Flippanarchy
Flippant Anarchism. A lighter take on social criticism with the aim of agitation.
Post humorous takes on capitalism and the states which prop it up. Memes, shitposting, screenshots of humorous good takes, discussions making fun of some reactionary online, it all works.
This community is anarchist-flavored. Reactionary takes won't be tolerated.
Don't take yourselves too seriously. Serious posts go to [email protected]
Rules
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If you post images with text, endeavour to provide the alt-text
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If the image is a crosspost from an OP, Provide the source.
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Absolutely no right-wing jokes. This includes "Anarcho"-Capitalist concepts.
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Absolutely no redfash jokes. This includes anything that props up the capitalist ruling classes pretending to be communists.
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No bigotry whatsoever. See instance rules.
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This is an anarchist comm. You don't have to be an anarchist to post, but you should at least understand what anarchism actually is. We're not here to educate you.
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No shaming people for being anti-electoralism. This should be obvious from the above point but apparently we need to make it obvious to the turbolibs who can't control themselves. You have the rest of lemmy to moralize.
Join the matrix room for some real-time discussion.
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Not voting means the party has to start offering policies to entice you back.
Blindly supporting means the party can start offering policies to entice those who don't vote for them (conservatives).
Tell me again which moves the overton window?
Focusing on nothing but voting enables neoliberalism in promoting fascism.
Well I’m right behind you bud. I’ll vote AND you let me know what you wanna do.
Vote if you want. But don't waste too much time doing so and join a political org.
Can we stop pretending like voting for the Democrats as they exist now stops the Republicans from winning? It only makes them win more slowly. It is literally why everyone is so disillusioned and why the Democrats were unable to sell their message to enough people. And can we also take for granted that me saying this doesn’t mean that I didn’t vote for Kamala Harris?
Maybe we could stop pretending that the shitty Democrats that have never learned their lesson suddenly will if Republicans win one more time
Yes. That's how electoralist politics work. The power as a voter lies in the ability to withhold their vote or to vote for someone else. The moment your vote is being forced into compliance, you have thus lost all your political power under that system.
It's kinda one of the major flaws of an electoralist system.
Congratulations for reaching the point.
The Democrats exist as they do now because they can’t rely on the left to vote. So they have to pander to the center.
Take a marketing class. If you think that politics is about pandering and not about convincing people, then you’ve lost the game already
The centrist voter is a myth. There is not a human who will vote for "means-tested subsidies for a state-run employer-funded health insurance marketplace where you have no idea what it will cover or cost." But wouldn't vote for "free healthcare" when you move to the center by compromising your bills, you lose voters who suspect the policy won't help them, you dont gain a bunch of "moderate Republicans" who want only half of immigrants subjected to inhumane conditions.
Blindly voting means the Right win.
Vote for the furthest left-wing candidate in the primary.
Vote the for furthest left-wong candidate in the general.
It's not difficult.
You forgot a step. Short term vs long term planning.
The problem with voting with your method is you only get to vote once. Every vote you need to make the decision:
I should vote based on the optimal outcome of this election.
I should vote based on the optimal outcome over many elections.
It's important that you first ask yourself this question. There's no such thing as a free lunch. And often by voting for (1) you're hurting (2).
For example, everyone to the left of Republicans would have been better off if Trump had won in 2020. The primary process was rigged to keep progressive Democrats divided while forcing Biden through as the centrist compromise. People on the left tried to vote for progressive candidates, but the DNC rigged it so that all the centrists EXCEPT Biden dropped out early, while the progressive candidates had their vote divided. The DNC organized for Biden to win the primary. And then, in the general, everyone on the left held their nose and voted for him. They followed your advice to the letter, and everyone to the left of Republicans was massive harmed as the result of following your exact advice.
Those on the left followed your instructions exactly, but they ended up with an inferior option than if they had voted third party.
Biden winning in 2020 guaranteed a MAGA win in 2024. Biden was never going to make the changes needed to prevent MAGA from returning to power. This was predicted by many on the left before he was even sworn in.
