this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025
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Those anarchists, tankies, fascists and authoritarians who claim this are just trying to sabotage democracy.
Or it's people who feel disenfranchised.
Not voting makes it easier for politicians to ignore them.
If they feel disenfranchised, they are probably already ignored.
Thatβs a self fulfilling prophecy.
Or a pat answer to give to disenfranchised people you don't want represented. "If we're ignoring you it's because you're not involved enough!"
Those people could also set up their own regional party to get their voices better heard in parliament like the bloc have successfully done, I'm not saying to "only vote."
There's always some new criterion for not being ignored.
This conversation is not productive, stop being self defeatist and start working on solutions.
This conversation has reached the conclusion implicit in its opening.
You will lay on the floor doing nothing while claiming you're "realistic"
Spot the odd one out!
I've definitely seen anarchists describe frustration with electoral politics, especially when people limit their political engagement to simply voting once every so many years. However, I've never seen one advocate against voting.
Anarchists are generally aware that, despite elections not being the thing that will overthrow the bourgeoisie, some parties result in less suffering for oppressed peoples than others.
There's a long history of anarchists who oppose voting
https://libcom.org/article/why-anarchists-dont-vote-elisee-reclus
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/aotearoa-workers-solidarity-movement-why-we-don-t-vote
https://apps.lib.umich.edu/online-exhibits/exhibits/show/debatedemocracy/anarchism---anti-voting
The anarchist argument is that voting somehow endorses the state and is consent to being governed. It's not a very good argument, but it is an argument nevertheless.
That's not an actual argument I've ever heard and I'm an anarchist myself, it usually goes more like:
Voting is a waste of time especially the more disenfranchised you are, mutual aid lasts longer and does more for people around you in the short term, in the long term you can build community get organized, and bargain for more than what simply voting can get you.
Personally that's not a bad argument, see I'm living in Israel and my town's going through gentrification, and the state I'm living under is fascist and the fascism is so normalized, not because of people like me refusing to vote, but because of liberals who were never so different from the fascists, constantly giving them ground, always bargaining for the bare minimum.
The only people actually getting anything done that is remotely positive are activists, like the people protesting to stop the genocide, and getting involved physically with sabotaging fascist efforts to stop humanitarian aid from getting into gaza.
Or at least that's how it was months ago, i haven't found it in me to listen to the news on quite a while, so what do i know.
Libs will do anything they can to avoid understanding anti-electoralism
I live in Illinois. If somehow the heavens and earth move such that Illinois turned red, then there would be absolutely zero chance it would be the tipping point in the presidential election. The vast majority of people in the US live in safe states.
And for the record, I do vote in down-ballot races, the ones that actually matter, but none of you care because it's all about genuflecting before the leader of the blue tribe. Which, frankly, just gives me more reason to refuse to.
"Democracy" doesn't need our help to be sabotaged, it's falling apart on it's own. Every time someone says that the voters have to change en masse to meet the policies of politicians rather than politicians having to respond to what their constituents want, they are the ones taking the axe to democracy. Why the hell would anyone care about upholding or defending a system that we have no say in? Somehow, insisting on popular demands and trying to turn the will of the people into policies that protect the rights of the vulnerable gets translated into "trying to sabotage democracy" equating Anarchists and Marxists alike with fascists.
Congratulations on four more years of a milktoast centrist liberal, is he going to acturally fix the problems? Or is he going to be like Biden and make the big talk of peace and prosperity while sending weapons to fund genocide?
Unlike his Conservative opponent, Carney has a resume of fixing problems more than talking. He has done a lot of talking during the campaign, as one should to get elected, now Canadians have a part in holding him to account as PM.
What has he done? All I know about the Canadian Liberals is that like the American liberals they have a long history of promises and a short history of keeping them.
His headline accomplishments are leading the Bank of Canada as governor, keeping Canada out of the worst of the 08 recession, then helped ease the fall of UK's economy post-Brexit, then in his short 1st term as Prime Minister taking over from Trudeau, he managed to shut Trump up about the 51st state stuff for nearly a month, after just one call.
FYI the word you're so desperate to use is milquetoast, not milktoast.
I have the feeling that you would be inclined to deny the distinction between the Biden presidency and the trump presidency that followed it.
Fundamentally Trump would not have gotten anywhere without decades of milqtoast ineffective liberals and corrupt milquetoast politicans, the Democrats are at direct fault for this. They built the conditions where people demanded something new and they gave them more of the same. They fought the left viciously while giving up the fight against fascism.
