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Once again *clears throat*:
“Nonviolence is fine, as long as it works.” — Malcolm X
“In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience.” — Stokely Carmichael
“A riot is the language of the unheard.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
You should pull every lever you have. Riot. Vote. Be loud as fuck. Throw a brick at a cop. Do it all. Fuck 'em.
Voting isn’t really a lever at all 😕
Might not help. Doesn’t hurt.
It could very well hurt you individually, especially if
makes good on their threats to have ICE at the polls. And collectively, most people see voting as a tacit endorsement of the system. In my view, any possible benefit we could get by voting is drowned out by that tacit endorsement. And in my personal view, the benefits we can get from voting are not even near-zero; they are precisely zero, because liberal democracy is structurally designed to be uncontrollable with respect to proletarian political wills.You can take direct action and also use every lever you have to try and bring about a better world. We can’t vote our way out of fascism but we can at least vote against accelerationists and buy ourselves some time.
You can take direct action and also use every lever you have to try and bring about a better world.
Right, but my argument is that voting is not a lever. Yeah, use every lever you have, but voting is not a lever; it’s something else, like a button that does nothing.
we can at least vote against accelerationists and buy ourselves some time.
No we can’t. Both wings of capital are accelerationists in their own unique ways. Both wings of capital are pedocapitalist, fascist, settler-colonial, genocidal, racist, transphobic, homophobic, imperialist, and statist wastes of flesh and air. The only difference is their marketing. Our only hope is ourselves and the projects we build in opposition to capitalism and the State.
I vote for leftist candidates on my local level and I vote for whichever option is more interested in preventing ecocide federally. It isn’t going to fix anything, but we’re at a very sensitive moment for climate change and it really matters what we’re doing about it. I don’t understand how that’s not a lever at all. I would like it if the next generations have a world to inherit, and there is a tangible difference between the two major parties federally. I’ll vote for the neoliberal that kills the planet slower, because the revolution isn’t happening this election cycle, or likely for a long time. I take direct action in my community, and I use my vote in hopes of not killing the planet for shareholder value.
I vote for leftist candidates on my local level and I vote for whichever option is more interested in preventing ecocide federally.
IMO there are certain special cases where one can accurately judge that voting in a local election will prevent or guarantee a specific event, e.g. voting in a politician who promises not to do a specific thing (but even then, no guarantees because politicians are lying scum…). The logic here is that the social network is small enough that you personally know or are not very far separated from all parties in the situation.
I would like it if the next generations have a world to inherit, and there is a tangible difference between the two major parties federally. I’ll vote for the neoliberal that kills the planet slower, because the revolution isn’t happening this election cycle, or likely for a long time.
My argument is that neither of these is possible through voting. There is no tangible difference between the two parties from an anti-capitalist perspective other than their marketing. And the neoliberals are united in all the ways that count.
I take direct action in my community
Excellent!
and I use my vote in hopes of not killing the planet for shareholder value.
Personally, I think the miniscule time spent voting would be better used for rest and enjoying your life.
In general, I’m willing to agree to disagree with comrades on the voting issue…but emphasis on disagree.
Its not even a button that does nothing, its a button that further entrenches the current governmental structure and empowers the right.
How about a third party? Most people wouldn’t vote for one in the US because they’re worried about wasting their vote, but that doesn’t seem to be a concern for you and you can freely vote for one.
What third party? The abusers at PSL? The hypercapitalists at the Libertarian Party? The sixty-nine bajillion centrist vanity parties started by failed politicians who are such vapid losers that they couldn’t even hack it in the centrist caucuses of the big tent parties?
Again, even if there was a third party nominally worth voting for, voting is a small waste of time, and electoralism is a tremendous waste of time, for the simple reason that States, in particular liberal democratic ones, are structurally incapable of bringing about anarchy or even approximating anarchist ends. Even if voting was somehow capable of imposing positive change upon us, it violates the principle of means-ends unity.
Their position is ideological, not practical.
Throw bricks at ICE at polls then.
Hell yeah 🤘
tacit endorsement
What does that even mean?
In America, 65% of the population votes. In Australia, 83% of the population votes. I’m sure Americans trust the election system less than Australians do, but does that mean anything? Or is it just useless posturing?
You all already know your system is corrupt, but you haven’t revolted. You haven’t stopped Trump. We stopped Dutton. So I think a little misplaced faith might actually be good for society. And if it’s stupid but it works, then it’s not stupid.
Wouldn’t that be how an inciting incident for riots could happen?
