- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes
- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes
So…what to do then? Assume that “tactical voting” exists and vote (by vote I mean real vote and null vote) or just say “screw this” and move on?
In other way: can voting be a tool that can help people?
I’m an anti-electorialist but I still vote.
National races and US congress votes are like pissing into the ocean, it doesn’t do shit. I vote in local elections to keep assholes from running my city. Do I think it changes anything? Probably not, but I just sort of vote in local elections for my disenfranchised comrades who can’t
It’s like, yeah, I’m against this shit too, but I don’t consent to my trans life being sacrificed for some lofty ideal or some intangible goal of revolution. You can’t vote away capitalism and all of its injustices, but if all leftists refused to vote, the remaining voters would vote away my right to stay alive. Fuck that.
Boy this made people real mad.
I vote because it’s the easiest way to be a smug asshole in RL conversation to the people who never listen to me.
This always happens. Turbolibs will always feel entitled to not just come into anarchist comms and downvote anti-electoralism posts, but even argue passionately about it without end.
If I had the room for it I’d add turbolib to my bio. Lemmy update for longer bio when?
The whole vote/novote thing seems turbocharged in the USA. Over the drink here some uni students write a few essays but mostly nobody cares.
That’s probably the most lib thing I’ve ever heard. Imagine defending the system that holds you down. Ew.
For me it’s their entitlement that gets me. It’s not enough that all of the goddamn internet is libby AF, they have to come into the few tiny anarchist comms and whine that we’re not liberal enough as well. “Oh but you were in my /all so you see…” SHUT THE FUCK UP! Goddamn!
Isn’t it entirely telling that the people who are so into virtue signalling respecting people’s spaces, letting people have their own culture and their own identity and their own whatever, love to come in here and punch down on anarchists?
Hard disagree. The data show clearly that willful lack of engagement with the electoral system has caused a measurable increase harm. Not the only tool that one should be using, nor the most impactful, but it is an important tool because letting the oppressor win unopposed only helps the oppressor.
Even if you think that we shouldn’t have a system of voting, that’s the system we have now. Whom could withholding your vote for the lesser of two evils possibly help? Oh that’s right, the greater of two evils.
Apathy towards voting is no solution either
I’m not apathetic. I’m actively against it.
You don’t want people to vote?
“Once less than 25% percent of people vote, I can easily argue that a government that is ignored by 3/4ths of the population has no legitimacy to govern over me and agitate that any use of force by the police or the army is an act of aggression by an external party.” Who are you going to agitate towards?
Removed by mod
Eh, the essay makes good points about why electoralism is not going to bring about a just society but it paves over all the ways that electoralism can make things worse with “we can just do mutual aid”.
For a lot of people in a lot of places casting a vote is low effort, and realistically the only intervention they’ll ever actually participate in while the barrier to entry is still so high due to the left being so utterly defeated. You can absolutely limit the power of “moderate” conservatives and liberals who tend to be the actual powerbase that successful facist takeovers of governments use. As well as having their own horrible goals.
It’s not really an either-or thing and the jackbooted thugs that are going to black bag you aren’t going to be like “well the ballot was down 15% (wildly optimistic) this year so uhhh I don’t think these orders are legitimate”.
We need numbers, practiced organisers, and institutions before accelerationism is at all advisable, if it even ever is. Even if your wildest pipe dreams about revolution broke out tomorrow we would lose right now, we just don’t have the numbers, skills and tactics yet.
Ok, you can dogpile me now.
voting is not harm reduction
Eh if I’m not gonna do what the gov tells me I’m not gonna listen to a random internet comment repeating dogma ;)
it’s a fact, not dogma
I find this sentence very funny
Accelerationism is a religion.
this isn’t about accelerationism
Anti-electoralism is mathematically indistinguishable from accelerationism. It may (possibly) have a different motivation but, it results in the same outcome.
stating the fact that voting is not harm reduction is not antielectoralism
Anti-electoralism is mathematically indistinguishable from accelerationism
you’re making that up