807
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
807 points (84.5% liked)
Political Memes
8991 readers
2344 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The dems as a whole wouldn't be moving back as quickly. If your in one of the groups you'd be better off being in a delicate but protected class rather than persecuted. Having obstruction to arms shipments would help Palestinians.
So back to you, how's not voting achieving anything? Its proven to be a strategic blunder. Tamkies that say otherwise aren't serious people.
Non voting has been the biggest block for several election cycles now.
Its not blue no matter who. Its blue when harm reduction is one of the limited choices and working to expand the progressive wing where possible.
What an asinine statement.
People aren't voting because they're Marxist and they're taking a principal position against electoralism. People aren't voting because they know their vote doesn't count.
People like me aren't the problem. My goal is to get people energized and involved in local politics which is vastly more important than the stupid electoral politics that this community keeps pushing. The Democrats lead us here and allowed this to happen. But yeah let's just keep giving them the keys to the kingdom because the other guys are worse
What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?
harm reduction doesn't work if it did Trump wouldn't be in office.
harm reduction isn't going to get people to vote people couldn't be arsed to vote in 2020/2024. You think shouting about harm reduction is going to get those people back in the voting booth?
The DNC have systematically shut down the progressive wing and we have less progressives in office now than we did in 2016.
Our institutions have abandoned us to the wolves and we need to build new ones. The faster y'all recognize that the faster that work can finish
Its not blue no matter who. Its blue when harm reduction is one of the limited choices and working to expand the progressive wing where possible.
No show has been the biggest block of voters pretty much every election for decades now. Their votes don't count because they are not voting for them to be counted.
Marginalized communities were 100% under dem control. Not in ideal conditions, but not being hunted.
In none of my comments I have said that voting is the only front. I am saying it is one of many and a very important one. Tankies like yourself are discouraging people from showing up and giving even more control to the far right. It makes you some very bad allies. Hispanics would not be hunted for sport. Abortion rights not rolled back as quickly. Palestine might have a better chance if we could block arms shipments fueling their destruction.
It's always about harm reduction. Was about harm reduction in 2016, it was about harm reduction in 2020, it was about harm reduction in 2024.
No one cares. Liberal activists have been banging the drum about harm reduction for the better part of 20 years.
You think continuing to go on about harm reduction is going to get the apathetic electorate to vote?
Yeah you're damn right there are people out here encouraging people to not waste their time with electoralism. There are much better places we should be spending our energy where it actually matters.
As far as the safety of minority groups under Democrat leadership I'd say it's a wash given that state leadership is far far more important than Federal leadership.
The Democrats will not save us nor will they deliver us from fascism
Did you read where I wrote this:
Can't move past harm reduction if you are not growing the progressive wing where possible. Either in the dem party or spinning of a serious 3rd party. Libertarian, as gross as they are, have made their ideas main stream in the Rs. Again tankies discouraging voting is abandoning a key front in the [class] war and rolling over for fascists.
Tankies just aren't serious people. Ive never had a tankie like yourself propose and different actionable plan. If they were serious they would have one to talk about rather than just shitting on what we do have.
Not voting has cost us LGBT, womens, and other rights. So... yeah they have a lot at stake. This is a [class] war and in all war you don't have a say about when it stops.
Have you not watched that Democratic party sacrifice the progressives on the altar of so-called progress?
Can't grow a progressive Wing if it's constantly stopped out by the DNC. 🙄
It's wonderful you understand we're in a class war. It's idiotic how you think electoralism is a major front in the class war. You know how I know this? Because groups have already tried the strategy you're talking about in history and specifically failed to save themselves from fascism. See Germany in the 1900s.
You say "not voting" has cost us the rights of women lgbtq minorities and other people, I say pushing a strategy of harm reduction for the Electoral it for the past 20 years is the reason that those rights were lost.
Lol.
I keep scrolling waiting for you to do something other than complain. I'm waiting for you to present some kind of path forward.
The closest you've gotten so far is implying that we need new political parties, while apparently being completely unaware that we are NOWHERE NEAR a viable 3rd party in this country. That would take YEARS of one putting in the hard work and winning local/state elections and getting MORE THAN ZERO members in the House and Senate.
