More than 100 Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and progressive Democrats and community leaders have signed a letter making the case for those reluctant to support Kamala Harris against Donald Trump.
“We know that many in our communities are resistant to vote for Kamala Harris because of the Biden administration’s complicity in the genocide,” the letter, published Thursday night, reads.
“Some of us have lost many family members in Gaza and Lebanon. We respect those who feel they simply can’t vote for a member of the administration that sent the bombs that may have killed their loved ones,” the letter continued. “As we consider the full situation carefully, however, we conclude that voting for Kamala Harris is the best option for the Palestinian cause and all of our communities.”
Refusing to normalize genocide is an important first step for working against it. The reason Dems can do genocide and not fear a loss is that so many people fall in line over threats that “the other guy” will win.
I get the concept of the Boogeyman opponent, but I’m this case nothing is myth, or fearmongering. We can see what the Biden admin is doing, and assume Harris won’t be very far from it. It’s not desirable but holy shit is there room for more chaos and death.
We have seen how trump handles the middle east, and color that with his modern statements. It’s evident trump’s path will be materially worse for Palestinians.
Given that trump or Harris will be the next president, the best choice for everyone is Harris.
As a bonus, the opportunity to “refuse to normalize” will be in jeopardy with trump, as evidenced by his language to go after dissidents, his treatment of protesters, and the leveraging of stochastic terrorism to motivate his base towards race/ethnicity based attacks, the Muslim ban, the kashoggi murder, the soleimani assassination, his conservative judicial appointments, his under the table relationship with Saudi Arabia via kushner, and his on the record praise of strongmen like netanyahu.
If you think it’s hard to denormalize what’s happening re Israel now, strap in for the trump ride.
Edit by abstaining on principle “you” may bring about the single worst person for progressive ideals, middle east stability, and Muslim security in the US with consequences lasting for decades.
There really isn’t in Palestine, in terms of the US. The US is competently organizing and supporting this genocide precisely because very competent Zionists are in charge, namely Biden, the team he has curated over decades, and Harris. They are actually pushing hard beyond what the Pentagon et al recommend, strategically, due to ideological commitment to the project. Harris is, of course, an empty suit, but one that is fully in line with this set of policies, and has taken on a major role in terms of selling the fake, appropriating “ceasefire” narrative and in running the DNC and its overall messaging, which has been brazenly pro-Israel during a genocide, committing to guaranteeing unconditional material supporting, and not even doing any form of pandering or aesthetic appeasement. Everyone knows that they could have brought on some wishy-washy Palestinian to do some both-sides pro-peace message at the DNC or later, but they are unwilling to do even that. That is how little they will give in on this issue. Those are the monsters created by this political self-disempowerment.
It is not evident. Trump is not as competent as Biden and his admin. He will have the same imperialist state that will of course back Israel, but he will also screw things up in various ways. I do not think Trump would have executed European subservience nearly as effectively as Biden-Harris. That is the primary outcome of their approach to Ukraine: to scuttle an independent Europe. They are now fully dollar-dependent and dependent on the US for energy while slowly deinstrializing themselves. Of course they will now fall in line more strongly on the US-backed genocide of Palestine. Trump actually pushed Europe in the opposite direction. This is not because he is smart and good, but he is inadvertently disruptive to carefully-laid plans, even while adhering to them 95% of the time.
Though to be clear, I do not subscribe to lesser-evilism logic. This is a self-defeating logic that is very shortsighted.
The best choice is to not normalize genocide. I will accept a compromise: if you don’t tell anyone to vote for Harris, nor defend such people, I don’t mind if you cast your vote for her. Deal?
The Biden-Harris administration is heavily pro-cop, and of course Harris called herself California’s top cop. She was known for being particularly cruel as AG. Oppression against dissidents primarily happens via local police and sometimes state police and the military. This faction of the Dems fully coopted and then worked directly against the George Floyd protests to massively fund cops and it is local Democrats that facilitate and run the police departments engaging in naked and disproportionate violence. In addition, it is the Biden admin that just signed an EO to authorize the use of “lethal force” by the US military on US soil, something backed up by a subsequent Pentagon memo. It is important to understand that these are not really oppositional forces, they are co-amplifiers of one another, and the Democratic political class openly enable the slide into oppression and then pretend to be against it when it has a bad look. They are slick, but not reducing harm.
I could go on more about the examples you listed if you would like me to, I just don’t want to take up too much space away from centering Palestine, particularly if it is not something you would want to discuss at length. Let me know if you would like to or if there is one particularly salient point that is most relevant. I could also continue that discussion in another thread or via DMs.
Under Trump, the people here normalizing genocide would be anti-genocide to the hilt, or at least in how they internalize this red line to themselves. They could be mobilized to protest, they could learn the core lessons at hand, they could demand that Dems et al work against this, and they could get involved with direct actions. When they are normalizing genocide, they tend to work in the opposite direction, and things will get far worse.
