If somebody tells you not to vote, they’re voting for the other guy.
Because there are massive groups of people on the internet with vested interests in convincing you not to vote (because it helps their allies win).
And ten times as many bots that are doing the same.
Brazil is hanging in there as well. By a thread, but it’s still…
Go Serbia! You crazy kids are showing the world how it’s done. Thanks!
This is basically why I’m cynical about voting. People will post stuff like this and ignore the 2+ years of street action that got them there.
AKA. I would be a lot more confident going into these USA midterms if my fellow Americans had been going on rowdy strikes the last two years.
But voting doesn’t counter the street action, it’s not a zero sum game. At the very least people should vote for the right people, even if that’s all they do. And if they wanna do more, like protest, then that’s great because it’s really needed. But in the end I’m of the opinion that you can’t complain about how bad it is and then refuse to vote. If you vote and then your candidate is shit, you have a reason to complain. If you vote and it turns out they meddled with it, then you can complain. And obviously you can also complain if half of the country voted for some douchebag. But people who encourage not voting are actively lowering the chances of the right people to win, even in a system where the vote is rigged. The more people vote for change, the harder it is to cover up
I don’t think they are ignoring it. This is a direct response to the people saying voting is pointless. Sure, the years of street action are important but if people didn’t vote then it would just be noise.
It ended three in half a year just in places tgat i am more connected to, two of which im actually very connected to
When the answer to the question ‘When did voting last end an authoritarin regime’ is ‘two days ago’
deep breath Are we talking about…
- Brazil
- Serbia
- Israel
Then i saw the title :) Thank you for clarifying OP
Israel ?
‘Very dangerous’: Both main candidates want ‘Greater Israel’
and one is a former general which seems very supportive of “extreme actions” for decisive victories.
Wouldn’t get my hopes up. Eisenkot is a former general. Former generals generally love pointing at a “common enemy” and suggesting more military spending as the solution. His son has died in Gaza in action so I am sure he will be constantly reminding everyone that “he has lost more than the peace seeking hippies and understands what is required”. Netanyahu would be like “you thought I was extreme, enjoy the show bitches”.
Haven’t checked all the claims here but it doesn’t look very hopeful
we are talking about the guy who seems to have come up with Dahiya doctrine
At the absolute least, voting (when possible) can stop things from breaking so quickly and making it easier to do the other things that fix things.
And once things are fixed, voting well will be one of the actions keeping things from breaking again.
Plus, it’s just one hour of effort with years’ worth of impact. Even if that impact is low, it’s a good tradeoff.
Voting out fascism never works except for all the times it has like the same fucking guy in 2020
Considering where we are now that doesn’t seem like a great argument.
There is no “beating fascism”, it’s an ethernal struggle, those fuckers are relentless. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, doesn’t invalidate your wins however small and temporary
I hope the Serbians don’t go out to brunch like the Americans did.
A surgeon saving your dog still counts if he later runs into traffic a second time. The vet’s office is not the shortcoming.
Also Brazil, also Hungary.
I mean, sure, go vote. Can’t hurt, probably.
But if you’re expecting it to fix anything, because it did in completely different countries, with vastly different histories and corcumstances… you’re in for some serious disappointment.
Yeah it’s like both doing things and voting are important, and maybe people should stop shitting on voting.
Sure voting isn’t going to get you in a luxury communist utopia.
But revolutions didn’t get anybody any of that either.
If one person is promising to make things demonstrably worse, vote against them. Doing the least harm is the most I can hope for and I do it all the same.
Damn, I hate living somewhere with history and circumstances.
ITT: authoritarian regime x10000
Fyi when leftists talk about the ineffectiveness of voting without a communist party, they are explicitly referring to mode of production. Did that change in Chile or Serbia? There’s your answer.
So what?
Sorry things aren’t getting better in the way you want, but getting better in a different, not mode of production way.
True democracy is a series of riots and rebellions. It happens when we all together, collectively, say “they can’t stop all of us.” Events like this are not the end goal of the project of liberation, but instead a loosening of the straps that prevent us from organizing true labor power. This is still a win for the people, worth celebrating, however, it should not be treated as the end goal of democratic progression (which many people will treat it as). In the coming weeks and months, I predict we will see many examples of this big tent government failing to fully protect and value the rights and liberties that the people should enjoy. The sooner the people start organizing themselves into units of power that restrict the harms the government can do to them, the better.
Government is not intrinsically bad, this is idealism. Government that serves a dictatorship of the proletariat is a good thing.
in this context, i meant this specific government. i suspect we have some disagreements about the inherent violence of state-based hierarchies, however within this exact context these differences of opinion are relatively immaterial as what we’re talking about is what comes next in one place in the world in one particular moment in time
I personally love anarchists, you included. I just naturally, as an ML, disagree about the state bits, among others. But thank you for sharing your side of things.
Who the fuck down voted this lmao?
The slightly more nuanced steel man is voting alone doesn’t fix things. I.e vote and take other action
Serbia’s election results happened after almost 2 years of protests including worker strikes
Yeah. Anyone who thinks “vote and everything will be fixed” is just as delusional as the person who says voting doesn’t matter. Serbia did way more than just vote and so far they’ve only voted out the authoritarian leader. They still need to tackle all corruption built up over the years. This is not the end, if anything it’s a start.