It really was a genius move to prevent uprisings, fix the candidates but everyone will blame eachother when whichever one wins inevitably perpetuates the orphan killing machine
It is if ppl were active on each level and in the mechanisms that decide candidates. Is there anyone you know personally who you would want to see in power?
Is there anyone you know personally who you would want to see in power?
God no 🤢
Is there anyone you’d want to see in power?
No, I’m an anarchist.
Nobody will do that alone and not if it jeopardizes their comfortable lives. Whatever rebels there are must make it safe enough for people to act their conscience if it is to happen before those people act from enough discomfort.
Voting and rioting aren’t mutually exclusive. I would go far as to say they are the peanut butter and jelly of domestic politics. The hammer and anvil go together. Two wings of the same bird. Ect.
You can vote effectively within a system you co-opt for The People via any means necessary. This ‘democracy’ shit in the US is extremely transparently performative.
One hundred percent.
And I’m tired of people telling me to shut up and to trust that democracy will fix things.
The game is rigged. We gotta flip the fucking table.
I’ve never seen anyone saying to trust that democracy will fix things. I’ve seen, and been, people saying to always vote, but I don’t see anyone saying to only vote.
I know some people who can’t accept that the system isn’t functional anymore, simply because they would have complete mental collapse at their powerlessness in the face of the present evil.
I probably do too, but I don’t really spend much time with that kind of people. I prefer to surround myself with people who turn righteous fury into resolve.
I see a lot of people say “oh so I should do nothing??” when they’re told voting does not matter. Seems like a whole bunch of people do just vote and put their faith in the electoral system.
This is precisely the problem, every generation after 60s stopped rioting. The FBI program worked: they assassinated the rioters, their families, stole their land, and enshrined the peaceful ones as “legitimate change.” Folks aren’t rioting anymore, because the indoctrination works.
Yup. It took me a long time to realize that the “violence doesn’t solve anything” mantra doesn’t hold up. It’s crazy that they taught us that at the same time they taught us about the revolutionary war, and we didn’t question it. That’s the power of repetition of propaganda at a very young age, I guess. Humanity learned how to domesticate humans, and the governments of the world used it to great success decades ago.
learned helplessness and a redirection of the general public’s displeasure into the (now fractured and captured) digital spaces. sending a meme of a Guillotine isn’t going to change anything either. Most people don’t understand what it truly takes because most people were taught that all of the positive changes in their life happened with peaceful protest and a quiet resolve.
The Chicano Moratorium Riots - 1970
Attica Prison Uprising - 1971
The Wounded Knee Occupation - 1973
The White Night Riots - 1979
New Mexico State Penitentiary Riots - 1980
The 1990 Mercado Riots - 1990
1991 Washington DC Riots - 1991
Rodney King Riots - 1992
The Battle of Seattle - 1999
Cincinnati Riots - 2001
Oscar Grant Riots - 2009
Occupy Oakland - 2011
Furgeson Riots - 2014
Oakland Riots - 2014
Baltimore Riots - 2015
George Floyd Protests - 2020
People definitely didn’t stop rioting after the 60s. They kept rioting, and the people doing it have been black, queer, hispanic, indigenous, incarcerated, etc. People who are on the absolute margins of society, that have the least to lose and the most to gain.
People who are on the absolute margins of society , that have the least to lose and the most to gain.
Kinda hard to make change when you’re the minority, huh. Now imagine if 70% of the population rioted all the way to D.C…
the system works fine for the majority and extremely well for those with enough capital to be comfortable.
Maybe in the 60s, but the dissatisfaction at the wealth gap is astronomical rn.
Slavery never ended. It just got rebranded. You can access it via the “For Profit Prison System” option.
it’s even in the constitution that slavery is illegal… except for prisoners. crazy shit.
I disagree that internal uprisings and riots were a factor in ending the Holocaust, but violence certainly was.
I’m not interested in being friendly or even civil to Russians, Americans, or Israelis who aren’t busy working to overthrow their government.
The point of the meme is not historical accuracy but that voting is bad.
I can provide a counterexample. Orbán’s fascist kleptocracy in Hungary ended through voting from a coalition of leftwing progressive, centrist and conservatives. And maybe a little sprinkle of J.D. Vance. So perhaps other tools like rioting have worked before and have had better success rate, but voting is a tool in democracies too, that isn’t mutually exclusive from the others.
Voting is a tool in a democracy. The american government is doing everything they can do to make sure you never have to vote again.
Also, with hundreds of cases where autocracy was defeated through violence, and bringing up 1 example where voting was successful isn’t exactly inspiring.
It is a more recent example than any of the others, so even if it’s just one case, it’s worth highlighting as a counter to OP’s posting spree suggesting that voting isn’t effective.