You're over here whining about the Democrat party, trying to get people to not vote for them, when there is no viable alternative and absolutely, positively, 100% will not be one by the next election.
You want to wipe the board clean instead of reforming an already super established party. That's childish and won't work.
LOCALLY ORGANIZE
I don't think I can be much clear about the solution. Do you think voting in 2026/2028 is going to save us? Thats funny. How about we focus on making it to 2028.
I don't want people to waste their time volunteering with the Democrats when they could be working with one of the other hundreds of local organizations that actually uplift there community instead of just burn the averages voters goodwill
You know we can do more than one thing at a time right?
You know there's an efficient use of time and then there is a waste of time right?
Yeah, which is why I am saying to put some of that protest energy into voting as well. We need to follow though to get policy. Otherwise the protest was just a hangout.
But we don't get to vote on policy. Not often. Not on the federal level and very rarely in a way that matters locally.
Our Representatives don't represent us and our government does not represent the majority will of the people and hasn't regardless of which party is in office.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't vote I'm saying that people shouldn't waste time convincing others to vote or who to vote for.
I just don't care about people trying to organize and won't waste my time helping others beyond my most intimidate eye sight
Fuck bro can you imagine if we had a SC that could rule that the overturning of RoeVWade is not allowed? Or that the shipments of more ammo to Israel needs to be stopped. Privileged people like you are not in the front line, but you are abandoning those who are.
Yep. You caught me. Local organization helps with none of these things and you're right I should waste more of my time trying to convince people to vote in a system that won't represent them or fix anything.
Really you should take this attitude to a Native American reservation watch how it plays out. I'm sure they won't have a ton of reasons why they refuse to vote in the US elections. And I'm sure they won't take any offense to you claiming that they're in a privileged position to not vote.
Yes Supreme Court that acts like that would be nice. Too bad that's literally never existed in the United States for its entire history.
You know what else would be nice if Bernie got elected in 2016 but over in reality we have to deal with what's here. Not idealism land where if you logic hard enough you can get all the apathetic voters to vote and every voter who's going to vote third party to vote for the party of your choice.
Your mistake is thinking that people are rational creatures that will always make a decision based on that rationality when in fact we are irrational creatures that contain a multitude of contradictory opinions.
Reality is recognizing that there is no magic wand to make apathetic voters come to the table and your pleas about minority safety will fall on deaf ears. Americans are an incredibly selfish bunch.
Call me privileged all you want you have no idea about my life who I am what I'm protecting or what I need to do to survive. It's almost like one should say that you need to check your privilege
Well there aren't any near me so no can do chief... unless i vote for someone that will expand aid to them...
Would you vote to help keep their rights?
Your Privilege is showing again. Native Americans aren't exactly Keen on getting us Aid. Something about the numerous strings attached.
I would vote pragmatically for the candidate who promises to do the most with the best track record. Which probably won't be the Democrat or the Republican.
So the thing I've been asking you and other tankies to do, but you keep saying you won't and would buy a jacket to rub in my face instead?
Noted I will not make sarcastic comments like that anymore. You do have a point that you never attacked my character for the most part. So I probably should not have made the comment about getting a jacket specifically to rile you up.
Regardless I wouldn't go buy the jacket I would make it. Much more ethical that way.
Other tankies will do what you want them to do but they will not spend their time doing the other thing you want them to do which is try to engage people to get them to vote. They will see it like I do as a waste of time.
You can try this thing on Anarchist and they would respond the same. They would see it as a waste of time.
You were not going to beat the government by playing in the government's own Turf and following their rules
Like I said its not the only front, just one of many.
I addressed this:
And i think its idiotic you are abandoning people you could be helping.
Yeah you didn't actually address my point that the DNC squashes Progressive politics so that there isn't a progressive wing and there will not be one in the DNC. It's fun to pretend though but you did actually address this concern though.
It's not my fault that you lack creativity and are unable to imagine a way of helping people that doesn't involve electoralism and think that's abandoning people 🙄
Because you don't vote. And we won't have a third party win local elections because tankies discourage taking action to win those elections.
Ooo. Finally we got a reason.
Explain how me not voting, which you have no idea if I did or not, fails to push Progressive politics in the dnc?
