thank you Serbia
(midwest.social)
magus
Curated TumblrAt the absolute least, voting (when possible) can stop things from breaking so quickly and making it easier to do the other things that fix things.
And once things are fixed, voting well will be one of the actions keeping things from breaking again.
Plus, it's just one hour of effort with years' worth of impact. Even if that impact is low, it's a good tradeoff.
Voting out fascism never works except for all the times it has like the same fucking guy in 2020
Also Brazil, also Hungary.
Also, look up Pinochet Regime in Chile
Go Brazil!
Go Brazilian!
The slightly more nuanced steel man is voting alone doesn't fix things. I.e vote and take other action
Serbia's election results happened after almost 2 years of protests including worker strikes
Why are people attributing this to Serbia?
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Serbia didn't win via voting, voting was a consequence of their victory
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Brazil is literally right there and makes so much more sense as a case study
If I take a shower, that won't suddenly make me attractive to girls. And yet, if I don't take a shower, my stench will make me unattractive to girls.
On second thoughts, the "why bother voting" crowd would probably struggle with an analogy about taking a shower.
would probably struggle with an analogy about taking a shower.
Or an analogy about girls, for that matter.
Or an analogy about matter, since they are bots.
Voting got Trump into the White House. It works. Just because it didn't work the way you wanted it to last time doesn't mean throw a hissy fit and sit on your ass.
The secret is that the "voting doesn't work" crowd actually like him there. They just want to see things fall apart and he's a rabble rouser that they can make use of.
And you only need to look around the internet to notice the "Voting doesn't work" or "Both sides bad" bots and idiots are coming out of the woordwork again for the next US election.
100%. If you come on to a liberal/left-leaning place like Lemmy and say things like "voting doesn't work" and "both sides" it's obvious where you stand.
Hi from Israel. Elections were today. Preliminary results show a very strong possibility for change. It's still up in the air, but yes, voting can fix things!
I heard that both of the frontrunning candidates are pro-genocide, so what change exactly? Is the argument "Netanyahu isn't killing Palestinians fast enough"?
The only possibility for meaningful change in the Zionist Entity is if its brought about by the IRGC. Palestine is not yours.
Israeli politicians are either Hitler, Super Hitler, or Mega Hitler. Wild to claim the elections will fix much.
Was going to make this comment. What's the new guy going to do different, exactly?
It's still up in the air
It's not. The genocide will continue nearly unabated regardless. The best case scenario on the table is it goes back to the pre-2023 status quo of a slower genocide.
The best case scenario on the table is it goes back to the pre-2023 status quo of a slower genocide.
...
Isn't that preferable, though?
I guess that depends on the outcome. Everyone was kinda ignoring the slow genocide. (just a few) Things started happening internationally when the quick one began.
Preferable, yes, sufficient, no. The primary factor that limits Israel's genocide, which also have the potential to stop it entirely, is not domestic opposition but foreign resistance, economically and militarily.
No, that's an .ml user. They hate Palestinians and trans people. They want BB and Trump to win because saying, I told you so, is more important to them than people's lives.
God damn this shit is so annoying. I thought lemmy was supposed to be better than reddit.
You're literally just circle jerking an opinion they didn't state.
Elections were today. Preliminary results show a very strong possibility for change.
Which Israeli political party opposes the genocide in Palestine, again?
הדמוקרטים
have certainly said a thing or two about that
In the elections for the twenty-five Knesset in 2022, for the first time since its establishment, the Meretz Party did not pass the electoral threshold and remained without representatives in the Knesset
:-/
Good luck. We’re counting on you.
I hope so. Netanyahu sucks.
That is interesting to hear. It seemed like the people against Benny think that they’re not genociding hard enough.
Notably, this election was not won by the Serbian equivalent of "blue no matter who." It was won by the equivalent of a third party.
It wasn't one of the existing opposition parties that did it.
Serbia barely had a second party, as far as I could see (from Croatia). Yeah, there was some opposition, but very few had any sincere trust in it, incomparably fewer than the number of Americans who actually like and support Democrats. The Student List tapped into this vacuum.
And European democracies are generally a bit more loose with having newcomer parties being at least somewhat viable, for better and for worse (AfD, UKIP...). The US electoral system just erases 3rd parties wholesale, it's particularly abysmal.
Btw, the Student List is not terribly left-leaning. They're trying to be "apolitical", in order to attract both the left and the right.
It's great that that worked. Was this groundswell a risk which now replaces half of a two-party system, or do they use ballots which make third-party support safe?
We will have to see what sort of reforms they make. I'll be following it closely
It was more of a question about this recent election. Was it first-past-the-post? Because if it is and they don't fix that, they will be incorporated into a two-party system. Those don't emerge because anyone wanted one.
They have proportional representation according to Wikipedia (emphasis mine):
The 250 members of the National Assembly are elected by closed-list proportional representation from a single nationwide constituency. Eligible voters vote for electoral lists, on which the candidates of the accepted lists are present. A maximum of 250 candidates could be present on a single electoral list.
Well the great thing about winning with a party that actually wants to change the system (if they do) is that regardless of whether it was FPTP before, it doesn't have to be in the future.
