More than 100 Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and progressive Democrats and community leaders have signed a letter making the case for those reluctant to support Kamala Harris against Donald Trump.
“We know that many in our communities are resistant to vote for Kamala Harris because of the Biden administration’s complicity in the genocide,” the letter, published Thursday night, reads.
“Some of us have lost many family members in Gaza and Lebanon. We respect those who feel they simply can’t vote for a member of the administration that sent the bombs that may have killed their loved ones,” the letter continued. “As we consider the full situation carefully, however, we conclude that voting for Kamala Harris is the best option for the Palestinian cause and all of our communities.”
We live in the most depressing timeline. Please vote for genociders. They won’t stop the genocide. But they also won’t turn America overnight into a dictatorship. It’s the best of 2 profoundly horrifying and depressing options. Another decade of international American war crimes awaits either way. But at the least, the status quo for Americans is better than fascism.
With a nation as powerful as the US, it’s never going to be one issue, and the options are rarely going to be simply good things versus simply bad things - at least until we have a form of democracy that is more representative and we do a lot of work on a, let’s just admit it, undereducated, overly propagandized, and far too distracted electorate.
What is the one issue?
The US is already fascist, the dictatorship is just of the ruling class rather than a single individual and their functionaries. It is currently getting you to rationalize supporting people committing genocide.
You can do something else: you can deligitimize support for genocide and do work against it.
Do you have a plan to radicalize enough people to topple the current regime by election day?
Or is your plan to tell me that I shouldn’t care that Trump is openly allied with people who want to commit genocide against queer people like me? Do you have a plan for your queer friends if he wins? Would you have me see their deaths as permissible if he wins? Or inevitable? Is your message of radicalization “you might die but it’s fine because the other government that wouldn’t have killed you was also fascist”?
Why do I need to?
You should have solidarity with marginalized people facing genocide, not fall into the trap of pitting yourself against them because the political class threatens you. An injury to one is an injury to all.
A plan? Friend, I have been organizing for trans liberation for years, probably longer than you have been politically aware. We will do the same work as always.
Of course not. Though I am not sure exactly which deaths you are referring to, nor the mechanism.
That is a difficult question to answer when I don’t know what you are specifically referring to. Many deaths of marginalized people would be preventable if we defeat oppression. Most are the product of policy and deprivation accumulated over decades of control under both parties. My homeless trans friends are not having a good time right now. They live in a blue city in a blue state under the Biden-Harris administration. One died earlier this year for reasons attributable to the material deprivations I mentioned before. They had a better life when Trump was in power and there were larger unemployment payouts and efforts to house people.
The only person pitting marginalized people against each other here is you, friend.
So, your argument boils down to… Trump and Kamala Harris have the same attitudes towards preventing violence against queer people? Or are you arghuing he would be better than her at protecting the lives of trans people?
Yeah I’m not defending this system you’ll note earlier I pointed out that they are genociders. I lamented that this is the reality we live in. I am an anarchist, a syndicalist and a marxist. I am in favor of the revolution. I also believe that mass murder is something that should be avoided whenever possible and that morality is affected by context. That the morality of sending one vote alone, one vote that does nothing to hurt the cause of revolutionary socialism, can be positive in that it works to prevent the status quo from being replaced by a significantly worse one that results in mass death of many more people. Your trans homeless friends defo have it rough, the queer americans in my community do too. They would have it decidedly worse if America was dictatorially controlled by christian white nationalists.
Jesus christ I’m so done with Liberals and I’m so done with people who see themselves as “enlightened” leftists. If I think that voting for a democratic government is a good idea, as it minimizes the likelihood of a total open fascist takeover of the US government and the placing of the US under martial law and enabling every political decision in the country to be made by a racist homophobic child rapist, then I’m supporting the neoliberal reality of America and killing homeless people or something. But if I point out that, Kamal Harris and Joe Biden are international war criminals who have committed acts of genocide by funding and arming a terrorist state actively committing the palestinian genocide, then I’m spreading misinformation or I don’t care about women or queer people.