I already said that voting isn’t mutually exclusive from violence or anything else. The process of it takes a couple hours out of one or two days, the primary and election day to go stand in line, or to order and mail your ballots. Technically speaking, even if in the USA’s case the state can jail and disenfranchise you, chances are getting a conviction will take a while.
Voting can be a tool, but not really beyond cases like Hungary where it has been allowed to persist for long enough that the autocatabolic nature of fascism burns out the population at large (so pretty much allowing it to run its course, with some limits imposed by the EU in this case) and not having the ability to look for fuel beyond their borders.
Fine if the spread of the fires can be contained in such ways, not much use for more than ruling over the ashes otherwise.
Edit: To clarify, it requires these conditions (the former to be effective, the latter to actually matter) because otherwise the people who cannot be compelled to do anything beyond voting will just meekly sit by as the vote gets ignored anyway, so long as the fascists have enough of some form of power to maintain the momentum to do so.
You make a good point, and I think America is in the process of burning through large amounts of people who thought fascism would do anything good for them, though I don’t know how advanced that is and it may not be as far as Hungary at this point in time. There are enough similarities between the USA and Hungary’s cases with the gerrymandered electoral process, constitutional 2/3s requirements to revert the skewed rules, appointed cronies to lead many government bureaus, a captured media environment, for me to believe that the path to reverse them through democratic means is possible.
(Personal opinion follows) I’m not advocating for people to vote then wipe their hands of the matter. People should go protest and riot before or after as they like. Though I think that organized non-violent movement building is the most effective tool for this situation, and people are taking action on issues like blocking AI data centres and taking down surveillance dragnet cameras (which sometimes the media portrays as violent but to me that’s non-violent). Once a movement is large enough it can start to bear its teeth, with little bits of threatened or targeted disruptive repercussions against acts of injustice, and not everyone has to be violent to participate. If the vote is not respected, that is the ideal time to riot. Even if a Democrat takes power in 2029, that’s not the time to shut up, protests should continue so that leaders know what people think are injustices that extended beyond Trump’s rise, and would spur government to action to address more than surface-level changes. Legislating away Citizens United, impeaching the Corrupt Supreme Court or expanding it, ending oil and coal handouts, expanding the House, taxing the wealthy, enacting Universal Healthcare and a Universal Basic Income, just to name a few.
That all hinges on them feeling too insecure in their institutional power (particularly military and police, where they have relative popularity) to manipulate the vote without consequence- likely by eroding it through continuing with the same kinds of action and harming yet more people in the meantime.
I am also pretty doubtful of the chances of whomever ends up in power next, upon being handed the machinery of state, actually makes the fundamental changes necessary to get away from the underlying causes that led us here, and honestly your wishlist doesn’t either (the results stem from the particular systems and power structures at work, if we don’t address them at their root then we haven’t done anything, and since this includes the very structures that state political power relies upon…), but those are really only secondary points.
I hope that I didn’t imply that you were advocating for that, I was trying to speak purely to the point being made without any assumptions beyond.
No worries, it’s a good discussion. I share the concern about putting all the eggs in the “vote blue and things will go back to normal” basket, because that is far from guaranteed to work or sufficient. I didn’t get the impression you were painting me in any camp, but I wanted to clarify my position to pre-empt any conclusion jumpers.
Has it actually ended the fascist kleptocracy, or has it just replaced which party is doing the grifting?
To me the promises and policies and the ideology of Magyar are eerily similar to what Orbán’s been doing when he was starting out in politics.
Here you go, a few reforms that many Americans have been asking for:
- MP term limits
- Age limits in positions of power
- Judicial reform to make it independent
- 9 year term limits for Constitutional Court
In consultation with the people of Hungary, lessons were learned and changes were made to help prevent Fidesz or others (including his own party Tisza) from taking the country hostage again.
Voting is the olive branch the owning class extended when the rioting got too close to them. You take that twig, let it ease your conscience however you see fit, then head back out into another riot with a clear mind. It is possible to vote, and also understand that voting is an ultimately meaningless gesture used to guage discontentment of the commoners.
Voting gives credence to the rioting. If you can’t be bothered enough to vote, it pulls legitimacy from the riots.
VOTE MOTHERFUCKERS
By the way… HR sends you polls for the same reason. They want to know if you’re getting paid enough to get you to be quiet. Or they want to know who to fire when they speak up.
I’ve come to say this but the mealy mouthed neoliberals think that the Democrats will magic away all the fascism and we’ll all be safe.
It only takes an afternoon every few years to show them they’re wrong…again.
Honestly they’re just the controlled opposition at this point. They’ll never improve anything, just put on the breaks some.