I also didn't say that you shouldn't vote only that you shouldn't waste your time with electoralism. Meaning that people should vote for who they want regardless of the screeching the liberals do. And that they shouldn't waste their time doing anything with those parties since local organizations are far more important than political parties.
Here in fact I got a great Counterpoint to this idiotic line of thinking. In 2020 we had the largest voting turnout we have ever had And end it up With one of the most institutional governments the Democrats have ever given us. How come that didn't result into the progressive Wing that you keep talking about? We also have record-setting votes during the midterms 2022. I wonder what happened to those progressives. It's not like we have a foreign lobbyist organization that does its best to ensure that progressives can't get anywhere. It's also not like the powers that be in the DNC do their absolute best to ensure that progressives can't get anywhere.
Your behavior aligns with someone who didn't. And the biggest voter block was non-voting.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1grcztm/voter_distribution_in_us_2024_presidential/
I see there's no response to me completely dismantling your point about creating a progressive Wing in the DNC.
Can we stop pretending electoralism is important? As I said multiple multiple times in this thread people should be spending their energy locally organizing with local organizations that do things like Feed the Homeless, or help those in a poverty situation.
It is important. This last election shows as much.
Yes we spent so much time and energy in electoralism to just for the Democrats to give the election to Trump 👍
What a wonderful use of our time, energy, and money.
Again, look who the biggest group is:
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1grcztm/voter_distribution_in_us_2024_presidential/
Yes and harping on those apathetic voters to vote for harm reduction has been such a wonderful strategy for the past 20 years.
If you want those apathetic voters to vote you need to get them involved in local organizations so that they can actually see change in their local community. This gets people engage in politics and they will do things like engaging electoralism and go vote which deals with the apathetic voter issue.
But you don't get there by solely focusing on getting people to vote. You get there on getting people engaged with their local organizations in their community.
Again you won't have the space to do things locally and grow progressive movements if you don't engage in elections. And non-voting is the biggest slot. Tankies just don't have realy policy. My city wanted to criminalize sex workers some years back and make it hard to reach them with healthcare. Voters said no. Its also easier to get an abortion when its not criminalized. Tankies ignore the material reality of voting, as such they are not serious about the [class] war.
You keep using the term material conditions. I don't think it means what you think it means and as a communist I find your use of that term frankly to be offensive.
If you're going to use marxian terms at least go to the reading to figure out what they mean.
Congratulations your city managed to use labor power to vote down some shit that should have never been offered up to vote in the first place and would not have ever been offered up to vote in a communist Society or in a locally run organization. You guys going to do that every time for the rest of Eternity to ensure that the powers that be don't pass those laws? And you wonder why people are burnt out and apathetic.
Furthermore your issue on the right to assembly is just as valid under the Democrats as it is under Trump because both parties are guilty of limiting the right to assembly. The United Kingdom labor party's actions against the group called Palestine action. See the United States response to college campus protests.
And you're just grasping at straws trying to literally find anything to invalidate my point when people have been meeting in groups secretly or not for years whether or not it's illegal.
Maybe get offended at the erosion of our rights and the increase in attacks on the vulnerable. It is rather privileged of you to just not care enough to be pragmatic on the elections front.
And we won't be able to if you keep no showing. [Class] War does not end because you want it to.
Remember when I said its not blue no matter who? Its about harm reduction where its the only option. Growing the progressive wing where we can. Even if that is 3rd party.
Its now illegal to get an abortion and to help someone that needs it. Cesar Chavez held group meetings to organize and police tried to intimidate. Sure would be helpful to have sympathetic minds in city hall to give him room to organize his labor movement.
Its important and tankies neglecting it shows they are not serious about our material conditions.
I mean I've shown at this point conclusively that we've known about this issue in the United States since at least the 90s. In fact there was talk about this in the 80s.
There's been a soul focus on getting apathetic voters to engage for about the last 20 years which hasn't worked and you think the best thing is to double down on a strategy that hasn't worked?
But I'm ignoring material conditions?
Okay since you're so interested in talking about material conditions let's talk material conditions. Who controls the Democrats and the Republicans because it's not the voters. It's the people with a shit ton of money that can then use their money as speech to vote.
