Real leftists understand the principles of harm reduction. Voting for Harris, as voting for Biden would have done, has the outcome of reducing harm compared to trump winning. Sure, there will still be harm, but it’ll be less, and that’s incredibly important. It’s basically the same foundation behind how we need to help drug addiction. Although Harris will likely cause even less harm than Biden.
Chances are that the “leftists” arguing for the purity test of Harris are people who aren’t truly at risk in this election. They won’t have their basic human rights torn apart if trump wins. They’re leftists in name only.
On, the, nose. There’s a few I’m pretty sure aren’t American. Not a Russian or bot accusation. And another decent contingent from States and areas so safely blue that they’re just out of touch. And don’t care about the possible damage they do. Choosing to virtue signal over trying to appeal to other people.
This is an important point - it must be really nice to be in a position where neither you nor any of your loved ones would be at risk with another Trump presidency.
I mean, I mostly agree, but damn the ultra-left marginalized white non-binary anti-Harris idiots who don’t care that Trump would be worse for Gaza than literally any other person on the planet are real.
Oh and also the libertarians (always white, middle class ones) who think anyone who insists on strategically voting is a “brainwashed sheep”.
Children on college campuses who think mommy and daddy’s money will shield them from negative consequences.
Don’t confuse leftists with Democrats, we are not the same thing. Democrats are right wing and support the oppressive status quo that keeps the marginalized, marginalized.
We will not support someone with her political record, shes a cop and ACAB
I get your rationale. But like I said in my comment, leftists and communists, as I assume you espouse to be, understand harm reduction. Voting for a third party or not voting only allows fascists to come to power. That is a fact. That’s what happened in Germany where the leftists/communists couldn’t agree on anything with the Catholic Democrats and that allowed the Nazis to come into power under the auspices of unity and competency. Just like the Republicans are pitching right now. You say that the status quo keeps the marginalize, marginalized. But you know what also keeps the marginalized, marginalized, and leads to much worse outcomes for the marginalized? Republicans winning.
Democrats aren’t perfect, hell, they fucking suck about some other core parts of communist goals. But when you refuse to vote or vote for a third party, you destroy the ability for us communists to continue fighting for our ideals instead of being rounded up and killed in camps.
My right to exist is on the line. Democrats will allow me to exist and continue to fight for a better future. Republicans will declare my existence pornographic, say that anyone who distributes or is a part of porn with be put in jail and called a sex offender, then will Institute the death penalty for sex offenders. I will literally be put in prison if Republicans win in November.
I want to keep existing and not be made illegal so I can continue to espouse and fight for my belief in the effectiveness of communists ideals. I know multiple communists who believe the same. And yes, we are communists, not democrats in disguise. We just also understand how politics works and that our lives are on the line.
I can’t convince you to vote for her. It just won’t happen. But this is why you’ll come up against fellow communists who will vote for her. I hope you can understand at least our reasoning for voting for her, even if you don’t agree with it.
I don’t get their rationale all. They’re either dumb as a toddler that can’t get their way so they hold their breath, or they’re malicious provacatours that want Trump to win for whatever reasons.
They’re lemmy.ml so it is the provocateurs one.
A communist that participates in right wing electoral politics is not a communist.
So then what are you doing to spread your communist ideals?
Apparently voting to let a literal Nazi into office like a pure dumbass.
Like the place isn’t already being run by fascists.
Ah, I see, you lack critical thinking.
Your solution is electing the people directly fighting leftists? The role of Democrats is not to defeat Republicans but to prevent leftists movements and organizations from gaining power or influence. They are gatekeepers to prevent progress
Yeah it will be much easier to make progress if we get the further-right guys who want to send the National Guard in to get student protesters. Floating ideas that protesters should be deported. That’s the clearest and swiftest path to leftism, a Repub president that urges cops to beat the shit out of protesters.
urges cops to beat the shit out of protesters.
Totally unlike cop actions during Palestinian protests?
Propaganda to get a far-right dictator installed in the US so that it collapses and allows China and/or Russia to expand. Source: they are from lemmy.ml.
A communist who does not participate in the election of the country’s leader is merely performative and cares more about being an “outsider” instead of actually advancing goals.
They’re not our country’s leaders. They are capitalist leaders, they are leaders for the donor class. The working class has zero representation in government, the occasional crumbs they will throw us is not representation, it’s to keep people silent and pacified. And voters will defend those crumbs, tooth and nail for fear of losing their crumbs
Yeah, the purity ponies back in 2016 did a lot of damage to this country. Not sure if how many of them learned their lesson. I imagine some of the younger ones did. In any case, as it turns out, no revolution of the proletariat was accelerated by having the convicted felon in for a term. Things that actually happened instead: a rigged supreme court, more tax cuts for the elite and for corporations, and stealing of women’s rights.
I’m seeing a bit of a redux this time around with the #bidensoold and “Genocide Joe” stuff. Again, people seeking a perfect candidate when no such thing exists.
Very often, I get the impression these “leftists” are disingenuous. I figure they’re Russians agents trying to cause instability, GOP astroturfers, or trolls who didn’t get care and compassion in the real world and need to see professional mental/emotional help.
Don’t forget the ever-present tankies!
Refer to the last point for tankies, I think.
And if not they might as well be because there is not a practical reason for any leftist to pick Trump over Kamala.
