this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2024
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Leopards Ate My Face
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Get organized. Join a Leftist org, find solidarity with fellow comrades, and protect each other. The Dems will not save you, it is up to the Workers to protect themselves. The Party for Socialism and Liberation and Freedom Road Socialist Organization both organize year round, every year, because the battle for progress is a constant struggle, not a single election. See if there is a chapter near you, or start one! Or, see if there's an org you like more near you and join it, the point is that organizing is the best thing any leftist can do.
Read theory. A good primer is Blackshirts and Reds. It will help contextualize what fascism is, what causes it, and how to stop it. I can offer a good introductory reading list for Marxism if you'd like, but this is a good starting point.
Aggressively combat white supremacy, misogyny, queerphobia, and other attacks on marginalized communities. Cede no ground.
Be more industrious, and self-sufficient. Take up gardening, home repair, tinkering. It is through practice that you elevate your problem-solving capabilities. Not only will you improve your skill at one subject, but your general problem-solving muscles get strengthened as well. Theory guides practice, which sharpens theory to be reapplied to better practice.
Learn self-defense. Get armed, if practical. Be ready to protect yourself and others. The Democrats will not save us, we must save each other.
Be persistent. If you feel like a single water driplet against a mountain, think of the Grand Canyon. Oh, how our efforts pile up! With consistency, every rock, boulder, even mountain, can be drilled through with nothing but steady and persistent water droplets.
Regarding point 1:
Sod off. Wasn't it the socialists who refused to cooperate with the democrats? Didn't they decide not to vote for the Democrats over i.e. the Palestine issue?
They sabotaged the Democrats. They are also responsible for this, in no small part.
And now they try to wash their hands?
Seriously, what is this bullshit?!
step 1: Help elect fascist president
step 2: blame everyone else for fascist president being elected
step 3: profit
From the "Freedom Road Socialist Organization" you linked to yourself: https://frso.org/statements/the-2024-elections-palestine-and-the-road-ahead/
You actively sabotaged the Democrats. You stopped them from winning. This is actively your fault, don't act like you didn't do everything in your power to help elect Trump
Marxists didn't sabotage the Democrats, the Democrats sabotaged themselves. Third party voters swayed 0 elections, especially not swing states. The truth is that the Democrats failed to rile up their base, Harris stopped doing what was effective like calling Republicans weird, then shifted to Liz Cheney endorsements to court the right.
The idea that the .1-.5% of votes that went to Stein or De La Crúz swayed an election where Harris handily lost 1-2% at minimum in nearly every swing state caused her loss is laughable. It was not the Leftists making any difference on the election, it was the failure of the Democratic Party and the Harris campaign.
Where was Medicare for All? Where was "Build Back Better?" Where were the solid, progressive policies that encouraged massive voter turnout in 2020 that evaporated in 2024? Gone, from both the campaign and the voterbase.
Whether you identify as a leftist or not, blaming a tiny group on swaying a massive election where non-voters would have beaten both Harris and Trump is silly. Look at the vote counts, the fact is that the Dems failed by their own lack of merit. This is the first time in several decades where a Republican has won the popular vote, the real, material numbers cannot be ignored. They are real, and need to be taken seriously.
I’m generally on your side of this argument but the number of non-voters is hard to quantify yet clearly had a major effect on the outcome, and a lot of the anti-Harris rhetoric from the left demotivated people into not voting at all (as opposed to voting third party). The third party vote counts are somewhat irrelevant to this line of reasoning.
It's important to note that there are 2 possibilities:
Leftists had little influence, and therefore did not impact the election. This is further reinforced by the fact that many leftists did vote for Harris, leftists are not a monolith. Therefore, the problem is with how the Harris campaign fared compared to Biden in 2020. I believe this is more likely.
Leftists had major influence, and the Democrats knowingly gambled on moving rightward. This is still a failure of the Democrats! If Leftists actually have the power claimed, then the minimum Harris could have done is run a similar campaign to Biden, not "Republican-lite."
I don’t disagree with that assessment.
what a stupid argument. You are blaming the Democrats for "failing to protect you" (by failing to win the Election) when YOU YOURSELF were advocating for people to stop supporting them winning the Election.
YOU are the one whose face got eaten by a Leopard. By advocating for people to stop voting for her.
