"Progressives should not make the same mistake that Ernst Thälmann made in 1932. The leader of the German Communist Party, Thälmann saw mainstream liberals as his enemies, and so the center and left never joined forces against the Nazis. Thälmann famously said that ‘some Nazi trees must not be allowed to overshadow a forest’ of social democrats, whom he sneeringly called ‘social fascists.’
After Adolf Hitler gained power in 1933, Thälmann was arrested. He was shot on Hitler’s orders in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944."
Vote for who YOU want to be president, regardless of if they have a chance to win or not. I wasn’t going to vote for Biden (or Trump) no matter what. I see people saying if you vote 3rd party you’re waisting your vote. You aren’t. You are supporting the candidate you like.
I am sorry, but this take is founded on a lack of knowledge about the spoiler effect in first past the post voting systems. Until more representative forms of voting are introduced this is an idealistic but ultimately misinformed take.
The spoiler effect is a system powerful encumbant politicians use to manipulate populaces at large in part by taking advantage of your better nature and belief in a flawed system. Voting your heart will just not be enough and it’s got hidden dangers. Pressure needs to be applied after this election to change the voting structure to a more stable and open system.
https://youtu.be/3Y3jE3B8HsE?si=qCvPLnk4u6FJ0ec2
Here’s a video that explains fairly susinctly what the spoiler effect is and how alternative voting systems disrupt it.
Still gonna vote for who I like and always will. I was gonna vote for Vermin Supreme until Biden dropped out.
These posts are always missing the point. Voters will vote third party. Your moral claims won’t change that, but your candidate’s policies could. Also, most of us don’t live in swing states. Don’t pretend our vote matters when it never did.
Voters will but they can’t do so under the delusion that a) they are making any sort of change or b) that they aren’t hurting the actually viable candidate closest to them.
The winner of the election in every state will be the Democrat or the Republican, full stop. You can choose to help or harm the one closest to your opinion.
This is the type of delusion that eventually leads to fascism any way
“Hey don’t try to change anything because obviously only one of two people can win”
“Hey you have to change things from the inside of the party, you can’t just have a third party even though every half decent western government has multiple parties”
“If you don’t want to vote for a genocidal enabler of capitalism and class separation paid for by the same people who pay for trump/hitler, then you’re voting for trump/Hitler”
“You have to bring the super nuts authoritarian fascists into the group, and exclude the actual left wing people who are screaming for basic decency and rights for everyone”
“Oh no how on earth did the crazy right wingers take over the entire country who could have seen this coming? It’s totally not the fault of a governmental party that can’t sort their shit out and take on policies that a majority of it’s constituents want, but instead keeps sliding as far to the right as possible every time they have to move”
Republicans are not going to suddenly stop being evil, so what’s the solution? Just endlessly comprise and never accomplish anything? Fuck that. I refuse to be held hostage. If Democrats want leftist votes then they have to deliver leftist policies. Otherwise they’re just as responsible
Every time they run on a left policy, they lose. Every time they enact left legislation, they lose. And you wonder why they don’t run a big left platform? Frankly they do left things in spite of it always costing them.
What the left needs to do is actually show up.
Hillary proves you wrong, though. Awkward!
Hilary who said she would have a map room to flight climate change. That existential issue that the left cares so much about, right? And bam she lost the election.
Exactly. If you’re as interest candidate, or arguably a center-right candidate, saying a few things to try to pretend you’re left wing is not going to get the support that you want. You need to actually change your policy in a major way well in advance.
Pretend? She declared fucking war on climate change. That’s what a map room means, a fucking war on it. But you want to say pretend lol.
And this is the big existential issue, isn’t it? It’s the big issue that all the logical leftists care about, right? It’s the issue of our generation, right?
And the left didn’t show up. She ran on that big important left policy. And. The. Left. Didn’t. Show. Up.
But we can go more! Why was it “only” climate change? For that let’s look at Obama. So Obama enacted the ACA. That’s great, right? The thanks Obama got for that was to lose the House of Representatives for year 3 and 4. And lose the House of reps again for years 5 and 6. And then lose both the House of reps and the Senate for years 7 and 8. He enacted left policy and: The left never shows up. So what did Hillary learn from the last 6 years of Obama? She learned that the left never shows up. And you’re amazed she didn’t ruin a big left platform on every issue? So she ran a mostly center platform to try to get voters, BUT with a big position to left on the map room to climate change. And bam she lost the election.
