If Biden loses—or, more likely, if Trump coups his way into power—I fully expect that a lot of liberals will devote more of their energy into yelling at people online for not voting hard enough than in resisting the fascism they keep warning us is imminent.
I’m not downplaying the threat of fascism: it’s very real and has been a real and growing fact in the lives of many Americans.
I’m mocking anyone who won’t shut up about how trump poses a fascist threat but also won’t change anything in their life as if fascism were an actually imminent reality.
“There’s a roughly 50% chance that I will be ruled by a fascist tyrant by the end of this calendar year. I will prepare for this by doing absolutely nothing.”
@HeavenlyPossum The best way to address this, IMO, is to point out specific actions people can take right now in their own lives to make a difference. I think that's where the disconnect lies for most people.
The most critical thing should be building networks of like-minded people who can be trusted and the second-most critical thing should be reading about the experience of the French Resistance. Like “how do I stay safe if someone in my network is captured and tortured to reveal identities of co-conspirators.”
@Uair@HeavenlyPossum I promise you they don't otherwise a lot more people would be caught for their crimes and there'd be a lot less emphasis on building networks of informants.
@hakan_geijer@Uair@HeavenlyPossum I think they know way too much about the average person, but most ppl involved in active resistance are probably taking more precautions than the average person to make sure big data doesn't know everything about them and what they're doing.
Hell, I take way more precautions than the average person and I'm not even doing anything illegal (for as long as it remains legal to think that fascism is bad)
@HeavenlyPossum I would have never thought along these lines on my own. I'm also not sure how to go about it, aside from the reading part. I have basically no friends IRL, just family, and many of those can't be trusted.
@HeavenlyPossum By all means. It's not an easy problem, and I imagine a lot of folks are in similar situations, particularly those of us most at risk of extermination under a fascist regime.
@HeavenlyPossum One thing I can point to is establishing ways to communicate safely. Encrypted communication channels, for example. Also geohashing-style drop points for thumb drives. But this presupposes someone you want to communicate with.
@HeavenlyPossum I remember reading about folks in Cuba using steganography to hide messages in images so they could communicate outside the country. Maybe we could take some pointers from more recent examples of people living under fascist regimes.
@HeavenlyPossum Another issue: People I might trust when things go to hell may not yet take the threat seriously enough. This would probably include most of my neighbors, for example.
Yeah here’s the thing: sometimes people were caught, sometimes they were tortured and murdered, sometimes they turned each other in.
I don’t think most people who think they might end up living under fascism have internalized the possibility that they might come to real harm even if they do everything right.
@HeavenlyPossum
I think one cultural stumbling block is that people have not yet accepted that the time for fun - if there ever was one - is over. We must agree to toil and sacrifice until the world is better. That's a hard sell. Our cultures couldn't even get through a few weeks of lockdown to save millions of lives. Entertainment options were prioritized over life needs then, and it hasn't stopped. idk how to tell the world "You're not entitled to fun, stop partying" effectively. @hosford42
@holyramenempire@HeavenlyPossum@hosford42 we can also see this effect when it comes to boycotting for Palestine. E.g. I can almost guarantee that the percentage of ppl who refuse to boycott Starbucks that both actually need coffee AND can't get it somewhere else is pretty damn low. Most simply don't care about doing anything for the greater good and prefer to pretend everything is fine
@HeavenlyPossum I genuinely despise how many Americans, in particular liberals, consider political action and participation to be something that is only done once every four years because the only conceivable political activity is voting. When people shout from their sofas that there is a genuine threat to democracy but do nothing to protect it until the day of the election, it really rubs me the wrong way. Like, democracy wasn’t simply killed by a single man. You were there too, recording it on your cellphone, unwilling to step in.
@HeavenlyPossum leftist preemptively ineffectually scolding liberals for hypothetically ineffectually scolding leftists? A few more rounds of this back and forth and we'll surely have the whole thing solved! 😀
Anarchists protest pretty much every recent Presidential inauguration, and if Trump wins I expect liberals to describe the protest as "don't those fools know they're doing a Reichstag fire that will send them to THE CAMPS" and if Biden wins I expect liberals to describe the protest as "See, the left were always Trump supporters! Horseshoe theory is true, arrest them for the good of democracy!"
Yep! Liberals are completely unwilling to look at the current US prison and border camp system as "the camps" despite the fact that the US incarcerates more people than any other country.