Trump in 2020 would have been far less dangerous than a Trump in 2024. He wouldn't have had 4 years to regroup and plan out his whole Project 2025. He would have been a lame duck from day one, and he wouldn't have had the political capital he came in with in 2024.
Centrists, liberals, leftists, all of them did themselves a disservice by voting for Biden in 2020. Objectively, everyone EXCEPT Republicans would have had a better long-term outcome if Trump had won in 2020. But in your strategy, we're not allowed to consider the long term effects of our decisions. We're just supposed to myopically focus on this and only this election.
You claim to worry about long term planning when you don't even have the hindsight of all the horrible shit happening we could have avoided.
In hindsight, everyone on the left side of the spectrum would have been better off not voting in the 2020 presidential presidential election.
No, it doesn't. The pseudo-democratic spectacle liberals call "democracy" is completely immune to abstinence or boycotts.
The libs don't lose when the fascists win. There's a good reason they keep fascists around.
That's an assumption. Another assumption is that they try to win over the voters who reliable show up and ignore the ones who don't as unreachable.
How do you ensure the outcome you're looking for happens? Hope is not a strategy.
That's true in a democratic system, sure. But what I think the electoral entryists lose sight of is the real incentive of a politician isn't necessarily to win election. The real incentive of a politician is to build political capital within the party/government in order to pursue an objective. And that objective isn't necessarily going to be a popular one.
Case in point, look at the UK Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour Right very deliberately and explicitly tanked their own chances to win in 2019, because they didn't want the policies that Corbyn was championing. The fact that Corbyn had brought in an enormous number of new, enthusiastic left-liberal voters was considered a problem to solve not a benefit of his campaign strategy.
Consequently, when Corbyn lost to Johnson, New Labour spent the next years systematically weeding out all of the new left-liberals introduced to the party in the prior cycle. They consolidated support around Starmer by shrinking participation not by expanding it.
The modern Democratic Party is engaged in a similar project. The goal is not to entice anyone into the party. It is to establish the Dem Party as the only viable alternative to Trump and demand voters approach the liberal(ish) party on its own terms. The Dems exist to cater to the donors first and then to the corporate media and then to the celebrity class.
The only thing that moves the Overton Window is consolidation of control over the local media.
Leftists quite literally need to get control of the airwaves and democratize the engines of journalism and information commerce. Anything else is a fool's errand.
You aren't going to beat FOX News at a propaganda contest by being a Silent Majority. All you're going to get is BlueMAGA blaming you when they lose, while MSNBC calls you a bunch of Putin Bots and TikTok degenerates.
Leftists have been doing this strategy for a couple decades now. How successful has this been at moving the Overton window left?
Voting blue no matter who seems to have done the US wonders huh?
You can’t have it both ways. Either the progressives not voting had no change on the outcome on of the election thus their strategy has no merit, OR progressives not voting cost democrats the election and the democrat party were at fault for abandoning their base. Oh what’s that? The apathetic vote is not to blame for either scenario? No shit.
No. The left hasn't.
Probably be more successful if you stopped being rightists and joined them?
And I think you'll find that blindly supporting blue no matter who has been done far more often for a couple of decades now. How successful has this been at moving the Overton window left?
Wait, what? No they haven't. They've been turning out in droves in both primaries and general elections.
I guess this means you don't know what a "progressive" is, huh?
Join a Union? Feed the homeless? Organize your fellow tenants? Actually attend a city council meeting?
You're smugly confirming your allegiance to the liberal death cult, because your only conception of "political engagement" is voting in a system that is crumbling before our very eyes.
And no, just voting wouldn't have stopped that decay. Nothing in the world is static, and 1000 years of Obama wouldn't stop the larger political-economic factors that are fueling fascism, political polarization, and civil unrest.
Cool, go vote, especially if it's in your local and state elections that no one actually pays attention to. But disengage from the rat race, and do something with an actual impact in your community.