So what did Biden learn from Hillary? Don’t run a left position on anything, because it’s a sure fire eat to lose. So he ran center. But guess what happened in office? He governed left. He did a lot of left things. And what was his thanks for it? Dismal poll numbers. Aka the left was not going to show up.
Like I said, when the Dems enact left policy, they lose. When they run on left policy, they lose. Because. The. Left. Never. Shows. Up.
After Adolf Hitler gained power in 1933
WHO GAVE HITLER POWER MOTHER FUCKER?
Nobody in history has been more vindicated than Ernst motherfucking Thälmann. A vote for a Social Democrat is a vote for fascism now just as it was then - and the Democrats aren’t even that!
I’m pretty sure if all Nazi voters instead voted SDP, Hitler wouldn’t have risen to power. The only reason the Nazi Party had any appeal whatsoever is because fractured voting meant chaotic governments, weak and ineffective chancellors, and leaving the president with no choice but to issue emergency decrees just to keep the state apparatus in semi-functional condition.
The one way, the only way, given the composition of the Reichstag, that the Nazis could have been kept out of power is if the Communists were willing to swallow their pride and work with the Centre Party, moderate right-wing parties, and SPD to keep Hitler out of the Chancery. Instead, look what happened. Hitler was appointed Chancellor and purged the Reichstag of opposition. The Enabling Act wasn’t passed because everyone wanted Hitler to have those powers. It was because you either voted with the chancellor or the SS would gun you down on the way back home.
That’s the problem with today’s so-called socialists. An absolutely myopic stance that what isn’t perfect might as well be the worst thing on the planet.
The SPD was joining with the right to crush workers’ movements long before the election of 1933. If the KPD had joined with them in a coalition it would have represented the KPD abandoning the German workers, and events from then on would have played out largely the same because the Social Democrats enthusiastically went after the Communists along with the Nazis, and it was once the Communists were taken out that the Nazis turned their ire towards the Social Democrats.
The only ways Wiemar Germany turns out different is if a) the SPD joins, rather than represses, the Spartacist Uprising, or b) the KPD manages to take control before being destroyed. It isn’t about being perfect, it’s about preventing the forces of reaction from having a foothold in the movement.
Then let it be. A liberal or conservative society is nonetheless better than fascism. What you have described is merely a situation where socialist and social-democratic politics have been electorally defeated by conservative ones.
The KPD chose to pout and fight to the bitter end rather than recognising that because they lacked the necessary amount of influence in the Reichstag to control the government, they could not get what they wanted, nor anything near it, and could only, at best, get an extremely watered-down version of the policies they want, or even settle for the status quo to prevent regressive policies from being enacted. Or even accept a mildly regressive policy to prevent a fascist one from being enacted. This is what democracy is meant to do. You give a little, and they give a little, and hopefully, we can both get a little bit of what we want or at least reduce the amount of the stuff we hate. If all of your positions are rigidly uncompromisable, you will find that a well-designed democratic system will keep you out of government and relegated to the sidelines unless you actually hold the popular mandate.
If the choice is to saw off your left foot or saw off your head, you must choose the lesser of the two. Refusing to choose does nothing to help you, and the KPD refused to choose.
Rather than accepting this reality, the. KPD decided it wouldn’t go down without a fight. Ultimately, they failed, and wouldn’t get the chance to govern (or even exist in public) for another two decades. Only after finding external help in the form of the Soviet Union and its Red Army did the KPD finally get what it wanted, subjugating the SPD. The new SED was ushered into government, will of the electorate be damned.
In the end, both the KPD and the Nazi Party wanted to destroy the Weimar Republic because they knew they could not get what they wanted by playing by its rules. The key historical difference is that the Nazis succeeded.
I don’t fault the KPD’s leaders for what they did. After all, we here in 2024 have the power of hindsight that was not available to them. But in the end, we must recognise that the KPD’s stubbornness certainly didn’t help with the collapse of the Weimar Republic and accelerated Hitler’s rise to power.
It is an uncomfortable position to be in when you are forced to criticise the decisions of those whose values you respect and agree with. But it must be done if the goal is to learn from history and not merely flaunt it.
I mean, we’re seeing the same thing (sans the communist orgs) play out in real time across Europe now. In Britain, labor purges Jeremy corbyn and his ilk, then gets elected with a solid mandate, then promises to gut the NHS and promotes transphobic policies (for no material benefit) in the name of coalition building anyway.