Unfortunatley nuance is lost on the majority of the denizens of the internet, everything is black or white here for the majority of people.
not to speak of how replacing our rulers can not fix the issue of rulership
That’s like buying a better car to fix the issue of travel.
A real authoritarian regime can’t be made to go away by voting. Look at Russia. Putin is still in charge, and his oppositions are dead, also his government can say whatever they want about voting results, and if you disagree you’ll end up dead too.
In America you also have authoritarianism, but it’s through oligarchy. It’s not the politicians in charge but the one’s with all the money. Nothing politically will change because they’ll just buy whatever it takes to prevent political change. That’s what gerrymandering is for.
That is authoritarianism.
Here in Europe we’ll be going up against riot police because American oligarchs are buying are politicians too. In America you have more bullets than any place in the world, and yet the oligarchs who buy their authority are feeling comfortable. Too comfortable.
Putin didn’t install his authoritarian regime in a single blow. It took many years of public support. Voting against him now is impossible, but that’s the result of repeatedly voting for authoritarianism for decades.
Why do you suppose the people kept voting for Putin? Do you think the Russian skull shape predisposes them to hating freedom and loving authoritarian strongmen?
I don’t know, but my guess would be that they were desperate after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and when people are afraid of the future they tend to prefer strong leaders with drastic policies who are not afraid to use violence. Putin was popular because he knew how to press those buttons.
But what’s with the sarcasm? I’m sorry if I offended you, but I don’t know how.
Why do you think Russians kept voting for Putin?
I don’t know, but my guess would be that they were desperate after the collapse of the Soviet Union
Putin wasn’t elected until nearly a decade later.
Why do you think Russians kept voting for Putin?
The 90s. Seeing their country go from conditions similar to the west to the greatest drop in life expectancy outside of war and natural disaster as your place of work closes, the copper is stripped from the walls to be sold overseas, and you can no longer afford food will make any alternative positive.
Putin was popular because he got the other oligarchs to stop stealing 100% of the country’s labor and resources to merely 98% of it, and the alternatives are the communists who Russians tell me aren’t good and various combinations of liberals who want to bring back the 90s and basically nazis worse than Putin.
But what’s with the sarcasm? I’m sorry if I offended you, but I don’t know how.
Eh, anyone who uses “authoritarian” is unserious; as they don’t know or haven’t contended with the history of any states that get labeled authoritarian or not authoritarian to understand the context of actions they just mash together into “authoritarianism”.
Thank you for a more serious answer.
So you are basically agreeing with me? People were desperate and Putin promised (and to some degree delivered) improvements.
Which word would you use to describe the political reality in Russia?
I live in Hungary. What Fidesz did here was full on authoritarianism. They stole a significant, visible percentage of the GDP every year, they controlled like 95% of the media (by budget), they were actively destroying the environment by giving build permits to industry and such in areas that were previously beautiful, environmentally protected lands and not forcing companies to comply with emissions and pollution regulations (e.g. battery factories).
And they were fully above the law, they have installed every member of the supreme court and heads of every law enforcement and secret agencies, so they could never be prosecuted.
Last summer they have prepared a law that would have let them prosecute, dismentle and jail all of the remaining 5% of independent media - precisely from Putin’s handbook. However people organized large scale protests, so they did not dare to implement the law in the last second. This was because Orbán has built a private army, also like Putin (OMON), called TEK, but it was not big and strong enough (yet) to be able to protect them from real large scale unrests. Also, they needed to keep up some appearances, because of the EU.
They have also gerrymandered the election and changed the election laws to help them as much as possible, back when they first gained 2/3 majority. They were also outspending campaigning the whole opposition by like a 100:1 ratio, using hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal funding.
So yes, Hungary was under a full on authoritarian regime and like 5 minutes and this last election away from becoming a total dictatorship. There were basically like these three things separating us from the total dictatorship:
- Having the 5% or so free, independent media left
- Fidesz not cheating away the complete elections (they were cheating some and buying votes, but not on a big enough scale), only Gerrymandering and skewing it in their favor as much as possible.
- Not building up Orbán’s own personal army (TEK) enough to be able to crush any unrest or rebellion.
All three of these points were most definitely getting solved in the next four years, if they gained another victory this past election, completely solidifying their power fully and indefinitely, just like Putin has done in the 2000s.
This was Hungary’s very last chance of avoiding to become a full on dictatorship. And we’ve used it spectacularly well.
Good job to all of you!
And from the outside at least looks like Magyar Peter is also doing a good job, is he?
He’s doing as good a job, as anyone could have hoped for. But it takes much-much more than just one man. The corruption from the last few decades (even before Orbán) is rooted very deep in all levels of society. So healing will take a lot of time. But at the moment we are heading dead on to a better, more democratic and fair country, so 180 degree turn from Orbán’s regime.
And by doing so you gave hope to us all.
I find the “we are doomed to fall into fascism” way easier to counter since Magyar was elected.
Really depends on the situation. If you have elections and the government has to honor the result it’s very possible.
There have been numerous of examples of a near complete state capture being reversed in recent history such as Hungary. Voting is extremely important.
What about the Pinochet Regime in Chile?
