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I am not saying we shouldn't vote for Biden, but acting like we shouldn't be protesting the genocide of Palestinians is bullshit. I know Trump would be worse, but it doesn't mean we should speak out against Biden sending weapons that directly aid in the death of children.
We can't just pretend he isn't complicit in war crimes just because the other option is worse. We should be able to speak out against the atrocities.
Then I think this isn't directed towards voters like you. It's directed toward those who say you shouldn't vote for Biden as a protest.
I am not sure this is effective against those voters. If anything it's shaming, at best, which causes people to dig their heels in. Addressing those voters as petulant children is not the way to bring them on board.
Well of course. It's directed towards them but just like almost everything on social media is meant to make those who agree feel better.
Their myopic crusade will doom the whole planet.
Really? A genocide is “myopic”?
The people who are on the streets organising and protesting for Palestine are the same people who are doing all kinds of organising: unionising workplaces, mutual aid, street medics, etc. to build up communities and create actual positive change in society.
Do-nothing liberals will do absolutely nothing but complain every day of the year. Democracy isn’t a matter of voting once every 4 years.
Besides, most of these people, despite being highly critical of Biden and will show up to vote on the day. They’re just not going to spend the rest of their time campaigning for a lost cause.
Why not put some of the blame on liberals who aren’t doing enough? Or maybe the reactionaries and fascists who do not give a fuck about what the vote says and will do everything in their power to obstruct, ignore, overturn and use violence to get the outcome they want. You’re delusional if you think fascists will just go away if Biden gets the vote.
You lack of concrete action will doom us.
How did you read that into what I wrote?
You know what I meant.
You SHOULD vote for Joe, but fucking hell this is HIS fault. Voters are a swirling mass of people. It might as well be fluid dynamics. Bad policies and apathy WILL affect support. It's going to. You can't stop it. You can't shame it back again either. You can't win back tent guy's vote by blaming him for Joe Biden's failures.
I don't get this Schrödingers democracy thing here. The American people should save democracy by voting for Biden to stop Trump. But they can't make demands against the pro-Israeli positions of Biden. You aren't even in the real election phase, the election is in six months, and people can't criticize or demand better action from their own elected president. Hell, I've seen these kinds of memes since the primaries, which are meaningless for Bidens candidacy except that you can send signals that you maybe have to change your course. But nothing has changed at all since then either, only empty words. How is this democratic then?
I'm not even saying that Biden has to do everything the most radical people on the pro-Palestine side demand. But Biden doesn't even try to find a compromise. He could maybe leverage the power that the American government has over Israel to stop the bombing of Gaza. If he feels brave he could even demand the stop on more settlements.
It's the Schrodingers democracy of the shrodingers "free" world we live in — Politics is pay to play, corporations are people and both can donate unlimited money, wealth equality is worse than the guilded age, but we totally have "democracy" bro. Also you should shut up and support a genocide because we're fighting to prevent the fascists from taking power, which will surely lead to genocide... Only worse!
This is the kind of discourse you get with a 2 party system ruled by a corporatocracy masquarading as a democracy — the propagandized neoliberal drones are most of the comments you read. Ultimately vote for Biden, because the alternative is literal Christian fascist dictatorship, but give Biden and neoliberals hell; make them believe they're gonna lose all the way to voting day.
give Biden and neoliberals hell; make them believe they're gonna lose all the way to voting day
I agree with this, but people really need to stop qualifying every critique with their intent to vote for him anyway. Biden has already been saying he doesn't believe his polling numbers are real (why liberals aren't panicking about that indifference is beyond me), we really can't be sending mixed signals here.
He risks losing if he doesn't change course, full stop. He needs to know that risk is real.
Saw this posted elsewhere and found it poignant
“If Nixon wins again, we’re in real trouble.” He picked up his drink, then saw it was empty and put it down again. “That’s the real issue this time,” he said. “Beating Nixon. It’s hard to even guess how much damage those bastards will do if they get in for another four years.”
I nodded. The argument was familiar. I had even made it myself, here and there, but I was beginning to sense something very depressing about it. How many more of these goddamn elections are we going to have to write off as lame but “regrettably necessary” holding actions? And how many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?
