This ignores that the average USAmerican will let their country murder millions of foreigners if it meant their grocery prices went down by 10 cents

As someone heavily involved in 's presidential campaign, I can say that OP’s position is much closer to the official campaign than people disagreeing. By that I mean we are not particularly interested in how people vote, but in using the campaign to reach people and engage them in politics outside the electoral. Our campaign is a vehicle to big swathes of desperate and disconnected people who think of politics in purely electoral terms - whether that’s that we have to vote for the lesser of two evils or that the failure of voting to fix societal issues means there is no path forward.

We know that when we go out and canvass, we’re going to interact almost entirely with people who are not ideologically committed leftists. The phase of organizing in the US demands that our work be focused on finding and bringing in people who are not aware of the necessity or existence of a vanguard working class party and convince them that their vote is only an extremely small part of their potential political engagement and the general path to fixing this rotten country.

Therefore, we always have to approach people empathetically, understanding their position so that we can move them towards revolutionary socialist politics. That requires us not to denounce Kamala voters as Hitlerites in training.

Nobody is immune to propaganda, yet the effect that propaganda has is overstated here IMHO. Read Masses, Elites, and Rebels. If a cis white lib is saying they’re voting L3Harris out of fear, they’ve really just been granted moral license to not care and are using that moral license to justify doing the same thing they would be doing if no pressure was applied to them at all.

I think yelling at libs about voting is effective because the vast majority of them are not joining orgs, they’re not communists that are just doing this one thing wrong, etc. They’re libs! And they perceive voting as the singular most important political action (especially since the George Floyd protests have been memory holed). If we can radicalize liberals’ understanding of voting, we can radicalize their entire politics. I know that because when I was a liberal myself, the first piece of theory I read was Bourgeois and Proletarian Democracy. After I read that, I radicalized very quickly, because my whole understanding of politics was based on voting for the right candidate and it was quickly shattered. So I believe that electoralism represents an attack surface for the left to exploit, since it has become the singular focus of the rank and file liberal politic.

All that being said, at some point it probably is worth shutting up about voting and just focusing on getting people to learn some useful skill, get organized, and agitate as many other people as they can to do the same. It would be really, really stupid if, for example, this whole site alienated a ton of its own already radicalized users over voting. It would be even worse if the same happened at unions and the DSA. It ain’t that deep.

My problem is you really can’t effectively campaign for Kamala and acknowledge the genocide. You’ll see many liberals try to thread this needle but then their campaign slogan is “vote for the lesser genocide” which really self defeating. Eventually they’ll get sucked into genocide apologia or even denialism out of convienice. When that happens, fuck em. For the ones that keep trying to thread the needle, I’ll keep asking them why they are so invested in electoralism.

I ran into someone recently who was all smug about voting, asking me, “Did you vote?” Yet, he was completely unaware of the local ballot items. This is due to the stupid national campaigns that emphasize just showing up to vote without understanding the stakes at the local level. No local organizations were strong enough to educate him on the harmful propositions, showing just how unorganized the left is. We’ve all seen good local efforts get crushed by capitalism, and even sensible ballot votes get overturned by state legislatures or vetoed. I recognize that there’s no winning through pure electoralism alone and that non-swing state presidential votes do not matter. If you’ve got time, maybe it’s still worth voting on down ballot stuff and following advice from your best local leftist org.

The US presidential election is a sham election even by the standards of bourgeois elections, so voting doesn’t matter in the end. But just because it’s meaningless doesn’t mean it reflects well on someone who casts their ballot for the current genocider. It’s like if someone upvotes a reactionary comment or post on Hexbear. The impact is practically nil, but they still would need to be reeducated and banned if they refused to self-crit. A major moment in the history of this website is transphobes getting banned for upvoting transphobic content. Imagine if they tried pulling some “uh aktually, this is a niche website. There’s no material impact for my upvote. It doesn’t meaningfully combat transphobia” excuse.