The last guy I confronted about this said at one point that what happens next if another Trump wins "doesn't bear thinking about".
They won't even mentally go there. They can't look it in the face in any real, serious way. They haven't asked themselves what they'll do. They think if it happens we're just doomed, period. No hope. No chance. No intent to struggle.
There were a few mild noises about "resistance" in 2017, but so lackadaisical. Some pink hats. They'll sit back and wring their hands while others step up and bleed.
Some will wake up when something finally hits them in a personal enough way to make our situation seem real. Then they'll have a lot of catching up to do, mentally and emotionally processing the impacts and practical necessities. Some will just panic.
I think an awful lot of people assume the only two options/modes are 1: voting vs 2: mindless violence.
Labor organizing is such useful practice, getting people's minds cranking on the gears of how to work together and push against power in real ways. I'd say it gets people's "heads in the game", except this nightmare is the farthest possible thing from a game.
@violetmadder@HeavenlyPossum More seriously: "center" is actually easy, in a democracy: it's the viewset that half of actual voters agree with and the other half don't. That's why, when the Overton window moves far to the right, then even people we find distasteful can be our temporary allies (eg, Liz Cheney). And it's why the views of people who don't vote don't matter.
@violetmadder@HeavenlyPossum
Assuming the "half" you're referring to is the half who could vote but don't: yes, they matter as people. They deserve to be served. But if a citizen doesn't vote, their political views – by which I mean the policies they want their representatives to enact – are indeed irrelevant, because they have neutered themselves in terms of impact.
For example: If you were a school board member up for reelection, and two people both made equally compelling but diametrically opposed arguments about something – and you knew one of them always votes and the other never votes – which one would you embrace?
I'm talking about the entire voting age population. Including the millions of people who SHOULD get to vote, but aren't allowed to. And, yes, the people who could potentially vote who choose not to-- it's easy isn't it, so fucking easy to scoff at them and look down your nose at them and dismiss them as if they don't count and don't matter and are just fools who "neutered themselves" what a revealing fucking word choice THAT is...
As if the electoral system is fully functional and fair, as if there has been NO concerted effort to disenfranchise people through bad education and corporate propaganda, as if the struggles of poverty don't make it harder and harder to find the time or energy to stay informed.
As if we are even ALLOWED ANY REAL CHOICES THAT HAVE ACTUAL IMPACT to begin with.
As if this hollow, cosmetic, theatrical mess we call "democracy" hasn't been systematically "neutered" by corruption in the first place. Sure, no, it's all the fault of those pesky lazy stupid naughty nonvoters. No point DOING anything that might actually convince them to engage again. They couldn't possibly be acting like this because they have any actual reasons worth caring about. No point ASKING why they aren't voting. Couldn't possibly be that they gave up on voting because they never see it offer them anything real-- there's nobody to blame but them.
Condescending to them as if they're lazy children and telling them they're irrelevant and invisible-- as if the world doesn't already tell them that in a thousand ways before breakfast every fucking day-- sure must seem like a good way to snap them out of it, apparently. It's so popular. How many people have you won over that way?
@violetmadder@HeavenlyPossum The rebuttal to your argument is right there in your argument: we're discussing "the people who could potentially vote who choose not to," not people whose rights have been suppressed.
Could you vote? Do you not? Then you're like a priest opining on family planning. YOU CHOSE to have ZERO RELEVANCE TO THE POLITICAL PROCESS, you idiot. Stop whining about why we should listen to to anyway, and examine yourself.
Keeping in mind that this started with my posts about how liberals will one day be goose-stepped into the camps that they warned about still complaining about who voted and who didn’t as if that ever mattered.
The whole point is that people who recognize and warn about imminent fascism should, at the very least, act for the tiniest moment as if that’s true.
Or, more likely, they recognize they already had zero relevance to the political process and acted accordingly.
Low voter turnout is an indicator of the nature of the electoral system, not of the electorate or the individual voter. Americans are fully capable of recognizing boycotts in foreign electoral systems—of course turnout is shrinking in a system as corruptly rigged as Iraq’s!—but struggle to recognize it in their own because constitutionalism and electoralism are part of the US’ civic national religion.
But it's so satisfying to peer scornfully over some glasses at them and imagine them withering in shame before the judgement of this random old white guy who's very full of himself (much like the ones they don't want to vote for in the first place). That'll teach em.
After all there's NOBODY ELSE to blame. Nobody at all.
