it reduces their engagement.
This is just Lemmy and the whole “leftist” influencer sphere (read: people who watch Hasan Piker and take him seriously).
I completely agree with everything you mention here but you’re going to make a lot of Lemmies very mad.
They aren’t open to real discourse and will literally ally with Republicans if it means they can take down Democrats.
David Pacman?
I’m not sure about that. But we will absolutely vote third, if they offer a platform that doesn’t vote status quo or having no view record, advance a platform that offers us something tangible. If they betray us, we remember.
I think that leftists generally have a hard time calling out people who argue in bad faith
We should genuinely be banning all tankies and accelerationists on sight. Allowing them to poison the debate to the extent they do really is our greatest flaw and the only real “leftist infighting” I’ve ever really come across.
Pretty sure leftist infighting is just a tankie dogwhistle at this point.
the only real “leftist infighting” I’ve ever really come across.
gestures wildly at the thread we’re in
I don’t think it’s just tankies doing it!
No. They’re all tankies or okay with tankies, which is more or less being a tankie. I recognize some of these users and many of them literally don’t believe in democracy and do stuff like defend the USSR etc. No leftist infighting here as usual, just people trying to push us to support their shitty little military regimes.
that has been my thought for years now, i feel like basically all the annoying and divisive things you see are just outright astroturfing
