Violence not Votes
(midwest.social)
CobraCommander
Memes of ProductionIts disturbing to me, bringing Holocaust as example here, but not Boston Tea, no French, Haitian, russian or Chinese revolutions, Mexico, Iran or Cuba also are great examples. Yet, not all of them went for good.
For why Holocaust is bad example., there's other comments, but even slavery is bad - slavery ended in many local places by riots, since very first slavery, thousands year ago, such riots happened. But it still lasted as law, new ownerships were made, next peoples were enslaved. Until some law on ups were changed, mostly by... votes.
Wanna change something, change the ups, govs.
Holocaust might have ended through war, but it could have been prevented through ballot box in 1933
Hitler wasn't voted in. His party got a small minority of votes. He was appointed chancellor by the liberals and conservatives.
He was fought in the streets by the KPD, but the SPD and the aforementioned groups worked against them, choosing to make Hitler Chancellor in order to give him the power he needed to crack down on the KPD.
The holocaust wouldnt have happened if the spartacists hadn't been so naive.
The holocaust is a crazy bad example for this argument.
As far as I understand, there weren't significant riots or uprisings within Germany that led to the Nazi's downfall.
...Ironically considering the voting claim, the Holocaust was stopped because of the choices of voters in faraway places. (okay, that and invading Russia rarely ends well for anyone, including the Russians.)
But that would require effort from the us population.
And, according to the voting stats, only ⅓rd of them will possibly put some effort in.
The other 3rd wants it as it is.
And the last 3rd either doesn't care or will protest riot because of Kamala Harris's laugh...
"her laugh" you people are so fucking ghoulish. Yeah man, genocide is just a fringe issue.
I disagree that internal uprisings and riots were a factor in ending the Holocaust, but violence certainly was.
I’m not interested in being friendly or even civil to Russians, Americans, or Israelis who aren’t busy working to overthrow their government.
The point of the meme is not historical accuracy but that voting is bad.
You should pull every lever you have. Riot. Vote. Be loud as fuck. Throw a brick at a cop. Do it all. Fuck 'em.
Voting isn't really a lever at all 😕
It really was a genius move to prevent uprisings, fix the candidates but everyone will blame eachother when whichever one wins inevitably perpetuates the orphan killing machine
Might not help. Doesn't hurt.
It could very well hurt you individually, especially if makes good on their threats to have ICE at the polls. And collectively, most people see voting as a tacit endorsement of the system. In my view, any possible benefit we could get by voting is drowned out by that tacit endorsement. And in my personal view, the benefits we can get from voting are not even near-zero; they are precisely zero, because liberal democracy is structurally designed to be uncontrollable with respect to proletarian political wills.
Wouldn't that be how an inciting incident for riots could happen?
You can take direct action and also use every lever you have to try and bring about a better world. We can't vote our way out of fascism but we can at least vote against accelerationists and buy ourselves some time.
You can take direct action and also use every lever you have to try and bring about a better world.
Right, but my argument is that voting is not a lever. Yeah, use every lever you have, but voting is not a lever; it's something else, like a button that does nothing.
we can at least vote against accelerationists and buy ourselves some time.
No we can't. Both wings of capital are accelerationists in their own unique ways. Both wings of capital are pedocapitalist, fascist, settler-colonial, genocidal, racist, transphobic, homophobic, imperialist, and statist wastes of flesh and air. The only difference is their marketing. Our only hope is ourselves and the projects we build in opposition to capitalism and the State.
Its not even a button that does nothing, its a button that further entrenches the current governmental structure and empowers the right.
How about a third party? Most people wouldn't vote for one in the US because they're worried about wasting their vote, but that doesn't seem to be a concern for you and you can freely vote for one.
Throw bricks at ICE at polls then.
Hell yeah 🤘
tacit endorsement
What does that even mean?
In America, 65% of the population votes. In Australia, 83% of the population votes. I'm sure Americans trust the election system less than Australians do, but does that mean anything? Or is it just useless posturing?
You all already know your system is corrupt, but you haven't revolted. You haven't stopped Trump. We stopped Dutton. So I think a little misplaced faith might actually be good for society. And if it's stupid but it works, then it's not stupid.
I can provide a counterexample. Orbán's fascist kleptocracy in Hungary ended through voting from a coalition of leftwing progressive, centrist and conservatives. And maybe a little sprinkle of J.D. Vance. So perhaps other tools like rioting have worked before and have had better success rate, but voting is a tool in democracies too, that isn't mutually exclusive from the others.
One hundred percent.
And I'm tired of people telling me to shut up and to trust that democracy will fix things.
The game is rigged. We gotta flip the fucking table.
I've never seen anyone saying to trust that democracy will fix things. I've seen, and been, people saying to always vote, but I don't see anyone saying to only vote.
I see a lot of people say "oh so I should do nothing??" when they're told voting does not matter. Seems like a whole bunch of people do just vote and put their faith in the electoral system.
I know some people who can't accept that the system isn't functional anymore, simply because they would have complete mental collapse at their powerlessness in the face of the present evil.
I probably do too, but I don't really spend much time with that kind of people. I prefer to surround myself with people who turn righteous fury into resolve.
This is precisely the problem, every generation after 60s stopped rioting. The FBI program worked: they assassinated the rioters, their families, stole their land, and enshrined the peaceful ones as “legitimate change.” Folks aren't rioting anymore, because the indoctrination works.
Yup. It took me a long time to realize that the "violence doesn't solve anything" mantra doesn't hold up. It's crazy that they taught us that at the same time they taught us about the revolutionary war, and we didn't question it. That's the power of repetition of propaganda at a very young age, I guess. Humanity learned how to domesticate humans, and the governments of the world used it to great success decades ago.
learned helplessness and a redirection of the general public's displeasure into the (now fractured and captured) digital spaces. sending a meme of a Guillotine isn't going to change anything either. Most people don't understand what it truly takes because most people were taught that all of the positive changes in their life happened with peaceful protest and a quiet resolve.
It takes both kinds of movements. Hungary voted out their dictator recently as well.
The State maintains a near total monopoly on violence even when the social contract is broken.
You know what is distracting us from doing all that?
Amazon Prime and doordash. Take those away, watch out!
But it's convenient to me if "violence" and even "disruption" hurt rather than help anything.