A few weeks ago I was standing in line at the public comment podium in front of the city council, while the mayor-- a guy who looks a lot like the person in your gif, with that same sour scowl on his face-- told a room full of 200 angry people why what we're trying to do doesn't matter and "won't make any difference".
That's the voice of the establishment, right there.
When the room exploded in furious shouting, he sneered at us as if we were annoying children-- lecturing us about respect and civility, as if our fury was completely unjustified and unprovoked, as if brutal disrespect wasn't dripping from every pore of his body since the moment he walked in.
When I stepped up to that podium, one of the first things I said to that room was, "If our voices don't matter, we have MUCH bigger problems."
If you assume that “the political process” begins and ends with the quadrennial ritual of casting a mathematically irrelevant presidential ballot.
For the vast majority of Americans, any ballot they could cast is already meaningless, and can—by your argument—structurally play zero role in the political process.
US politicians do not enact the preferences of the electorate that voted them into office. It’s silly to say that non-voters’ preferences are irrelevant while voters get their way when, in reality, voters’ preferences are irrelevant.
It’s much harder to advocate for electoralism like this if you acknowledge this basic fact of the US political system.
@HeavenlyPossum@violetmadder And I didn't say they did. Yeah, donors and influencers trump citizens to a point – but only because $ and publicity help candidates reach even more voters. The courts still are the real currency. But what voters, donors, and influencers all have in common is that they're putting skin in the game in one way or another. Voting is something; someone who can't afford to give $$ to superpacs, aren't famous enough to influence their fans, and doesn't vote is irrelevant.
It's a gunfight. Yes, one voter has less firepower than one donor with an M-16 But 100 regular people with .22s will still take down one SEAL with an automatic. (And the people who smugly walk away feeling pacifistically righteous are really just leaving the guy with the M-16 in charge.)
I find this really tedious, but you’re just reinforcing the initial point I made, so I suppose I should thank you for that.
If you genuinely believe that Trump is a fascist, and acknowledge that the US electoral system turns out presidential election results that are effectively coin tosses, then we might expect to find you acting like your beliefs are true.
@HeavenlyPossum@violetmadder Except my point is simply that voting > nonvoting, as part of a larger package of activism and resistance, and that those who elect not to vote therefore are far more your enemy than the centrists you deride (who nevertheless will vote Dem and therefore reduce Republicans' power to impose facism). I'm unclear what you think I'm saying besides that, nor why you disagree.
The larger package of activism and resistance involves respecting the efforts of those who prefer to work outside the system. It also involves recognizing how centrist "reforms" are frequently used as honeypot traps that divert energy into dead ends and stifle real change.
Nonvoters aren't my enemies. Several were standing at my back while I was at that podium. They clasped my hands and slapped my shoulders after I spoke. They took their own turns speaking. One had bruises on her face from being struck by police at a protest the day before.
I'll tell them my arguments that voting can be useful, but I'm not going to insult or abandon them if they disagree.
Nonvoting is a refusal to participate in a corrupt system-- not an attack against me. I may not agree with it, but I understand it. I trust that the people who are behaving that way might actually have compelling reasons, even if I disagree. They don't scream at me or insult me. They don't try to browbeat me into voting for war criminals.
The ones who simply gave up and don't care aren't like that because they're stupid or evil. Apathy is a symptom of despair.
They are not enemies. They are potential allies, an untapped and overlooked resource of immense power. When they finally decide to move... THAT is when change will come.
The simple fact remains: American presidential elections are effectively coin tosses. Twice in my adult life the loser of the election has become president. I operate under the assumption that a belief in the threat of fascism binging on a coin toss would motivate more behavior than just this repetitive invocation about voting harder.
People who do not vote are not my enemy. I did not identify liberals as my enemy, either. I identified many liberals as unserious about their professed beliefs.
What else is in your package of activism and resistance?
Some things that partisans in Europe did under Nazi rule include: assassinations, sabotage, guerrilla war, and publishing propaganda, all under threat of arrest, torture, and execution.
Other people went into hiding or exile. Most people just went about their lives as best they could, and some collaborated.
I don’t think most people who warn that fascism is an imminent threat are willing to honestly think this through.
Trump has already been president once; many people have already experienced fascist violence in the US. This is not some speculative and possible future.
I also strongly doubt that most people who anticipate fascist rule in the US are, in any way, prepared to fight.
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