I’m so done with arguing on this. I’m nearing a state of utter acceptance that Trump will takeover and probably allow christian white nationalists to start a queer holocaust on American soil, or else that Kamala will win and the neoliberal western democracies will continue to death spiral towards inevitable neo-nazi fascism, and in either case all the while Israel creates its own lebensraum throughout the middle-east by committing genocide on a scale literally not seen since world war 2. You tell me not to vote, to just magically hope that everyone else across the continent will rise up and overthrow the american neoliberal machine all at once by some kind of act of god or something. You tell me that it doesn’t matter if round ups start happening and trans people like me get thrown into mass prison camps and slaughtered. Don’t play this nonsense game acting as though you have no idea about Project 2025, no idea what the fascist right is planning for queer people. They aren’t subtle. They know if they get him in power there is literally NOTHING we can do to materially prevent them from making being trans point blank illegal, to have it classified as sex crime, and to use lists theyve made to round us all up en mass.
How in god’s name do you think you’re convincing anyone?
It doesn’t, no. I said nothing like that. I would expound on that topic but I think it is counterproductive to entertain things I didn’t say.
I am confused by your conclusions. Please refer to the things I said that led you to this conclusion. I think you are struggling to rationalize your perspective with mine, but I have a very different idea of power and electoralism than you do.
Yes, the system must be overturned.
Nice! Good to meet you.
I agree with the idea of individual voting to be a bourgeois concern. I would gladly go on at length about building power in other, better ways, at least at another time.
I am intentionally focusing on a bourgeois moral argument because it gets to the core of how this audience thinks and how they are forgiving themselves for supporting genocide. Their identities are wrapped up in being the good people, and isn’t that, then at least the smart people doing their best to limit bad things. This is why the people who respond never address what I say directly, they just flail around looking for reasons to attack me or make some things up to make themselves feel right or try to make it about their advanced mathematical understanding of a lesser evil argument (that is a joke).
I focus in the bourgeois moralism for one simple reason: to agitate against normalization of genocide. Organizing work happens outside of a place like Lemmy Dot World.
Regarding your last point, there is something you should understand about what is happening here given your identification with the left. Liberals are announcing exactly what level of depravity they will accept for their political class. This one has the filter of racism and xenophobia to libricatw that process, but it is crystal clear: along this oath, there is no bottom. Consider what that means as US hegemony breaks down and climate change ramps up. Dems have already pivoted right in immigration and the climate. This is exactly the kind of thinking that will prevent the concept of revolution from even getting off the ground. You will be labelled a terrorist and your life forfeit by people with this attitude. Just like the genocide of Gaza, they will tell themselves and you that their hearts go out, but unfortunately you chose to belong to a terrorist org and it is actually funny that a Proud Boy shot you.
This is “harm reduction” and lesser evil logic that is incompatible with the traditions you have identified with. It is also short-sighted. What do you think the trajectory is for a political class whose voters are all automatically supportive, including when they do genocide? Are they going to make any policy concessions? Why? There is a reason that they are the ones telling you to follow this logic. It is not revolutionary irganozations2 telling you to do this. It is not great theorists. It is big standard capitalist party sheepdogging. Genocide edition.
The Christian White Nationalists are enabled and promoted by the “harm reduction” vote. These are pseudo-foils serving the same masters. The neo-fascists are responding to degrading conditions and a society with ubiquitous reactionary marginalization narratives to leverage to divert pain from loss of status or material well-being into racism and xenophobia. Dems are particularly effective at degrading conditions while preventing a left outlet, while promoting their right flank as an “opponent” that justifies voting blue. And while doing so, they move right. This course is one of mutual amplification, not harm reduction.
Do you think that? How? Who told you that was good reasoning? I am sure it was among liberals. I do not mean that as an insult, I mean that it is literally a liberal framing of electoralism and political power. It is how they coopt your energy.
I think I am running out if character space on this comment. I would also like to center Palestinians rather than an extended discussion of US electoralism in this particular thread, if that is okay with you. If you would like to continue this discussion or have me go over the rest of what you replied, I would be happy to do so in a different thread or via DMs.