Is entirely inconsequential to get 10 million people to stand on the side of a road for a protest that does not threaten power. This was something that even MLK Jr recognized which is why he was historically unpopular during his time. He did things like shut down the highways, Shut down bus routes, shut down cities. They never used violence they only just stood in the way but it was effective. You'll notice that the 10 million strong that we just had in the no Kings protest did none of those things and thus nothing changed.
How many people begged Biden to change his Palestine policy and told him that he was going to lose the election because of it? 1, 2, 1000?
Man electoralism is so good at getting our politicians to listen to us.
I wonder who was in control in the 90s, what party when we went through both recession and lost all of our manufacturing jobs. And I wonder how that happened and what economic theory can be used to explain it. I mean it's not like the Democrats did anything to fix all of the social cutting by the Reagan administration nor did they put back any of the regulations they removed that would have resulted in a much different outcome for us today they had put those restrictions back.
We had a record number of Voters turn out in 2024 and it wasn't enough.
The capitalists are not interested in what we want and they're spending Millions upon millions of dollars to ensure that will never get it and that what we do get will be ineffective compromises that barely count as a solution. It's why we couldn't get a minimum wage increase through and it's why we can't get something that every other fucking country in the world has.
You know what I remember about all of this a large focus on electoralism and how that if we just get the Democrats in we can do the necessary work to push them farther left wing but that doesn't seem to have work now does it. If anything the Democrats are further right than they've ever been and what they offer us are are social platitudes that don't meaningfully affect anybody's lives.
Every election I have ever lived through has always been about voting in the Lesser evil and pushing the Democrats to the left and it's not worked
Stop pushing insanity. Whenever we manage to achieve through the electoral process will be undone as soon as the capitalists are able to do so and that is also historically true. Pretending that electoralism is going to do anything other than delay the inevitable is a pipe dream of those who only want to live in peace who cannot understand that that was never an option.
Yes, and in your blind privileged don't see why even harm reduction helps the most vulnerable.
Remember the graphic? Shows there are people we have not reached for our cause. Electorally or otherwise.
Remember where I said elections are the only front in the class war? Because i didn't. Protests are important. I am saying that we need to convert those into policy and part of how we do that is voting.
Which is why they are involved in electoral politics. Because it materially helps them and suppresses our ability to build. Hence why we need to be active on that front too.
I do remember the graphic. Remember how nothing we've tried in the last 20 years has gotten that number to move? I do.
It's Rich to call my position privileged with the way your arguing.
Remember when I said you shouldn't spend a lot of time on electoralism. Lenin agrees. Not that you care because to you he would be the ultimate tankie.
You're not the one worried about getting home to an empty house because your parents are now at Alligator Auschwitz. You don't seem bothered that discrimination laws are being rolled back. Certainly not enough to have your voice officially recorded as saying no to that. Not enough to help those beyond your town that need help.
Pretty privileged really.
Lol I spend my time local organizing and helping my community but that doesn't matter to you clearly.
It only counts if I waste my time advocating for electoralism.
Thats a pretty dumb position and one that is clearly born of privileged.
And you should take an evening to vote as well.
Nope. Going to get a big jacket that says "Voting is for chumps" just so I can watch liberal go off.
Definitely don't think that people should pragmatically vote and then leave it at that instead of wasting anymore time in electoralism
Just be sure to check your privilege at the check out.
From the person that thinks electoralism will save us...
Yeah great bit of advice.
Just one front in the class war. Thanks for helping fascists win ground without contest and leaving many of us to suffer for it. Not every one has the privileged to not care about the out comes of elections.
Fascist gonna fascist and the Democrats should not have sold us down the river.
I mean arguably you're losing electoral strategy is the reason the fascists are at the door. So take some pride in your own contributions to the mess that we've created.
Vote 3rd party if you are in place where you can.
I plan on it.
And I hope you can. I live in deep red texas. 3rd party is anarcho capitalist libertarians, so I vote blue. I am not saying they are then end all be all, but those ancaps get votes and then part of their platform gets mainlined in the R party. Those are material consequences of elections.
I understand that's what you think but I think you're going to be disappointed in the outcome of those actions