• mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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    8 months ago

    Yes, I know what Gandhi’s saying. I’m asking how you’d apply it to the present day, and you’re deflecting instead of answering.

    You keep fast-forwarding to voting day

    Oh sorry I must have replied to a message under the wrong meme or something; the one on my screen is different I guess.

    (Edit: Also there’s this)

    I keep asking you to clarify what you’re saying, and you treat it like it’s some sort of trick, and react with tactics instead of clarity. That’s a hallmark of propaganda. Just say what you mean, if you feel confident enough to stand your ground in it.

    • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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      8 months ago

      I’m saying the same as Gandhi is:

      Stand up for your principles and don’t cooperate with genocide. Be willing to put yourself in harms way (trump) and demand justice in exchange for your vote.

      It’s not a trick or propaganda, it’s pretty straightforward. I’m so confused because you do seem genuine but for some reason no matter how close I walk you to the conclusion you still somehow miss the point.

      Stop committing yourself to supporting Biden when he’s actively supporting genocide. Push him to see reason. In 7 months you can make the hard choice you keep harping about, but until then what’s the fucking point of running cover for him when you could be pushing him to see reason

      It’s not that goddamn complicated.

      • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Stop committing yourself to supporting Biden when he’s actively supporting genocide. Push him to see reason. In 7 months you can make the hard choice you keep harping about, but until then what’s the fucking point of running cover for him when you could be pushing him to see reason

        I noticed this comment outside of the conversation we were already having, and I had to say that I actually completely agree. We should be pushing him, especially since there’s evidence it’s working. And you don’t have to refuse to vote for him – you still have 7 months until you have to make the hard decision.

        I can get behind this.

        • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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          8 months ago

          Thank you for saying that, truly.

          People are treating protests of Biden as if it’s the same as wanting Trump to win. People are so committed to the electoral team sports that they’re completely allergic to exercising their power against their own party.

          There’s a reason why civil rights movements existed almost entirely outside of electoral politics; liberty and justice were never on the ballet to vote for to begin with.

          If MLK resigned himself to what Democrats were willing to provide without protest, we’d still have segregation. If Douglass avoided speaking truth to power and rallying against Lincoln, we might not have abolished slavery and reconstruction might have been even worse (though admittedly reconstruction was shit anyway, but at least that wasn’t Lincoln’s fault).

          • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            People are treating protests of Biden as if it’s the same as wanting Trump to win.

            It effectively is, in a lot of areas.

            MLK would say to vote your conscience in the primaries. Not the general.

          • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Yeah, protest is a very powerful and necessary tool. Protesting to push Biden doesn’t mean you have to abstain from the election. You can choose to vote for Biden but still make it clear you’re not pleased with him. Protest votes in the primary are perfectly acceptable for this reason.

            If anything, I think it’s better that we protest now rather than later. It’s a win win situation to resolve this conflict before the election.

            I also believe that voters tend to have more power than non voters. We’ve seen that politicians are more willing to listen to those that already vote for them.

      • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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        8 months ago

        Be willing to put yourself in harms way (trump)

        There it is

        You understand that it’s not just me in harm’s way with Trump, right?

        That he’s far more pro genocide (including specifically in Palestine) than Biden is?

        I’m so confused because you do seem genuine but for some reason no matter how close I walk you to the conclusion you still somehow miss the point.

        Believe it or not, there is often more to a conversation than you just walking the person you’re talking to over to the point that you want to make and repeating it in different ways until they absorb your way of seeing it.

        I could be right or wrong; I’m just saying how I see things. But if your whole model for this is that your viewpoint is the correct one, and you need to persuade the person you’re talking to to see things exactly as you do and anything else is just a frustrating expenditure of bytes, then I think you’re gonna get limited benefit from any amount of time you spend online.

        • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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          8 months ago

          Im not telling to vote for Trump. I’m not even telling you to not vote for Biden. I’m telling you to fucking ask for something in exchange for the vote.

          There’s a separate argument about what the value democracy is if it can’t be expected not to support genocide, but I’m not even pressing that issue.

          Saying you aren’t going to vote if Biden doesn’t see reason doesn’t put Trump in the white house, it puts pressure on Biden. What you actually do on election day is different, but campaigning for Biden despite his genocidal complicity is so far from activism that it’s borderline complicit in the genocide in itself.

          • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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            8 months ago

            Im not telling to vote for Trump. I’m not even telling you to not vote for Biden. I’m telling you to fucking ask for something in exchange for the vote.

            There’s a separate argument about what the value democracy is if it can’t be expected not to support genocide, but I’m not even pressing that issue.

            Yeah, I feel you on that. Like I keep telling you, direct action or directly giving Biden a hard time on Gaza sounds great.

            Saying you aren’t going to vote if Biden doesn’t see reason doesn’t put Trump in the white house, it puts pressure on Biden. What you actually do on election day is different, but campaigning for Biden despite his genocidal complicity is so far from activism that it’s borderline complicit in the genocide in itself.

            And let me ask again: Would this logic also apply to refusing to support the SDP over the NSDAP in the 1932 elections? As a lot of the left did exactly that during the infighting that preceded Hitler’s ascendance.

            • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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              8 months ago

              And let me ask again: Would this logic also apply to refusing to support the SDP over the NSDAP in the 1932 elections? As a lot of the left did exactly that during the infighting that preceded Hitler’s ascendance.

              That isn’t really an adequate comparison, is it? Germany was a parliamentary democracy at the time, are you asking if id have voted for the SDP or KDP? Are you suggesting having two parties split the NSDAP opposition vote is what lead to their accent to power? Or are you asking I’d be protesting Hindenburg to take more direct action against the NSDAP or more firmly address the crisis that lead to their growth?

              If anything I think the most apt comparison is between Biden and Hindenburg: they’re both staunchly centrist and both beholden to conservative interests. Personally, I think both Biden and Hindenburg legitimized reactionary concerns by playing into them, and I think there’s evidence that helped the NSDAP accent.

              But the thing that makes our situation so much different is that Biden isn’t splitting the vote with another party, he’s in command of the only opposition to Trump. Pushing his politics left to address the underlying concerns of the populists is probably the only thing within our power. He needs to solidify his coalition, not sit on the fence like Hindenburg did.

              • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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                8 months ago

                Germany was a parliamentary democracy at the time, are you asking if id have voted for the SDP or KDP?

                Precisely yes (or not voted at all if you felt no party really was representative of you properly)

                Are you suggesting having two parties split the NSDAP opposition vote is what lead to their accent to power?

                Yes, in addition to splitting the political energy in general

                Or are you asking I’d be protesting Hindenburg to take more direct action against the NSDAP or more firmly address the crisis that lead to their growth?

                I’m suggesting that the communists spending energy opposing the SDP and Hindenburg for fairly valid reasons, when there were much more pressing threats to the safety and security of the entire world including themselves to spend that energy on, made their concerns about the establishment left (however valid) laughable in restrospect.

                But the thing that makes our situation so much different is that Biden isn’t splitting the vote with another party, he’s in command of the only opposition to Trump.

                It sounds to me like you’re saying that splitting the vote between Biden and nobody (by not voting) is a good thing to do, to push him to the left. I fail to see how that is a better idea than splitting the vote between the SDP and KDP, and I think the results can potentially be pretty similar.

                It sounds like you really, really don’t want to answer this question plainly. Would your logic also apply to refusing to support the SDP (or for that matter Hindenburg) against Hitler?

                • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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                  8 months ago

                  I’m suggesting that the communists spending energy opposing the SDP and Hindenburg for fairly valid reasons, when there were much more pressing threats to the safety and security of the entire world including themselves to spend that energy on, made their concerns about the establishment left (however valid) laughable in restrospect

                  This is where our disagreement is. I don’t think the rise of the NSDAP was a result of the SDP splitting the vote with the KDP, I think it was the failure of the SDP and Hindenburg to address the crisis that pushed the country into reactionary politics to begin with. You could just as easily blame the SDP for not joining the KDP instead, since the KDP was reacting to the same failures of government the voters of the NSDAP were.

                  I especially don’t attribute blame to citizen voters supporting the KDP, because not only does that not matter as much in a parliamentary system, they’re also reacting to the same failures of government that the NSDAP were.

                  So no, I don’t find that argument convincing, and I likely would not have supported the SDP given the availability of other options.

                  Id also point out that it was Hindenburg who appointed Hitler as chancellor. That should be evidence enough that KDP voters were right to challenge his position in the presidential election in the lead up to the parliamentary election.

                  • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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                    8 months ago

                    You could just as easily blame the SDP for not joining the KDP instead, since the KDP was reacting to the same failures of government the voters of the NSDAP were.

                    Yes, absolutely. Responsibility can be shared; almost any big disaster is a result of multiple overlapping causes where any number of people could have taken action to make it less likely or prevent it.

                    In fact, I think the Democrats are a lot more responsible for creating the conditions that led to the rise of Trump than the SDP. The SDP at least had genuine hardship imposed on their country from outside, whereas the establishment Democrats ever since the 1990s have simply been selling out the working class, in an economy that’s raking in money hand over fist, because they could and they assumed that nothing bad would ever come of it (to anyone that they thought mattered.)

                    I especially don’t attribute blame to citizen voters supporting the KDP, because not only does that not matter as much in a parliamentary system, they’re also reacting to the same failures of government that the NSDAP were.

                    So no, I don’t find that argument convincing, and I likely would not have supported the SDP given the availability of other options.

                    Okay, that’s fair. But what if there weren’t other options? If we used a parliamentary system in the US, and we were talking about voting for the Democrats or else a genuine leftist party, I would be 100% in agreement with you about voting for the left instead of the Democrats.

                    What if Germany used the FPTP system, and you were voting for Hindenburg or Hitler directly to lead the country? Do you think that someone in that hypothetical election who refused to vote for Hindenburg in 1932, because he hadn’t done enough to earn the vote, would still feel justified in that decision in 1945?

                    (Biden isn’t Hindenburg; Hindenburg doesn’t have a direct analogue but he would be more someone like John McCain IMO, but that’s not directly relevant to the question I don’t think.)