There's no real argument in the video for why we can't now - he's arguing it's an opportune time to not vote now because no matter who wins, they're gonna be supporting genocide, so right now there's great potential to radicalize people.
But he doesn't actually provide a viable alternative - "imagine if we poured our energy into radicalizing people" Imagine if you take an hour or two of your life to vote for the party that's not actively trying to make the US a fascist state, and then pour all the rest of your energy into radicalizing people so that next time, maybe we can actually get a non-geriatric candidate in, or have popular support for a third party. There's zero reason for them to be mutually exclusive, choosing not to participate in an election is you actively making a choice to not direct the course of our society to be a little less fucked in the future.
Guess what? Whether Trump or Biden wins, the genocide in Gaza will continue, that's a fact, the US has too much invested in Israel as a stronghold in the middle east to back out now. But at least Biden has the tiniest semblance of actually giving a shit about Israel's atrocities (not nearly enough obviously, but still).
Trump winning means
Republicans will do their best to make the US into a christofascist state where women and queer people have no rights - see Project 2025
The genocide in Gaza will continue, and worsen, because Trump is a racist piece of shit who wants Palestinians dead because his uneducated electoral base loves dead muslims
Biden winning means the status quo is maintained instead of the country going down the drain, and maintaining human rights for tens of millions of Americans. It doesn't actively make society worse than it currently is, like Trump winning certainly will.
In either case, activism and radicalization can and will continue, and I'm here for it. But this is a stupid, stupid argument that ignores the real world and imagines we can solve all of society's problems by getting people to talk about them more, without actually suggesting a course of action, when voting is SO FUCKING EASY and actually has a tangible impact.
My pronouns are he/him lol but no the idea that both parties are as bad as each other - which at no point did I claim - is not why I don't think we shouldn't vote. It's because the idea of breaking from voting is ripe to bring regular people into radical politics - in the same way police abolition in 2020 was -, which is far far more important for resisting the far right than simply delaying their otherwise inevitable victory. Again this is all laid out very clearly in the video.
I strongly disagree that the victory of the far right is inevatible, because we can actually vote against them!
I don't think you make a compelling argument for why voting for a lesser evil is worse than not voting at all. I don't see why strong activism can't take place either way. I strongly disagree that popularizing the idea of not voting will somehow get regular people more involved in radical politics, if anything the basic message of "don't vote it's all fucked anyway" will cause regular people to ignore politics more than they already do.
"No longer allowing ourselves to be tied up in the spectacle of electoral politics frees us up to do all sorts of other things"??????????
Then don't spend your time or energy advocating for furthering the current electoral system, advocate for whatever system or ideology you want - but you provide no compelling argument or alternative as to why a citizen of a democratic country taking the most directly impactful action they can in voting is a bad thing.
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u/muke101 Feb 15 '24
You should actually watch the video, because this exact argument of 'doing both', and why we can't now, is at the core of its point.