- Mod of !anarchism@slrpnk.net posts a great Greta Thunberg quote, but then tries to use it to justify not voting in the upcoming US election
- Multiple people point out that’s very clearly not what she meant
- Removed by mod Removed by mod Removed by mod Removed by mod
Using your mod powers to decide who is allowed and not allowed to speak is not very anarchist of you, @mambabasa@slrpnk.net
There is a detailed body of theoretical works in Anarchism about how Electoralism is counter-productive and mostly just distracts from the real work that is needed. This isn’t about Harris or Stein. Coming into an Anarchist community and arguing about the need to vote for a candidate is similar to coming to a Vegan community and starting to argue that eggs are better than meat and maybe a little meat is not so bad after all.
I agree with this thread, which I saw a while ago.
Also, the electoralism wasn’t out of nowhere. It was pretty much 1/4 of what the post was saying
You are again missing the point. No one claimed that you are not allowed to vote for the lesser evil if that is something you want to do.
But you should not be voting for the way-lesser evil are asking others to do so (perhaps while continuing to emphasize that the system will still be broken)? If that’s what you’re arguing, could we take this to where I’ve replied below so the overall argument is more public and easier to follow? thx
Sorry, can you please rephrase or fix the grammar in your post above? I don’t get what you are trying to say.
sorry, hopefully it’ll make sense if you replace “are” with “or”
No that is not what I am arguing then. Voting for the lesser evil is often the right choice. If I was a citizen of the USA I would certainly vote for Harris tomorrow as the lesser evil, but that is a personal choice and I trust that most US based anarchists are sensible enough to do the same.
The main problem with electorialism is not the voting itself, its the spectacle around it and the waste of effort and money to promote the candidates and all the (self) gaslighting that people do. Coming to an anarchist space and doing that will at best get you ridiculed, but in this case the mod decided to show these people the door.
That’s an interesting argument I haven’t seen before.
While I obviously wouldn’t support anyone dumb enough to make a new post to explicitly promote a candidate, I think the mod basically egged these comments on in this case by going to great lengths to promote not voting for this specific candidate, thus feeding into the spectacle. I would understand if all such comparison of candidates was treated the same; however, that doesn’t seem to be the case here.
Someone commented under the post, advocating for the Green Party, and the mod left it up but deleted and banned people who replied to that person and brought up the whole “impossible to overestimate the consequences” thing.
I didn’t do anything similar to what poVoq is claiming I did, as you’re pointing out. But the people who did do that, the mod left alone, banning people who objected.
I’m done litigating this at this point, but I did get tempted into coming back to point that one thing out.
Edit: Phrasing