Yeeeah a lot of third parties don't seem aware that this is a thing to fix. Winning makes them even less likely to consider systemic change. It worked for them - what's the problem?
Well, if the reason it "worked for them" is because they had promised electoral reform, then they could easily lose their support by breaking that promise.
In this specific situation, the coalition is very fragile without a clear ideological direction. It's very possible that it will break apart, and so it's in their interest to enact reforms that would allow smaller parties to hold influence.
Do you have historical examples to support that claim, btw? You say "a lot of third parties" but which ones?
voting is an expression of solidarity
Note that the student movement formed an incredibly unique decentralized political apparatus OUTSIDE of the formal institutions. They are exemplary and I am excited to see how successful they are going forward. Dismantling the Vucic corporatist structure won't be easy but I think this movement is genuinely capable of it.
They did not vote blue no matter who, they built their own political bloc from fucking scratch.
Edit: I'd also like to be abundantly clear that the point communists make when they say voting doesn't work is that voting won't dismantle capitalism. These students and the political apparatus they built can change the leadership for the better but it isn't going to smash capitalism and replace it with a society free from oppression.
They did not vote blue no matter who, they built their own political bloc from fucking scratch
And if my grandmother had wheels she'd be a bicycle.
The political landscape of Serbia does not seem to be one in which the concept of "blue no matter who" even resolves to an intelligible idea.
You can't just transplant the political strategy of one set of conditions to a completely different set of conditions.
Certainly we have the same end goals, but your implied expectations do not match the conditions outside of Serbia.
Yes I agree. Serbia and America are not similar. Which is why the electoral success of the Serbian student movement does not mean electoralism is a viable strategy for significant political change in the united states as the post is suggesting.
Ooof. Two days isn't long enough to know if the authoritarian regime is gonna go quietly. Hoping they're able to make it stick. 🤞🙏🤞🙏🤞
Two days isn’t long enough to know if the authoritarian regime is gonna go quietly.
Or if the Student List delegates are going to be able to form a government and deliver on popular reforms.
People getting all excited like it's Obama '08, fully forgetting what happened two years later.
And in the US, six years ago. We just didn't count on the electorate being stupid enough to put The Idiot back in.
If a US student list were created and the people on the list weren't part of the 2 major parties, the organizers would be told that we have to work within the 2 party system.
Math doesn't care about feel-good stories, and our stupid electoral system works differently. Any particular state electing a third-party senator is immediately feasible, albeit only every six years, staggered. Any particular state electing third-party representatives is doable but relies on deeply fucked district maps which can shift out from under candidates or incumbents. None of this has anything to do with the executive branch because we don't have a ministerial parliament - and electing a third-party president is next to fucking impossible.
Unless one of the first-party nominees dies, we are simply not going to see American voters rally behind anyone else, with the uniformity necessary to win enough states' independent all-or-nothing contests. A supermajority can demand one particular guy and they do not count if they live in the wrong borders. It is more likely that that several hundred theoretically-neutral state electors simply decide to make shit up and install whoever they want. That's how Ron fucking Paul wound up with one of Hillary's electoral votes.
If the glib solution worked, it would simply happen.
Unfortunately we need ballot reform. Anything would be better. Letting people check multiple names would break this duopoly. Critics bitch about "bullet voting" (not that kind) and I remind them that's how things work now. Ranked ballots would be simple and massively powerful, even if we squandered them on a misuse like IRV. The right answer requires a Condorcet method because the function of an election is to pick someone the most people want.
Your preference for this guy over that guy should count fully, even if you'd prefer to be governed by an ideal longshot, or a complete nobody, or Mickey Mouse. Ranked Pairs lets you safely put all those losers ahead of anyone with a real chance. All that matters is, if it came down to A vs B: who ya got?
My favorite condorcet method is Pairwise Voting, simply because it’s the easiest to explain to people. Mathematically, all condorcet methods are equivelent. You just need to pick a fallback method of choosing when there’s a condorcet cycle.
6 million people versus 350 million...
So in a couple years when it becomes obvious that the new boss is the same as the old boss will you all stfu forever about how it's possible to vote away the wealth and power of the unelected ruling class?
If we all shut up you won't be able to act like your farts smell like cinnamon and roses though. Why ask to stop the only reason you keep on living? If you don't get to pretend like you're smarter and better than everyone else then what's the point of your existence?
I feel you but the situation in Serbia is actually exceptional. For 15 years Vucic had effectively built a "state capitalist" system but the goal was to simply make him and his friends personally very wealthy rather than using markets to build productive forces which could then be utilized by a proletarian state. Much of the Serbian economy is nominally nationalized and with a group like this in charge that corporatist structure could be dismantled. This creation of Vucic is the primary contradiction in Serbia. Should this national economy be wielded in the interest of the people (or split up and privatized in a less favorable circumstance) then the primary internal contradiction would become Capitalism generally rather than a cartel who has monopolized the entire economy. This would allow for a more class conscious movement to form. It isn't THE change but it is progress towards it and the unique way they accomplished this could be emulated in similar places. America is not a similar place unfortunately.