Are you in any way able to criticise Trump or the Republican party directly, or for you is public enemy number 1 the Democratic Party?
People dont hold the Republicans to any real standard because we all agree they're just cartoonishly evil. Democrats can be critiqued because they have an actural ideology that can be pinned down (which I very strongly disagree with). Republicans meanwhile don't really belive in anything of substance, they sorta just hate people and blindly eat up corporate propaganda (hell they call themselves conservatives yet their definition of conservative values are basically defined exclusively as whatever the hell Reagan did)
And in your view, is it better for America to have a Democrat in the Whitehouse or not really?
Better is a strange choice of words here, better compared to what? Better compared to Republicans? Better compared to the Social Democratic parties of Canada and Europe? Or better compared to a real workers party? Because so far it seems like you have done nothing but attempt to twist my words to make up your own preconceived conclusions about leftists that has very little basis in reality.
I think you'll find that I've mainly been asking you questions rather than misquoting you, but OK.
I thought it was very very clear indeed what the two alternatives were for who is in the Whitehouse, and I'm sure we'd agree that they're are theoretically much, much better alternatives like actual left wing parties, but no, I wasn't asking you a theoretical question about parties that had no chance of winning in the USA at all, I was asking you about the real world. I'll try again.
In your view, is it better for America to have a Democrat in the Whitehouse than a Republican, or not really?
Would it have been materially better for Harris to win rather than trump?
Would it have been better for Biden to win than trump?
I essentially already answered your questions so you know what ill reject your false dichotomy. I reject the entire premise that I have to pick between fascism and fascism lite, between one capitalist and a slightly better capitalist. This system is fundamentally designed to strip all power away from the workers and into the capitalists. Liberal Democracy is democracy by and for the capitalist class.
I was especially amused at the characterisation of the only two real world choices for president as a false dichotomy! You're so living the stereotype of an ivory tower theoretical communist.
Now that we've been all around the houses and you've evaded the real life D vs R question literally every time I asked it, I'll just put my original point here:
I don't think you've proved me wrong in any meaningful way whatsoever.
You are unable to coherently make any genuine criticism of Mr Trump without watering it down to the extent you can switch blame onto Biden or the Democratic Party for it.
This is not because there aren't extraordinarily stark differences, nor that you're unaware of them, but because you refuse, despite evidence to the contrary, to shift from your belief that in politics there is black and there is white and there exists no grey.
Maybe someday you'll realise that the real world isn't perfect and that if it were, we wouldn't need socialism or communism in politics anyway! Maybe you'll realise that awful comes in different degrees as well as different flavours.
Yes because that does not NEED to be the case. We do not need a corrupt Democrat party to wave their fingers at us and demand we vote for them. Democrats like Bernie Sanders and AOC are starting to understand but the Revolutionary Communists of America (RCA) have the true solution.
Which one? You mean the one that gave almoat unrestricted weapons to Israels genocide? The one that watched people starve on the street while bragging about GDP growth? The one that gave hand outs to his corporate buddies in DC? Or the one that deported immigrants and refugees? Because that has been both
Because what Trump is doing isnt new, fundemntally its a natural continuation of Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Biden. War criminals who brag to us about morality.
When the options are black and a very dark shade of grey with a massive label "at least im not that other guy" there is very little difference. Biden enabled Trump, the Democrat party normalized fascist rhetoric through "civility" politics, and now theyre going even further to the right. Just because Biden did the act of the reasonable kind liberal doesn't make him any less ruthless.
I aint asking for a perfect Anarcho-Syndicalist Utopia (as much as I would greatly like that), im asking for a future ANY future beyond this insanity. You may have the privilege to say that but your Liberal "imperfection" is whats directly threatening the lives of myself, my friends, and my family. When Democrats refuse to counter Transphobic Republican narratives I directly see more hatred directed towards me. When Democrats give unlimited funding to Israels genocide I see more antisemitism directed at me. As much as I strongly dislike Bernie Sanders and AOC (Im far left and they're centrist) I would be more than happy to vote for them.
So my point is im a leftist and I belive in leftist unity, I will vote for any leftist on the ballet whether it be a communist, a socialist, a syndicalist, or even a social Democrat (which is not even leftist) but after voting Kamala in 2024 I have gotten sick and tired and I will not vote for Fascism Lite again.
So, basically, everything I said was true about you. I wonder why you spend all this time and effort trying to sound otherwise. Why not just say "of course" at the start? Or even "I see no real moral distinction between Biden/Harris and literal fascism, and will always find ways to blame Democrats for the evils of trump" it would have saved so much disagreeing with me.