this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2024
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Because boycotting is powerful. People forget this
There is no benefit in losing our democracy to a christo-fascist takeover. And historically when Democrats lose, they move further to the right. If people on the left want to shift the Overton window towards them, they should be a reliable voting block during elections and build grassroots movements between elections.
This is literally how the US system was designed to function - making significant changes requires stringing together electoral wins over the span of decades. The more a party loses, the more it concedes ideological ground to the opposition. Yesterday's conservatives become today's moderates.
PSL seems to actively organize stuff, I've seen PSL promote a lot of protests over social media and pro-Palestine organizations like PYM and SJP occasionally repost PSL stuff. Meanwhile I haven't seen Dems do a thing except maybe help people sign up to vote or something.
Unlike the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Democratic Party has a chance at winning in our first-past-the-post election system. Being able to vote for a socialist party in elections that used rank choice voting would be preferable. In order to improve our democracy to that point we first have to keep it against christo-fascist takeovers. Voting for Democrats in this election is useful for the purposes of achieving socialism and true majority rule democracy.
Democrats not working with groups like the Uncommitted Movement, Palestinian Youth Movement, and Students for Justice in Palestine has been a serious strategic mistake by the Democrats. Even just a willingness to have further discussions with these groups would help Democrats election chances this year and going forward.
I'm confused by the last paragraph in terms of why a pro-Palestine organization would want to work with a party that is actively genociding them. Democrats working with those groups would have been a great strategy, meaning they wouldn't have funded the genocide in the first place. Right now a lot of Muslims who would otherwise be somewhat apolitical are voting green because of this, and SJP is outwardly condemning Democratic candidates like Biden and Kamala. If it was only the Republicans that were causing the genocide those people would probably be promoting Democrats.
Israel is actively committing genocide against the Palestinians. Biden is complicit in that genocide. The Democrats want a ceasefire. There have been numerous cases of push back from Biden's own administration against his stance on Israel-US relations. The Republicans want the genocide to continue until all Palestinians are dead. Trump has said Israel needs to be allowed to finish what they started.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/biden-administration-staff-sign-open-letter-demanding-ceasefire-israel-rcna125057
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/02/politics/us-government-employees-gaza-policy-statement/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/04/politics/trump-israel-comments/index.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-israel-gaza-finish-problem-rcna141905
Given that Democrats want the Palestinians to exist and the Republicans do not, it makes sense that the pro-Palestinian groups should want to ally with the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party's inability to get on the right side of history on this issue should not deter pro-Palestinian groups from acting in their own self-interest to achieve their goals. Palestinian statehood would be dead under a Republican christo-fascist dictatorship along with millions of people.
Thus it is useful to pro-Palestinian groups to attempt to ally with the Democrats even if the Democrats fail to reciprocate. The reverse is true for the Democrats. A tit-for-tat copy cat strategy is not useful in this situation. Both pro-Palestinian groups and the Democratic Party need each other and the sooner they both come to acknowledge the mutual beneficial nature of a partnership the better.
If the Democrats wanted a ceasefire they would actually be trying to make that happen. The staff pushing for a ceasefire, some of whom remained anonymous out of fear of retaliation, are going against standard Democratic policies. Also that article happened a year ago, still no ceasefire. Meanwhile seeing what Democratic political figures who are on the highest levels of government post, all I ever see is either explicitly pro-Israel stuff or pulling the "protesters are anti-patriotic and pro-Hamas" card. Pro-Palestine Democrats are a minority if they even exist, and the majority of the party who actually has an influence in public policy is bought out by the military-industrial complex and other corporations and don't give a shit about anything but their paycheck - Democrats overall are only escalating the conflict and are not going to end the genocide no matter how much they pretend they want to - Biden hasn't and Kamala has made it clear which side she is on.
Wow those bombs the Democrats sent them sure seem happy to help Palestinians grow and prosper
Have you even been paying attention to the protests? Unlike lemmy.world politics, these protesters hold a very fine line between what is tolerated and what isn't, meaning anything that causes their families death and suffering through their tax dollars crosses that very fine line. The entire purpose of the protests is to demonstrate that this issue is not one they will negotiate with. Expecting a group to tolerate their families being less bombed over more bombed is fucking ridiculous. I wouldn't want my family to be bombed at all and neither do Palestinians.