I do quite a bit of work against the genocide on Palestine and political work. I am not simply “abstaining” from politics. But I do suggest that those who think of politics as electoralism consider what they are doing when they announce that it’s okay to voter for genociders. What that really means and who you think you are vs. who you actually behave as, and what you will not just tolerate, but openly justify.
In not voting you normalize genocide, effectively turning away, to not look upon the mess.
Edit in a trump presidency activism will be harder, and progressive folks, and minority communities will be at increased risk. The ideal of getting involved and making your.voice heard will be a vanishing opportunity.
Personally, I will be voting for a candidate that is explicitly against the genocide. In this way, the message of my vote will be fairly clear.
Out of decorum, please note an edit may have passed while you were typing.
In reply: if the candidate does not win, the message is lost in the wind.
Ah yes I missed that.
The best situation for not losing the message would actually be a Harris loss and where various pundits and orgs push the message that it was due to support for genocide. The Democratic party and its loyalists will of course do its best to avoid that messaging and either deflect from the topic to blame something else (justifying whatever new stances the party wants to take) or by adopting a “Trump is worse so you deserve it” form of sour grapes.
Re: challenges in activism, it was much easier to organize under Trump than under Biden. But as I do not subscribe to lesser evilism arguments on electoralism, and am against genociders, I would also not vote nor recommend voting for Trump just because he made that part of political work easier.
That would maybe work if there were test elections and then the real deal a little after. Having a dicktator for the next 4 years (minimum) is a bit too much to send the message. It is just cutting off your nose to spite your face.
It also works for real elections. It has precipitated realignments and the downfall and replacement of parties in the US’ own history, even. Those had deeper material roots, but then so would the acceptability of supporting genocide.
You are repeating a line that really just disempowers you and those that align with you. It tells you that your role, your “power”, is just to support whoever the party picks for you, or else. This is false and self-defeating logic.
There was already a Trump presidency. It was from 2017 to 2021. It was not a dictatorship. The country ran basically the same as before, in fact, though he was simply hamfisted in hiw he approached reactionary policies, and naturally this made for great media time and Democrats calling themselves “the resistance”. The Biden-Harris administration largely continued his policies, but that “resistance” immediately dissolved, it was just a partisan PR ploy and was not about undoing concrete policy impacts. Biden still threw kids in cages and massively ramped up refugee deportations, attempting to (illegally) prevent refugees from even applying if they crossed the border when undocumented. Biden kept the trade wars. Biden fully coopted and reversed sentiment on racial justice in policing, pivoting Democrats at all levels to be pro-vip and providing large funding increases to racist police squads.
The political class operates far more similarly to one another than they do to you. They just warp perception through partisanship and propaganda. This does not mean they are identical, just it is nowhere near as dramatic as you describe: the class that actually controls this country has no interest in allowing the dictator you are imagining, it isn’t going to happen, and the horrific policies you are thinking of will have corresponding ones from Democrats, provided with a smile and an appropriation. Include in that list: genociding Palestine.
So, do you agree with these Muslim leaders, or are you saying you know better than them?
An astonishingly racist question.
As a brown person myself I want to know if you agree with the leaders or if you’re saying you know better than us. It’s hardly racist to wonder if we’re being patronized by people who claim to know better than us.
What’s racist is calling the group simply Muslim and then taking a tokenizing approach to them.
Maybe you should read the letter they signed before defending support for genocide, and before trying to weaponize your own identity against solidarity with Palestine.
Shameful.
Who said I was supporting the genocide and the defense of it? I take the same approach as them in the letter. It’s an undeniable genocide and horrific, but the situation is most likely to get better under Harris, not Trump.
If agreeing with that letter is weaponizing my identity against solidarity with Palestine, what do you think of the letter writers?
Do you not believe that is what you are doing when you try to wield this letter as an identity-based cudgel against people that say you should not vote for someone genociding Palestinians? Please do some introspection if you don’t.
As who? You broad-brushed them as muslims before. So eager to push back! Have you read the letter yet?
The genocide already has unconditional support from the Biden-Harris administration and they are extremely competent at securing support from Europe and, as you can see here, earning your complacency, complacency in those around you, and an explicitly Zionist party.
I think that if Trump were doing this you could be mobilized to actually materially oppose the genocide instead of making excuses for why you will support literal genociders, even going after people that reject genocide with bad faith arguments and racist tokenization.
That is, actually, not how you weaponized your identity. Please review what you wrote to me.
I have already answered this question in my criticisms of the letter. If you have read the letter and looked at the signatories, you will find that they correspond to a specific class of people, they have very particular relationships with the party and the wider political apparatus. In short, they are almost entirely the heads of NGOs and party insiders.
This is not a new playbook, Democrats often tokenize identities in this way to have a party-aligned subset of people, people with direct material interests tied to the party and its wider apparatus, sign statements or otherwise present themselves as representing “The [X] community”. Imagine how the process for creating this letter and having it signed happened. How they networks were created, why they exist, who is doing the asks, how they organizations are funded, whose connections they rely on for their work, what the career ambitions of young party leadership groups are. And ask why it is almost exclusively this subset of people.