The holocaust is a crazy bad example for this argument.
As far as I understand, there weren’t significant riots or uprisings within Germany that led to the Nazi’s downfall.
…Ironically considering the voting claim, the Holocaust was stopped because of the choices of voters in faraway places. (okay, that and invading Russia rarely ends well for anyone, including the Russians.)
The people that decided they were too busy to vote last time could quite literally band together and elect anyone they want in any party.
I know, fuck me, right?
Its disturbing to me, bringing Holocaust as example here, but not Boston Tea, no French, Haitian, russian or Chinese revolutions, Mexico, Iran or Cuba also are great examples. Yet, not all of them went for good.
For why Holocaust is bad example., there’s other comments, but even slavery is bad - slavery ended in many local places by riots, since very first slavery, thousands year ago, such riots happened. But it still lasted as law, new ownerships were made, next peoples were enslaved. Until some law on ups were changed, mostly by… votes.
Wanna change something, change the ups, govs.
Holocaust might have ended through war, but it could have been prevented through ballot box in 1933
Hitler wasn’t voted in. His party got a small minority of votes. He was appointed chancellor by the liberals and conservatives.
He was fought in the streets by the KPD, but the SPD and the aforementioned groups worked against them, choosing to make Hitler Chancellor in order to give him the power he needed to crack down on the KPD.The holocaust wouldnt have happened if the spartacists hadn’t been so naive.
Luxemburg and the Spartacists had criticized the SPD in 1914 for having become a bourgeois party. Its like, they knew what was happening, they just didn’t do anything about it until 1917. Naive in that they continued to trust the SPD despite identifying its actual class character, when they should have been organizing, educating, and building for the split, so that when the split happens the mass of workers are prepared.
Its a really interesting point to make in this thread, since “rioting” was
ultimatelypart of what defeated the German working class. Police would infiltrate the movement, incite putschism or convince people to switch the target of an action. Over and over, defeat after defeat, still the power of the bourgeois in Germany was crushed by the revolutionary workers. Except, there was nobody on the left who could lead and organize a transitional government, they’d all been killed in riots or exiled.I feel like saying it was “rioting” that defeated the working class is a bit reductive. If the spartacists had been less naive in their uprising (not trusting the SPD, not giving money back to banks, so much other stuff) then “rioting” would have put the working class in a different situation. In the following decades what did them in was the systematic attack on them + their continued faith in their fellow person (despite ideological differences) that seems, very broadly, to have been the big issue.
I mean fair – just to say, you can riot and still lose, even when the conditions are ripe. The actual condition is organization and revolutionary program in practice, not just “riots.” Like sometimes you gotta take over the streets. To the point of the meme, you can organize people to vote which won’t get you there either. But it isn’t really riots or voting, both are subordinate to the revolutionary program. To me, the crisis of the working class is 1. Crisis of organization 2. Crisis of education/consciousness 3. Crisis of leadership.
We don’t really need a working class that riots or a working class that votes. We need a working class that knows when to vote, when/where/how to “riot”, but the need doesn’t really have to do with rioting or voting. Both are tactics, but tactics in the absence of strategy is a loser
The only naivete I can muster is that they should have been more prepared for how the Kaiser wasn’t going to allow Prussian Germany to lose Bavaria AND the monarchy. The SPD was a party that existed within the monarchy, and german states being independent of that was a far greater sin to the military aristocracy.
I dislike this line of thinking because often what this sort of violence does is delegitimize these claims at the same time. For the few times it has worked, it hasn’t worked a lot.
On top of that, slavery ended because the government made laws against it. Interment ended because the government changed. How many awful things never came about BECAUSE of voting? Imagine if Trump didn’t win. Imagine if Roger Stone never got Bush elected? What if FDR wasn’t elected? What if Lincoln didn’t win?
It’s just a poor way of thinking.
I lost my longer post, but will summarize.
Slaves were freeing themselves before Lincoln got involved, Japanese internment ended six months after Japan surrendered and Trump, Bush, FDR and Lincoln all took horrific actions.
I went on to talk about violence like Bleeding Kansas, the Haitian Revolution from France, Nat Turner’s Rebellion and John Brown. I then bastardized Theodore Roosevelt’s phrase, “Vote softly, and punch your leaders in the dick, maybe steal a car?”. Also something about eight hour days and the Haymarket Affair.
Violence is an important part of history and politics. I’m sure you will say, “progress in when big strong men get voted for and take action” or something. I do feel sorry for you. May we get through these turbulent times using violence when that is the only language that will be heard.
Violence is how we assure our votes are heard. But voting is still important. Even if it’s only used for movement building.