Palestinians will be dead regardless of whether it is a christo-fasticst dictatorship or a corporate-fascist dictatorship committing the genocide. Don't expect them to negotiate with either of them.
Democrats, including Kamala, have shown opposition to Israel's genocide, while Republicans have not. Your argument doesn't even seem to recognize that Republicans want to completely eliminate the Palestinians. If your argument was actually in the interest of the Palestinians it wouldn't be for a course of action that will ensure their destruction.
Your argument's subject moral reasoning will not end the genocide or ensure Palestinian statehood so it is not useful to the Palestinians or pro-Palestinian groups.
People act in their own self-interest. If the pro-Palestinian groups are going to use any political party it will be the Democratic Party because that is the option available to them. Grassroots movements can shift a political party on the political spectrum. It's reasonable that pro-Palestinian groups will work to shift the Democratic Party to the left. This includes voting in US elections for Democrats, as Democrats shift to the right when they lose, historically speaking. As apposed to do nothing to impact US politics and let themselves be destroyed.
Words don't stop genocides, actions do, and the Biden-Harris administration has made no actions to prove that they are any better than Republicans on this issue. Pro-Palestine groups have one job and it is to make sure Palestinians aren't being oppressed and genocided. They are putting pressure on Democrats to stop the genocide, but their job is not complete until their demands are actually met. Negotiating for a kindof genocide is not what they exist for, and it makes their stance appear weak and easy to manipulate so they are not going to do it. If they convince the Democrats or whatever political party is in power to stop, they win. If they don't, the protests create discourse and increased discontent among the community for the government as they go mask off with their fascism, which then puts more pressure on the government from the community to stop and the cycle repeats until somebody caves in.
In the face of a christo-fascist takeover your argument's strategy of doing nothing because of moral reasons is useless.
See open letters cited in previous sources. Trump said Israel needs to complete their genocide. See previous sources.
There won't be any Democratic Party to leverage once Republicans jail their political opponents and we are all in death camps.
We need to keep our democracy long enough to change our society for the better. This means voting is a mechanical choice each election cycle and that grassroots movements are used to get more progressive and socialist candidates into positions of power between elections. The calculus for pro-Palestinian groups is the same. Vote!
https://www.vote.org/
I'm talking about what the Pro-Palestine groups are doing, not what I'm doing, since you keep saying Pro-Palestine groups should promote Democratic candidates so I'm explaining why they aren't doing that. Since you think you know how a pro-Palestine organization should be run, why don't you go to a protest, find an organizer, and tell them your idea then let me know how that goes? I'm not in charge of those groups so if you're going to argue about what candidates Pro-Palestine groups should support you're wasting your energy on the wrong person.
My argument is that it is in the strategic interest of both pro-Palestinian groups and the Democratic Party to work together. My argument has refuted your argument by explaining how its strategy, of doing nothing, is not useful to either of these groups.
Now is the time for voting. Polls will close on November 5th. It is in the strategic interest of people on the left to vote.
By refuting your arguments other people will see that they are meritless and vote.
https://www.vote.org/
I don't know saying Trump is a fascist seems kind of propaganda to me. Don't get me wrong I'm not voting for him and I don't like him either
He’s a fascist because the definition of fascist applies to him.
Trump is one the spewing fascist rhetoric.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/07/trump-immigrants-crime-00182702
Weird, I recognized the rhetoric but not the username. Here is the Project 2025 link again:
https://www.25and.me/?topics=
And the full project 2025 website:
https://www.project2025.org/
Republicans are overrepresented because of the electoral college in presidential elections. Republicans do better with low voter turnout because more people are inclined to vote for Democrats, but those people tend to be concentrated in cities and certain states. It's how Trump won the 2016 election despite losing the popular vote. Meaning Democrats need more votes to overcome high population states and cities from being underrepresented in elections.
So by not voting in this election, people are making it easier for Republicans to win by not helping to overcome this anti-democratic advantage that Republicans have. By not voting a person can contribute to Trump's success even without supporting him.
Thankfully there is still time to vote.
https://www.vote.org/
Because ~~boycotting~~ propaganda is powerful.
FTFY
Has any boycott actually done shit at a national scale in the last 20 years?
Every boycotted vote I've heard of just involved the boycotting camp shooting themselves in the foot just assuming it was gonna go the other way anyways and then wondering why their foot was bleeding so much.
I’ll save everyone the time-
No. No it hasn’t.
lol classic whataboutism
Are you a Russian bot?