I want to draw attention to the elephant in the room.
Leading up to the election, and perhaps even more prominently now, we’ve been seeing droves of people on the internet displaying a series of traits in common.
- Claiming to be leftists
- Dedicating most of their posting to dismantling any power possessed by the left
- Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
- Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
- Attacking anyone who promotes defending leftist political power by claiming they are centrists and that the attacker is “to the left of them”
- Using US foreign policy as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the US political system
- Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism
When you look at an aerial view of these behaviors in conjunction with one another, what they’re accomplishing is pretty plain to see, in my opinion. It’s a way of utilizing the moral scrupulousness of the left to cut our teeth out politically. We get so caught up in giving these arguments the benefit of the doubt and of making sure people who claim to be leftists have a platform that we’re missing ideological parasites in our midst.
This is not a good-faith discourse. This is not friendly disagreement. This is, largely, not even internal disagreement. It is infiltration, and it’s extremely effective.
Before attacking this argument as lacking proof, just do a little thought experiment with me. If there is a vector that allows authoritarians to dismantle all progress made by the left, to demotivate us and to detract from our ability to form coalitions and build solidarity, do you really think they wouldn’t take advantage of it?
By refusing to ever question those who do nothing with their time in our spaces but try to drive a wedge between us, to take away our power and make us feel helpless and hopeless, we’re giving them exactly that vector. I am telling you, they are using it.
We need to stop letting them. We need to see it for what it is, get the word out, and remember, as the political left, how to use the tools that we have to change society. It starts with us between one another. It starts with what we do in the spaces that we inhabit. They know this, and it’s why they’re targeting us here.
Stop being an easy target. Stop feeding the cuckoo.
It’s a psyop
They appeal to leftists by saying electoralism won’t bring revolution, which is true… But then say don’t vote.
Makes no sense to me. Use any lever you have. You can advocate revolution and pull the lever for lesser evil. It reduces the concept to black and white thinking while appealing to people’s sense of self righteousness and laziness.
The same tactics and arguments are deployed on maga, only they’re encouraged to vote
None of this shit matters anymore jfc. There won’t be real elections in 2026. Stop drinking Democrat collaborator diarrhea and start preparing for mass street level resistance. In case it somehow isn’t glaringly obvious, when the mass protest encampments shut down cities the Democrats will be the ones telling people to go home and vote instead. And when Trump nationalizes the national guard and sends them in to break up the encampments at rifle point the Democrats will wring their hands and put out a milquetoast statement about how they support peaceful protest but that disruption can’t be tolerated. Were none of you alive yet in 2020? Did none of you get guns pointed at you by national guard sent in by Democratic governors?
The Democrats are sitting in congress making word-shaped noises that gesture at displeasure with the ongoing fascist coup. A Republican Nazi could walk around congress putting them down with a cattle gun and the remaining ones would smile tightly and put out a statement about how “this is a serious violation of democratic norms” and then vote in favor of the next Trump nominee. These people are collaborators. They will do nothing to stop the fascist coup because they don’t want to.
Whether or not there are propaganda accounts actively trying to disperse and confuse resistance is absolutely pertinent to what we do from here.
It’s definitely true that 95% of the Democrats haven’t really been doing shit now that the horrors have started, and that talking about the election and how Trump shouldn’t have won is kind of a lost cause now. The propaganda accounts I am more concerned with at this point are the ones going into /r/50501 and doxxing and confusing people, trying to drown out useful organization, generally trying to defeat anything that might oppose the fascists. I haven’t seen those ones on Lemmy too much although I’ve seen a few. And misleading people about the bigger picture “in politics” as opposed to out of politics is still certainly a problem. They’re both problems.
I had more I wanted to say on this topic when I first read it, but at the time I also had more energy. Had I not had other obligations, I would’ve written out my more detailed thoughts then. As it is, however, I’ll have to settle for the (relative) shortform, as I find this thread exhausting from the outset and the sheer quantity of incredibly angry back-and-forth here has only made it worse.