What distinguishes these “bipartisan” labourists and their american equivalents from the Tories except different colored hats? Would you also blame corbyn for running against these people?
No, I would not. In an ideal world, Corbyn would still be the leader of the Labour Party while Starmer would head a moderate centre-left or centrist liberal party, and after the 2024 election, it would be Corbyn and Starmer governing together in coalition, resulting in a government that is slightly more to the left than what it is now.
But the UK’s system of elections is flawed and definitely not perfect, which prevents this.
I was trying to draw a comparison to how the KPD formed in the first place. they were a group within the spd who were horrified at their colleagues voting in support of a brutal imperialist war and left (or rather were kicked out) of the party. Imo there has to be a moral line somewhere after which you refuse to vote for or even be in government with people who do monstrous things.
And it is not just the uk’s system of elections, as I mentioned this pattern happens across all of Europe and the United States, which leads me to also believe it’s an inherent feature of “liberal” bourgeois democracy and the kpd were right to roll the dice and try to fight it through non electoral means.
Frankly, most communist parties around the world that try to fight the government and take over violently get brutally crushed.
You cannot launch a violent revolution without popular support, and the reality is that absent extreme circumstances, the population as a whole at any given time will view the policies proposed by most communist parties as extreme. That is why it is so exceedingly rare for communist parties to be able to win power democratically, because the truth of the matter is that communist policies are usually deeply unpopular.
I do not care whatever your intentions may be; if you try to impose your ideology on the population against their will by violence, I equate you to the fascists. And indeed, many of the so-called socialist regimes that have popped up after these “worker’s revolutions” have been tinpot dictatorships with the socialist decorations, while extinguishing personal liberties and badly mismanaging the state economy. And the promise of equality is totally betrayed as the party leadership becomes the new bourgeoisie, living in luxury off others’ labour while the workers’ living standards remain much lower.
I am a socialist and also Chinese, and I believe fellow socialist George Orwell’s Animal Farm is shockingly illustrative of the situation.
Progressives should not make the same mistake that Ernst Thälmann made in 1932
The mistake Ernst Thälmann made was not throwing his support behind checks notes Paul von Hindenburg, the man who ordered the police massacre of the Spartacus League?
After Adolf Hitler gained power in 1933, Thälmann was arrested.
Who elevated Adolf Hitler to the Chancellorship in 1933?
We keep doing “harm reduction” but after what point is is truly harm reduction and when does it because a slow decline into fascism? Right now the “harm reduction” policy means voting for genocide, war, a fascist border policy, less social programs for the poor, more money for the rich, mass censorship, and surveillance. What will you Liberals say when the Kamala runs again but even more right wing, and then what? When does the insanity end? At what point do we vote for Fascists as a form of “harm reduction” while the planet dies? How long do we truly have to keep making the capitalist class rich at our expense before there is no future generations to protect? I reject this line of thinking, true freedom cannot come from reform. We need a new revolution or we will not be alive to tell our story.
All viable politics is harm reduction.
He can write executive orders all day long but unless he’s repealing a previous order, it requires Congress to fund them.
And you might think he’ll just blunder along like last time, and I’d like to point out he did a lot of damage last time, but I believe he is FULLY aware of Project 2025 and I think he would try his best to enact much of it because it involves loyalty to him and enriching him. Either way, I’m not interested in finding out.
Sorry for the pedantry, but the term for cancelling an executive order is to rescind or revoke them. Only legislation is repealed.
Don’t mind at all. Thank you for correcting me.
We could avoid this with ranked choice voting.
Ranked choice voting probably leads to two-party domination (see Australia or Malta), and even without that caveat it’s otherwise suboptimal. Score voting is the way to ensure voting for your favourite comes with no strategic tradeoffs.
This might work, but in our current situation I don’t see the outcome as much different than what I’d expect now. MAGA would give Trump the highest score. Dems would give Harris the highest score and the rest would split.
I also don’t agree with the part of the premise that says our system is prone to fraud. Because each district does things differently, it makes it hard to hack. In Miami for instance they had hanging chad, because they used a punch system. Where I live, we fill in a bubble and in some states only mail in ballots are used. The real hacking takes place before the vote, in social media.