“progress in when big strong men get voted for and take action” or something. I do feel sorry for you
What the fuck? Weirdest shit to say while advocating violence.
Slaves were not freeing themselves, they were on the run. They were not safe. They did not get a fair shot in the world and most often did not get to live successful lives. And even after passing those amendments that stuff still didn’t get better but they had the law on their side and that changed history. Slaves had been fighting and running for centuries before countries started passing laws to change that, the only reason why slavery isn’t as big of a thing today is because laws were codified to stop it. And the only reason why that happened was because stories were shared, insight was offered and empathy, understanding and knowledge won. You’ll probably say something super disrespectful acting like Americans working today with their AC, Internet, eating more food than anyone back then could imagine is slavery but that is absolutely absurd. It isn’t fair today, we can do better but my god the calls for violence are pathetic when solutions are right in front of your face.
Japanese internment ended six months after Japan surrendered
So it ended because of policy, not because of violence? What are you pointing out here I don’t understand? The internment of Japanese citizens was wrong but it wasn’t because of some violent episode it ended?
Trump, Bush, FDR and Lincoln all took horrific actions.
Great explanation? Lincoln has two main problems from what I remember - he changed the law to arrest people who opposed the war, protested, editors of newspapers, Confederate sympathizers which you can definitely say wasn’t cool but on the other side, these were people basically supporting slavery or at least being Ed Sheeran about the enslavement of people, so feel how you want about that I dunno. He also continued the abuse of Indigenous Americans which is super fucked up, but you’re starting to fall into the leftist problem where suddenly nobody is perfect, everyone is bad and now you’ve set such impossible ridiculous standards nothing will get done it’s called a circular firing squad, and it’s really fucking dumb especially when looking back in history and applying modern lens on these people’s entire actions. Lincoln ended slavery, that is what happened and it was for the best.
Nat Turner’s Rebellion
Have you heard of the Battle of Blair Mountain? Tons of people here on Lemmy will tell you actions like that helped acquire worker’s rights but they actually didn’t. Historians look back and recognize it likely delayed worker’s rights because the response was suppression as a form of retribution/punishment. This same thing happened with Nat Turner’s Rebellion. You did not get the weekend because people died for it, you got the weekend because people worked together to get it. They spoke, they voted, they educated.
Violence is an important part of history and politics.
Yes it is but looking at history violence almost always just makes things way fucking worse. Cherry picking instances of violence you support isn’t the look you think it is. When you have an option to actually JUST FUCKING VOTE. And make change without killing innocent people, many of them poor and unable to escape violence, YOU’RE the asshole here. Don’t you understand that? You’re basically demanding people throw their bodies into a meat grinder to get what you believe is right.
The Haitian Rebellion was the only successful slave rebellion and that was because a multitude of reasons that had nothing to do with their choice to be violent. Their adversaries were weakened, slavery was already being seen as a cruel and evil thing, smart people used their words to get everyone to work together. It wasn’t violence that achieved independence for them. Nat Turner did his best as did John Brown, so did Lincoln, so did FDR, and so did Obama, regardless of how you choose to view these people they did want to make a change that was positive just like you do. Left-leaning people want so badly for the best candidate possible, they literally want a messiah to be every option they have and they want every scenario to have a pretty little solution with no bloodshed or cruelty, but then they also want to engage with violence and cheer on slaughtering of the bad guys. It doesn’t make sense. Crucify and kill anyone who isn’t perfect and all you’re left with is more violent people?
My point isn’t violence is bad and you’re dumb for saying it or something, my point is calling for violence is bad when you have such an easy fucking lay up of a solution. Which is to just fucking vote, get the right people in and let time march forward. If you try to engage in violence you will enact the suffering of so many people who don’t choose that for themselves. Slavery wasn’t defeated with a sword, kings weren’t defeated by the guillotine. It was by the word and the pen and knowledge that we were able to push past these awful things in history. I find it absolutely absurd how many people want to leap to violence and can’t understand they are literally the monsters they hate, history literally teaches us this time and time again. A revolutionary force engages in violence to make change, then that violence becomes the norm and they continue the violence because they believe they were correct to be violent in the first place.
This post is fucking stupid because it completely ignores times in history where collective action, voting and education made the most drastic changes - voting rights for women/POC/the young/the poor/the disabled, apartheid ended because of sanctions, the Great Salt March, the Singing Revolution, it goes on and on where non-violence got better results than violence ever could’ve. It is through collective action and taking back your government system. If voting did not matter they wouldn’t put so much god damn effort to get people to not vote. Murdering Caesar did not make Rome better.
