this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
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Anarchism and Social Ecology
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To clarify the point of the post for outsiders:
Anti voting is the view that one must not be satisfied with voting, and must do more outside than voting, that is in contrast to the popular perception in which voting is seen as a way to bring about change when in reality it's anything but.
Voting will always work to concentrate power in the hands of the few because the powerful won't let it be anything other than a way to consolidate power, this would be directly against their interest.
Historically change was brought about by protest, struggle and sabotage.
Even in the social democracies in the nordics change was brought about because the struggle in Russia and Ukraine was seen as a threat to the capitalist system, this even fits with expectations as with the fall of the USSR and the veneer of a "socialist state", worker and human rights are being rolled back.
People voted for FDR instead of Herbert Hoover, and that ultimately resulted in some pretty sweet policies. It wasn't perfect, but that is a prime example of a presidential vote being worth casting, in addition to more anarchist methods of bringing change.
There was a lot of protests happening at that time which really helped motivate the new president to actually do something, but if all those protestors chose not to vote, Hoover could've been elected instead, which seems... Not ideal?
If i remember correctly, a lot of what FDR did was because the worker protests, led by communists, were extremely popular, as well as labor unions, so it is implied that this requires more than voting. Then again i read on that a few years ago and I'm not american so i might not remember the details so good 🤷♂️
As far as I'm aware, it was a combination of unemployed worker protests combined with WWI veterans demanding their bonus certificates be cashed early, known as the Bonus Army, marching to the capital. Both of which were motivated by the economic depression of that time.
From the first link, I did spot one communist protest in Rhode Island that was 10k strong, as well as a protest in Boston, Massachusetts that was 40k strong against capitalism (though it does not specify if it was communist).
As I mentioned in my previous comment, the thing that really pushed FDR to do the right thing after he was elected was the powerful protests, but I would maintain that had the protestors not voted out of principle and Hoover had won instead, it is likely not much would've been done to alleviate the suffering and conditions those protestors were protesting. Hoover publicly denounced every positive effort put forward by FDR. He also showed how he would've dealt with more protests had he stayed in power from his treatment of the Bonus Army.
Y'all are gonna be real unhappy with how things work out for the anarchists if Trump wins. Obama was a conservative Democrat and McCain was a center-right Republican; there was a ton of overlap. Between Biden and Trump there is a yawning chasm.
I agree with the protest, struggle and sabotage. Bringing not voting into the equation in this particular election is like refusing to put out your house on fire, because one of the firefighters voted for Ronald Reagan.
That's a long comment to write considering you didn't read my own
I did read your comment. You said "voting is seen as a way to bring about change when in reality it's anything but." In this particular election in this particular year, that's very obviously not true, and seems like a particular and pernicious message. In my opinion.
If you'd been commenting under a pro-activism-outside-voting post, we'd be having a whole different conversation, because there is a lot of your comment that I agree with. You're commenting under an anti-voting post though, and there are definitely parts of this post and your comment that I disagree with.
I've been noticing a lot of recycled memes, this one over ten years old, targeted at leftist communities, with a general subtle message of "don't vote." You can explain it for outsiders as much as you like; if you think that's a good thing or not worthy of comment, then I'm not sure what to tell you.
Edit: I calmed down my language a little
Trump wins, my country gets plundered. Biden wins, my country gets plundered. I can't even vote in your stupid elections asshole.
I'm sure a bunch of little Honduran kids who still may never see their real families again are super sympathetic to your "both sides." Trump doesn't fuck things up only for Americans; he has the capacity to hurt a huge number of people pretty much everywhere in the world.
Also, if you didn't want feedback on your opinions as they pertain to the US election, why'd you post a meme with an opinion about the US election?
Biden kept the concentration camps open. What's the difference? The entire point of the meme is imperialism, that nothing has changed since Obama's election, that no matter who wins, imperialism wins. I suppose I can't expect an Americano to understand that.
Biden stopped family separations, tried to reunite the kids with their parents wherever it's even still possible, and he's currently in a fight with the government of Texas because Texas wants to keep their deadly cruelty to helpless migrants alive, and accelerate it, and he's trying to stop them. Trump wants to do mass deportations "on day 1."
But please, keep going with your fascism-apologist rhetoric while pretending that it's somehow anti-Imperialist. I know multiple people the arc of whose lives is radically different because of Obama-era immigration reform, so you're going to have a real hard time convincing me that these things don't matter.
Biden kept the concentration camps open. Any good he's doing is just white wash. Fuck your country.
He also did NOT stop family separations. That's bogus propaganda. He's continued and worsened them.
And his beef with Texas is not that Texas wants to hurt immigrants and Genocide Joe wants to protect them; it's literally a competition between Texas and the feds on who gets to have supreme authority in their sadistic immigrant abuse. I sometimes joke that they'll probably settle their differences by having an immigrant murdering competition and go home at the end of the day to back claps and a round of drinks, no matter the outcome.
Certain brands of liberal bend over fucking backwards to distort reality in order to defend their favorite fascist. Gross. Don't step in that.
As for the Nordics. With the fall of the USSR you had a massive worker pool starting to compete with the Western workers for jobs. Especially China opening up allowed companies to not negotiate with unions and just offshore jobs. At the same time you had massive growth in the global work force, just from population growth. That gave capitalist the option to offshore jobs and that weakened the labor movement. That really hurt the left in the West a lot, as they obviously had the most expensive workers in the world.
The good news is that this is changing. China and the US are in a trade war. Russia is in a real war. Most of the world already has opened up to capitalism, so the number of locations to offshore to are limited. Population growth is slowing down, with the working age population growing much much slower.
We can already see some changes. Unions are getting stronger in the US. Same story in Europe, with some truely large strikes recently. That probably means better workers rights and so forth in the future. If not with the unions then some other way.
The idea is sound enough, but the rhetoric is deeply unpalatable. Focus on what you think people should be doing, not not doing.
I've gone over it, albeit on a surface level to keep it relatively short, if you really want to know more then you ought to listen to people who go deeper than i am, not to go all "I'm not here to educate you" but you really do have better sources than a stranger's comment on the internet.
I'm trying to be very clear that I understand and mostly agree with the ideas that underlie the rhetoric, which I think is unfortunately not up to the same standard. If we want these ideas to catch on, we're going to need a prettier bow on it than "don't vote", which is discouraging and whiffs of fifth column.
I agree, i even said "don't vote" is explicitly not the message, the image above is just agitation that is meant to spur people into action beyond mere voting for an alternative.