To suffice the ideas of mine that I still remember, then:
- I have a feeling that while you may not consider me specifically to be a “cuckoo,” that this post was still partially aimed at people like myself, since I’ve spent a fair chunk of time arguing to the immense faults of the Democrat Party, some of which was in discussion with you.
- If the above is true, I feel dehumanized and find this topic incredibly depressing.
- Regardless of the above, I find jumping to assumptions of bad faith on the part of those with whom you disagree on this topic understandable, but needlessly conspiratorial.
But to end my comment, I’d like to point out an area on which you and I can find common ground: Your point of “Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism” suggests you feel that the people arguing against voting / the Democrat Party are doing a poor job of offering alternative solutions. On this, I agree. Solutions for that scenario are hard to come by and often complicated, and where people do have things to suggest a portion of them are very flawed; voting Green, not voting, and the occasional implicit suggestion for violence, etc. All of those have huge problems that I know I don’t need to explain to you.
For that, all I can say is that I agree that leftists can do better and should. I’ve seen the good suggestions before. Things like mutual aid, education, organizing, joining events — all of these are very useful things that are significantly more important than one vote in a broken electoral system. Unfortunately, as you’ve noticed, frustrated and angry people tend to be bad at mentioning these things.
I only ask that you consider that these people are frustrated, angry, and restless, rather than actively fake.
If you read down to my comments down below, you’ll find some examples of people doing specific fuck-ups that strongly indicate that they are non-American fake accounts, and not someone who is frustrated, angry, or restless.
I do think that a lot of people on far-left-Lemmy are in fact genuine accounts who also do the things OP is saying, and that maybe calling them fake accounts isn’t productive. I actually think fake accounts on Lemmy is also a huge problem, but the tells that I consider are a little different than the ones OP talks about.
For that, all I can say is that I agree that leftists can do better and should. I’ve seen the good suggestions before. Things like mutual aid, education, organizing, joining events — all of these are very useful things that are significantly more important than one vote in a broken electoral system.
Yes. Whether or not someone is fake, talking about those things constantly would be a much better (and also less suspicious) thing to talk about, as opposed to incessantly talking specifically about how important it is not to vote and not so much about those other things.
A lot of the accounts I’m talking about are still talking about how important it is not to vote for Democrats, and haven’t bothered to say more or less anything about joining the protests that are going on right now. Actually, I’ve seen a little scattering of the current generation of fake commenters who are talking about how dangerous the protests are, how some might be “false flags,” how we need to be careful or they’re going to sit this upcoming one out. Things like that.
It’s like making banana bread. Everybody has their own recipe, but it’s still banana bread. The Trump administration is the continuation of the Biden administration. And America is an imperialist empire that rapes and pillages the world. We are also heading to a precipice, where we will be fooled into fighting another world war, war because of course blame it on the Muslims. Fascist are the useful idiots of empire, and sometimes fascists don’t realize their fascist. Neo-liberalism is a right-wing ideology, and that’s what we’ve been dealing with when it comes to the Democrats. Because they all take money from foreign powers, and they do not work on our behalf. They also use the intelligence department to divide this nation. since education has been under fire for so long, that most of the people in America don’t understand World War II or the world that they live in today. Russia defeated the Nazis, America came in to take the credit as they were also funding the Nazis, similar to what is happening in Ukraine today. But what is different is that communism is dead and what we have now is global capitalism. With our own capitalist class that fights amongst themselves for their interest while at the same time understanding their place in the hierarchy and keeping us all down and stupid. China is a capitalist country. Russia is a capitalist country. Liberals or the Democratic Party will try to rebrand themselves in order to keep voter engagement because that’s all it is. It’s a suggestion. It’s a temperature. But what I’ve seen is that voter turnout keeps