I don’t mind people voting for liberal candidates if they’re otherwise struggling, lost, and/or confused and need to feel like they’re doing something, for lack of understanding of the nature of organizing collective action. If it’s a little peace of mind, okay, they deserve it.

What offends me about electoralism are the people who speak of the act of voting in moral terms.

yeah but then how can I virtue signal and feel righteous all day long online?!?

Hexbear on people with bad views on forgein policies: i can fix them

Hexbear on people with bad domestic policies: scum of the earth

Lmao, imagine voting ever. I gave Bernie $27 dollars and a temporary stay of execution in 2020, and I’ll take both back in this world or in hell.

Vibes do not matter. Actions matter. If your decisions “are not coming from a place of evil” but the result of those decisions is “substantially more evil every single time”, then your decisions are not sufficiently repudiating evil. Correct action comes from correct thought. If the action keeps being “kill more kids”, then eventually you have to admit the thought “killing kids is okay, actually”.

voting for Kamala Harris is not the same thing as being a Hitlerite even though people doing it are completely wrong and I’m tired of pretending it’s not. You have seen the arrogance and myopic viewpoint of liberals. They do not think anything besides suffering is possible. This is not a mental state of Hitlerism but a state of supreme nihilism. It, of course, ends in materially the same thing, but intention is important when considering the “abstract moral value” of people, which is what this post is about.

Also, most of you are ex liberals. Meaning most of you have endorsed war crimes with a vote. Probably worth keeping in mind.

Also this is true. A ton of people here have endorsed genocide and are now deciding this is the genocide that they can decide lets them be a Good Person while everyone else is a Bad Person. Which of course is almost correct, that is how it works when it comes to genocides, endorsing them generally is a bad-person thing. But if you’re one of the people who literally did that exact same thing and are now “pulling the ladder up” because you’re already radicalized, then you have to realize how short sighted and selfish that is. If you are willing to give yourself a second chance despite a possible full past commitment to lesser evilism, then it is completely absurd to condemn every Kamala voter as unable to change.

Of course, this does not apply to those who are genuinely spreading Democrat rhetoric, that is a staunch rhetorical decision and while I’m sure they could technically become radicalized to socialism later in their life I do not believe anyone is obligated to tolerate them. I am merely defending the still embryonic baby-leftists that likely don’t know what’s going on and are just trying to support as many people as possible with the flawed understanding of reality they’ve been given

I disagree completely. Liberals are white supremacists and have always been waging war on the whole world. They are weaselly and smug liars. They invented ads. They live off of the stolen work of whole enslaved countries. They are humanity’s enemies.

I’m of two minds about this and while I agree with you mostly I do take a bit of an issue here

Like ive actually talked to liberals about their vote. I didnt even have to touch grass to it! Where their coming from is wrong and ive told them that, but ive seen the effect the lesser evilism propaganda has on their mind. they are not coming from a place of evil with their choice Hating, “not forgiving”, or throwing in the pit (as ive seriosly seen suggested) the 10s of millions of people who will vote Kamala in November is simply not practical. You cant hate humanity to that extent and organize. And you definitly cant desire to kill that many people lmao.

I don’t think anyone is serious about wanting to kill all libs, I can’t speak for everyone but when it’s coming from me it’s clearly hyperbole because I’m just yapping

I think libs should be treated as individuals, there’s a nice old boomer lady who feels genuinely scared of another Trump term who I’m completely kind and civil to because she’s out with us every week protesting the genocide, I can see that she genuinely cares and we don’t try to vote shame each other

Now on the other hand that old boomer dude I’ve never seen before who showed up at our protest last week to campaign for Holocaust Harris and vote shame us got none of that kindness or civility from me because he didn’t fucking deserve it, frankly I regret not being a bigger dick to him

Online it’s the same way, if they’re trying to scold us I’m going to tell them how I feel and I’m going to tell them that there’s blood on their hands

You are right that it doesn’t matter

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they are not coming from a place of evil with their choice

To the pure, all things are pure