“Practical” is the important word in what you wrote. Some of these middle class purity test crew have no understanding about voting to prevent the greater harm.
Lots of people seem to be discounting the idea that perhaps they’ve just been dissilusioned with the electoral process after 30-something years of voting for the lesser evil.
None of them are that old
It’s unrealistic to assume that that’s the case for every single person who falls into that category. People come from all different walks of life and believe a great number of things. I’m not saying that impossible for any of these people to be how you guess, just that you’re removing the possibility of people to exist that don’t fit into the way that you think.
My list wasn’t exhaustive.
I’ve noticed one very important detail:
Nearly all the anti-Harris posts are saying the same things in slightly different ways. When challenged almost none of them respond.
Harris 2024. Fuck the republican traitor filth.
They could have “weekend at burnies” biden and I’d have still voted for the corpse over the turnip.
Well realistically, what’s to be gained from engaging with endless unrealistic purity tests? Of course we should always strive for the best we can. But we also need to come to terms with the fact that a lot of people can’t or won’t
Some of the anti-Harris “leftists” are probably just trolls, bots and tankies doing the bidding of our foreign enemies.
If that’s the case, maybe centrists shouldn’t have spent so long crying wolf about people who didn’t like Biden.
Oh christ. How much of this anti-Harris sentiment is actually out there?
Most of the progressives I’ve seen are delighted that the party is listening for the first time in fucking ages. The whole “purity test” narrative was shown to be complete fucking bullshit when Harris dropped out and progressives accepted her.
But that won’t stop centrists. They need to continue the bogus narrative that progressives can’t be satisfied so they can keep moving to the right, ostensibly to capture the votes of Republicans, even though they know that Republicans aren’t reasonable and won’t accept the capitulation centrists call compromise.
Oh hey they wrote an article about us!
We’re just lucky she is not running for President of Lemmy
Some of these “leftists” are conservatives who are afraid of the white supremacy rhetoric on the right so they cannot join the white supremacists outright, but they hate the gays, or trans, or don’t believe in climate change or something else.
I think the root cause is religion, I wish we could treat religion as a private thing and just remove its influence from public spheres in all countries.
Does it even make sense that someone else’s (doesn’t matter whose) storytelling or world origin myth should have this much public influence or authority? It’s unreasonable and borderline psychotic.
I imagine there are a lot of conservatives that aren’t actually so concerned about racism / sexism / LGBT issues as about financial ones. They fear that empowering the “leftists” will lead to them losing all the luxuries they enjoy, a flame Conservative pundits are all too happy to fan. Particularly when they believe they have a chance to become one of those rich people the leftists are actually targeting, they’re worried about “lazy” people (obviously not working hard enough) coming for their hard-earned wealth. So even if they might disagree with the GOP’s stance on the social issues, they’re concerned about the “collateral damage” the progressives might do their own lives, and since that affects them much more tangibly than reports of social issues, they’re naturally biased to worry about their own wellbeing first.
Religion obviously plays a role in enabling that mindset by justifying supremacy (I’m a better person, so I deserve better) and inequality (God gives us each what we deserve), giving an explanation for things we don’t understand (God’s plan) and a goal (be a pious Christian and go to heaven), relieving of guilt (just ask God to forgive you and that’s that) and a fear of death (I’ll go to heaven anyway). It also provides a mechanism for Power to steer people (The preacher I trust tells me it’s God’s will) and direct their anger and attention away from the people exploiting them (Those damn <insert relevant slur> are the devil’s agents and working against the good and pious people like myself).
Better access to education, teaching critical thinking and scepticism, helping people realise the lies they’re fed - and particularly the fact that none of us are immune to deception and propaganda, no matter how smart - could help both these problems.
I’m voting Harris, for all the reasons outlined in this thread, but damn it chaps my hide that this is like the trolley problem where the trolly will go down the 100% evil track unless you pull the lever to go down the %25 less evil track. Everybody in here seems to think we shouldn’t want a better track, it’s just not practical or possible to do anything better.
Is nobody else here frustrated that the only alternative we have to the orange fascist is a prosecutor that put countless brothers and sister into the racist for-profit prison system for having weed? This is the alternative that progressives are excited about?
I read a line somewhere -I forget where- but it was something to the effect that always voting for the lesser of two evils means getting the second worst possible america. Are y’all so pragmatic that wanting anything other than the second worst america is automatically interpreted as a bot, or a Russian troll, or a stupid college kid in a Che t-shirt that only wants to endlessly critique?
Crumbs. They are satisfied with crumbs.
My hope - yes, I’m naive and optimistic, let me have this - is that it’ll gradually shift the Overton Window to the left.
Radical political change has a risk of emboldening “They’re going too far!” rhetorics, swaying those who prefer the familiar over uncertain promises of improvement to help swing it back. We’re in a certain bubble here in that we’d like to see significant changes ASAP, but don’t have an accurate idea of how many people agree with us on that.
The same mechanism that enabled a gradual slide to the right needs to be stalled and reversed, improving things little by little. I would guess voter enfranchisement would have to be an early priority, along with education and media bias (though censorship is a bad precedent to set, and I’m not sure if there’s a better way to tackle that)
I don’t have all the answers. It’s far easier to point out flaws than come up with sustainable and lasting improvements as an amateur. This is why I think having discussions on such things is important: Collectively, we may come up with more ideas, show up errors in them and maybe develop better solutions.
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