– Hunter Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72
Sure, but nobody was afraid of Nixon becoming a fascist dictator now were they
Lol, I mean I get why you feel this moment is unique, but i'm looking through NYT articles from 1972 and if you take out the dated references you could almost mistake them for articles written in 2024:
To the Editor: When a Democrat for Nixon says “I'll vote holding my nose, but McGovern is not a big enough man to be President,” or “I don't like him, but there is no viable alternative,” or an uncommitted Democrat says “McGovern doesn't turn me on,” such remarks are liberalese for “I'm doing alright the way things are, and can't take a risk of any change in the status quo.” - NYT Letter to the Editor 10/19/72
"Lawrence F. O'Brien, the na tional campaign chairman for the McGovern‐Shriver ticket, accused the Nixon Administra tion yesterday of sanctioning tactics of “political espionage” that bordered on those of “a fascist state.” - NYT O'Brien Charges 'Political Espionage'" - 10/14/72
"Deceit, deceit, everywhere deceit—but especially on the political and cultural left, says Arnold Beichman, and most out rageously in the writings of the youth lovers (Marcuse, Slater, Sontag, Roszak, Reich and the rest). They say “America is al ready a fascist country or is on the road to fascism,” that the country “is guilty of genocide,” that “the Bomber Left ... is a moral force” They claim the white “American worker ... is a retrograde, decadent, self ish creature: a honky,” that “our political system is an ut ter fraud, particularly the two‐ party system,” that “American values are wholly materialistic,” that “America is insane,” and that our primary need is for “a violent revolution.” " - NYT, "Nine Lies About America", 10/8/72
I'm having a great time reading through these actually, it's interesting reading the op-eds from back then.
Uh... Nixon was terrible. He resigned in disgrace. Even Republicans shunned him after he left. It's hard to put into words how much Nixon disappeared from modern society.
Without a second Nixon term, Watergate is probably not as big of a deal. Then Fox News is never created. You can see where I'm going with this.
The point is, yes every election is important. Be grateful you can vote, and that your vote counts. It hasn't been the norm for most of human history.
No one I know who does serious work on Palestine is only working on that one issue, wasn't doing anything before and won't do anything after. Burnout is incredibly high among activist leaders right now. Cut us some slack please
They won't cut you slack, because they actively support the genocide. "But Trump will do worse genocide" is concern trolling.
There's a genocide? But those numbers were doubled
Cool talking point
I'm deeply uncomfortable with the amount of people calling those wholly opposed to complicity in genocide as "single issue voters". Sure, if genocide isn't enough of a concern for you to oppose candidates that are complicit, then I guess you can call it "single issue".
We're talking genocide here, so I'm going to compare this to the most known genocide on the planet. Imagine if we knew about and could see the Holocaust occurring as it happened when it started, and FDR was funding the Reich including circumventing congress. Would you expect people to still vote for FDR, or would you expect people to oppose his candidacy? This caliber of rhetoric as well as this post has turned this leftist away from my plan to vote for Biden. Nice work folks. I'll be voting for Cornel West and trying to keep the liberal trifecta in my state legislature this year.
The "if Trump wins" folks are angry at the implication that their vote is tacit support of genocide, but are fine with the implication that not voting for Biden is tacit support for Trump
Stopping gun violence is what the Gaza protestor is trying to to do. Banning bigotry? Yep, same. Save democracy? How? By standing strong with genocide? Not very fucking likely, imo.
For all of the people who will inevitably show up to say "But you can't criticize Biden, it's an election year": man, I can't imagine offering such a bad take completely unprompted and free of charge. People are throwing tomatoes at you from the shores of history, you just don't know it yet. Supporting genocide is wrong, period. If Biden doesn't want to be criticized for it, maybe he should stop supporting it.
Stopping gun violence is what the Gaza protestor is trying to to do.
Because Palestinians don't fucking shoot and kill people...? Way to jump the shark.
Hamas murdered more people in 1 day than every American school shooting combined.
Do you listen to yourself? What the fuck are you even talking about?
Banning bigotry? Yep, same
Hamas is an Islamic terrorist group founded on an explicit call for genocide against Israeli Jews.
They aren't flying rainbow flags or celebrating pride month this year, either.
Save democracy? How?