And now you're trying to make a profit off of it. You plunged the country into fascism (or at least advocated for it) and now you're trying to play the victim, discredit those that actually tried to stop fascism, and try to profit off the fascist President you yourself helped elect.
Seriously, sod off. Don't try to blame others for the crimes you committed.
I am telling you that if every single third party voter, including the libertarians that voted for Oliver, all voted for Harris and convinced several others to do so each, Harris would have still lost. This is an irrefutable fact, the Democrats failed to run a campaign that brought out voters like they did in 2020. They fumbled big time by not promising popular policies like Medicare for All, and the genocide in Palestine has only hurt her campaign.
The blame is not with the leftists, who are too small in number to make a difference one way or the other, but on the Democratic Party.
Finally, even if the Leftists had decided the election (which we proved they did not), then again, it was a failure of the Democratic Party to push to the right with Liz Cheney endorsements, rather than courting this imaginary powerful Leftist voting block.
Either way, it isn't on Leftists.
jesus fucking christ.
You're blaming the Democrats for losing, when you yourself obstructed the democrats from winning. You advocated for People not to vote for Kamala, which they did, and now you're blaming Kamala for losing.
You have absolutely no right to critisize the democrats or whine and bitch about the current situation.
And the Argument about third party voters is a straw argument. Because it's not about the people you convinced to vote third party, it's about those you convinced to abstain, to not vote at all
Those made the difference.
Again, Harris was up in the polls when she was using successful tactics like targeting Republicans, calling them weird, and the slogan "We Will Not Go Back!" Those were popular, she had great momentum. And then she catered to the right, her polls plumeted, and she handily lost even the popular vote.
Harris and her campaign chose to run to the right of Biden in 2020. No promises of Student Loan Forgiveness, no Medicare For All, nothing, the only issue she took a hard stance on was abortion rights. She campaigned with Liz Cheney in the context of an ongoing genocide of Palestinians, this is a tremendous failure in understanding the optics of an election.
No, FRSO, PSL, Jill Stein, no Leftist or left-leaning boycott made a damn difference in the end. It all ended up being Harris failing to replicate the positive emotions surrounding the 2020 election with broad, popular policies. You have absolutely no evidence that fringe leftists somehow influenced people into staying home when Harris herself campaigned to the right of a successful Biden 2020 campaign. They tossed the winning formula into the dirt.
Did you mean "The Dems will not save you" as in no matter if they are in control or not, or as in because they weren't elected? Neon is assuming the latter, but if you meant the former, then the entire argument is meaningless.
Little of A, little of B. Neon is making the false claim that leftists lost Harris the election, which is a separate argument from my initial claim that the Democrats are largely ineffective both because they fumbled the election majorly and failed to introduce meaningful protective policies against Republicans.
My claim was double-sided, they are arguing with one side of my claim, ergo I think it had merit.
I know tensions are high and we all want to play the blame game, but doing so won’t solve our problems. I’m angry about the same things, but I know that attacking someone who’s ostensibly on our side does nothing but cause further division between us. That’s what the fascists want.
Right now, it’s okay to grieve. We’re all dealing with intense emotions that can overwhelm our better judgement. But OP is right - in order to look forward, we must first look out for each other. The establishment has failed us. We are all we’ve got now.
classic move, blame everyone except the party that ran the most dogshit campaign I've ever seen in my life. a tale as old as time
You know what's the actual classical move?
Those that stood by and idly watched fascism rise to power blaming those that actually tried to fight it.
Your inaction, your call for inaction, directly facilitated Trumps rise to power. All so that you could virtue-signal over Issues that will get much worse under Trump than Harris. Don't act like you're the victim here.
You made your Bed and now you refuse to take responsibility and sleep in it.
Let's pretend Harris wins. Next time is again "the far right is coming; vote for us" without doing anything that makes it more difficult, like stop supporting a far right government in Israel?
I'm a (libertarian) socialist and I voted for Kamala and told others to do the same.
Do you have a source for the assertion that socialists not voting for Kamala were a large factor? I know I've heard that Muslim Americans were one demographic who, even though they were a fairly left (of what the U.S. considers center) leaning, didn't vote for Kamala. But to the extent that they're "responsible for Trump's win", I don't know that that is on "socialists" per se.
The group you are speaking of are not now washing their hands, they went to rallies and protested to have a change of position on Palestine which was not forthcoming and now that candidate is out of a job.
The US supports a genocide, people are entitled to conscientiously object to deplorable actions.