getting smaller and smaller because people are starting to catch on …things will just get worse, I can guarantee. But you’ll just turn a blind eye, because you’re playing Tribalist Games. Red Team vs the Blue Team. It’s all the same, it’s still the same game. You should Google the imperialist Boomerang. What goes around comes around. What they do overseas will come back to you and me. I would think with the Snowden and Julian Assange leaks that would have woken up a lot of America, but America is… That.They’re literate, or they lack reading comprehension and the ability to pay attention. As somebody who is liberal arts educated, I really do think that America is one of the most servile nations in the world. Because we’ve been fat and happy, eating the spoils, well relative crumbs, but spoils of our imperialist wars. Unfortunately, I live in this country and I am struggling. I really want out. I do not identify with this culture and everyone around me seems crazy. And they lack the patience to listen. All I ask for you to do is listen. I plant seeds. Eventually, if you get enough of those, you have a garden of reality. We really do lack critical thinking skills. And then the sofist, Uno card, is something that just drives me mad. Either way, if I live or die, justice will be served, and Yankee gets what they deserve. Justice is coming, either by the nations of the world sick of your shit, or by your own hands. I mean, haven’t you figured it out yet? The whole good cop versus bad cop thing. You are the most gullible nation in the world. America is similar to North Korea. America is like North Korea with Disneyland. You’re in a theme park that you can’t afford and you can’t get out. It’s a small world after all.
Russia defeated the Nazis, America came in to take the credit as they were also funding the Nazis, similar to what is happening in Ukraine today.
I feel like at this point you’re just inviting someone to say something so you can pitch a fit about “how DARE you” and write more screeds to jam up the conversation that’s going on, and accuse the other people of being victims of propaganda.
Great points! Now that the election is over, let’s focus on revamping the Dem party instead of huffing copium by blaming 3rd party leftists for not being conservative enough to vote for a rightwing party!
Glad to have you with us. We’re talking about David Hogg below, who is one of the people who is trying to do this. Let’s rock.
Please stop strawmanning us (I’m sort of assuming that this comment can be aimed at me, which I think is accurate) for long enough to get behind some kind of effort like that. Our main complaint about one certain subset of the “3rd party leftists” so called is that, on Lemmy, the sum total of their efforts seems to be not producing any success for 3rd parties, or for the left, or for reforming the Democrats, or against the Republicans, or anything like that, but actually interfering with the “revamping” as you say. By shitting on people like Bernie, or Elizabeth Warren, or David Hogg, or encouraging people not to vote letting Trump get in office which now makes things much harder, or encouraging them to vote for someone who definitely won’t win, and so on.
@t3rmit3@beehaw.org
Never heard of him, but if he’s like Bernie, I’ll endorse that.
I’m sort of assuming that this comment can be aimed at me, which I think is accurate
Nope, just responding to OP. I fit 3 of the items on their list, 5 depending on who you ask, and I take exception to having my issues with the party that’s supposed to represent my interests dismissed as “maga cuckoo infiltration.”
If it is as you say, then that sounds like bad faith actors posing as 3rd party alright. People will do anything to get you sucked into engagement to drain you and keep you from being productive. I guess reminding everyone of that is a public service
Yeah, I sort of saw talking with t3rmit3 that me and OP do actually see things a little differently maybe in some important respects. I actually don’t think everyone who fits a lot of OP’s criteria is necessarily (or even probably) a fake account. I definitely think there’s a huge problem of fake accounts but the way OP has framed it I think also includes some people who are just speaking their mind.
Some of the accounts that I would place in that category also hate Bernie. They call him a “sheepdog” or say that he is controlled opposition designed to siphon off support that could productively go towards some 3rd party candidate that 99% of the country has never heard of, and that’s who we should be voting for. I mean sure, that viewpoint could be legitimate from some kind of person who’s got a comprehensive master plan I’m just too thick to understand, how doing that will tie in with the left finally seizing power in this country if we can all dump Bernie, but you surely should understand that me (and presumably OP) will be skeptical.