By voting against a self-described "dictator" who happens to also be an authoritarian kleptocrat who calls every election he's ever been in "rigged", pressured Secretaries of States to just make up votes, coordinated false electors to overthrow the election, pressured his VP to call the certification process into question and who generally doesn't believe in the peaceful transition of power.
I'm not gonna ask you to suck Biden's cock or anything, feel free to dislike his handling of the Israeli-Palestinian war (a war he neither started nor wanted to happen in the first place) if you want. It's my view that America's actions so far have actually saved thousands of lives in the region, and it's an objective fact that Biden has delivered more aide to Gazan civilians than anyone else. (Don't let that stop you from being pissed off at the wrong guy.)
But, seeing everything we've seen over the last 10 years, are you seriously going to deny that Trump and the Republicans are an existential threat to American democracy?
Supporting genocide is wrong, period
The Palestinians aren't innocent in this either--they (and the Arab League) threw the first punch back in 1948, and they (Hamas) threw the first punch on October 7th of last year. It takes 2 to tango. Both sides of this fight have been complicit in doing evil shit building up to the conflict we have today. When people say things like "Palestine should be free from the river to the sea", how can you read that as anything other than a call for genocide against Israeli jews? Hamas surrendered any facade of legitimacy when they conducted a terrorist attack on Israel last year (intentionally killing more people in a single day than Israel has been killing in Gaza on average). Hamas has fired something like 10,000 rockets at Israel (and that's not counting the attacks from Iran, Hezbollah, etc.), so how many thousands more people do you think would be dead today if Israel didn't have the capability to defend against those kinds of attacks?
The only peaceful, non-genocidal solution to this ~80 year war is a two-state solution in which Israelis and Palestinians learn to put aside their mutual hatred, dis-empower the extremists who run their societies, and coexist. Neither Hamas nor Netenyahu are capable of delivering this. Hamas will soon pay the ultimate price for their cowardice and terrorism (as they should), and hopefully the Israeli people will see that Netenyahu has failed to protect them and democratically remove him from power.
Yes, you have persuaded me that the only rational course of action remaining is to leave babies to die of neglect after you force hospital staff out at gunpoint, murder ambulance crews and their patients, murder aid workers, murder anyone in the same building as a militant in one of the highest density populations on earth, force men, women, and children to starve when the world is ready to deliver aid, tell people to go to refugee camps and then bomb the refugee camps, massacre people for rushing to a food truck to get food for the crime of being desperate and hungry, destroy their homes and possessions, reject peace deals that include the abolition of hamas as an organization, close off every means of escape, and then move your people into their land once you've sufficiently killed them off.
Of all the cases for genocide, you made, well, one of them. I would say that I hope you feel as good about it in the future as you do now, but I wouldn't mean it, because it's a fucking genocide and you're defending it. I get that you don't seem to want the extermination of all Palestinians, but you're going to bat for a government that does.
You engaged with a grand total of 0 of the points that I made. So A+ dodging I guess. Congratulations on being a classic bad faith actor.
Hamas are a terrorist organization that openly advocates for genocide and commits war crimes, murdering civilians in cold blood, taking hostages, operating out of hospitals and aide organizations, and using innocent people as human shields. They have a PR department, and they don't need any new hires right now, sorry.
The only peaceful, non-genocidal solution to the Israeli-Palestinian war is a two-state solution. Fuck Hamas, fuck Netenyahu, and also to a much lesser extent, fuck you. I didn't "make a case for genocide", you did. If you think Hamas are going to go down in history as heroes or freedom fighters, you're as dumb as you are ignorant of history.
I don't think they'll go down as heroes, I think this is going to go down more or less how native American genocide happened in the US west. Native Americans would do cattle raids or revenge killings, which were often used as justifications for even more violence against non-combatants (followed by the taking of that sweet, sweet land). Which is more or less what's happening here. I think the formation of the modern Israeli state was a huge mistake, and now we've got to deal with it. Ultimately, no solution's going to be popular, but letting the IDF commit genocide while saying "but HAMAS" ain't it. HAMAS has offered to disband itself in the latest peace talks, which Israel rejected. That really just leaves the naked truth that what Israel wants in the land, and if they've got to murder everyone there for it, that's a small price for the US to subsidize.