First time around Dems would probably vote Dems 99, GOP 0 and leave every other party blank, but over time people would realise that you can ALSO score your actual favourite (think of all the people that would vote Green if it wasn’t a wasted vote) a 99 without hurting the “lesser evil’s” chances. Greens 99, Dems 99 and GOP 0 is just as bad for the GOP as Greens blank, Dems 99 and GOP 0. That’s the magic of score voting. And people who are really apathetic and refuse to vote because they think all parties are bad could still express an opinion akin to Dems 10, GOP 0, rest empty.
GOP 0? Trump barely lost the last election and the Republicans still control one house of Congress.
These are different ways to fill the same ballot! In score voting you give every party a score (in this case from 0 to 99). This was the example of a die-hard Democrat. A more moderate voter might vote something like Dems 50, GOP 60, or Dems 30, GOP 25
We desperately need more real third-party participation in politics, but voting for third parties in presidential elections doesn’t make that happen—the US voting system isn’t a business that adapts its products to meet consumer demand.
That… is the exact opposite of what the article is arguing. If one side of the political spectrum (inevitably right-wing) unites, they immediately run over the side that is split up into different fragments that are arguing over just how much of a school lunch should be subsidized by the government.
And we have seen this in the modern day as well. A couple months back basically the entire Left/Center-Left of France had to unite to try and prevent fascists from taking power and… it is unclear if they actually succeeded.
Its fun to parrot the exact same text every single time a topic comes up. But shit like this is a lot more important than meming about Subway and it is well worth understanding what efforts do and don’t address and think through those problems. Otherwise we just leave ourselves more and more vulnerable to hate.
The point though is that ranked choice allows you all the benefits of 3rd parties without the downsides.
One can just as easily argue that that is the point of primaries in the US and other countries. You get a wide range of left and right leaning candidates and you downselect based on who the majority wants as well as general election theory to handle moderates.
And… the end result is that people get incredibly pissy when their candidate doesn’t win and disenfranchise themselves. Theoretically, a very strict ranked choice model that requires ALL candidates to be ranked could help with that but you still get into the realm of “protest votes”. See: People who refused to vote for Biden because he had shit stances on genocide and who would have given trump, who is openly genocidal, the win.
The reality is that we need to actually educate people on how governments work to undo decades of “haw haw, douche or a turd sandwich” levels of narrative. But we also need the politicians to actually unite against common threats. The fascists already understand that. But the Left continues to infight at every opportunity.
voting for third parties in presidential elections doesn’t make that happen
In a winner-take-all system, the marginal votes on the winning and losing side don’t matter. Third parties are an extrapolation of this principle. But when you’re voting in a state that is 60/40 for a given party, any individual vote for a given party is equally meaningful.
The only real benefit to valuing a Big Two party over a Third Party is if you’re in a swing state, where the odds of your vote being the tipping point are reasonably high. And even then, the powers invested in the partisan state secretary and county election’s commissioner offices render that decision relatively meaningless.
People losing their shit at Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan in 2000 seem to have completely overlooked the impact of the mass voter disenfranchisement under Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris, the Butterfly Ballot design that confused voters into voting Buchanan over Gore, as well as the transformative impact of the Brooks Brother’s Riot and the subsequent SCOTUS decision to halt the vote count in Dem leaning districts.
At some level, Americans must stop treating their elections process as free and fair, and then deflecting blame of defeat onto anyone who doesn’t vote for your favorite candidate.
Plus we keep using this outdated first-past-the-post voting system in the 21st century.
Yup. We need ranked choice/instant runoff voting first.
Approval Voting is even better.
I second Approval Voting. STAR as well, but perhaps slightly less intuitive.
That’s why one should always vote for Democrats who support voting system reform.
Are we talking about the same Democrats that sued to keep ranked choice boating off the DC ballot this year? or the Democrats that chose to keep ranked choice voting that had already been passed by voters off the Alexandria VA ballot?
I interpreted it as “vote only for those democrats who support voting reform,” but it could also be sarcasm.
I feel like we need something like the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact that is aiming to eliminate the electoral college, but for Ranked Choice.
Passing this federally is too hard. We need do to this state by state.
Until I can vote for a third party with RCV, then I might as well be saying that I have zero preference about the GOP and DNC options on the table.
Rightwing Dems that get to the primary off corporate donors in the primary will never let RCC take over
The only reason they win in generals is the only other option is Republicans.
To fix anything on the federal level we need the Dem party onboard and all on the same page, then heavy majorities, then fix the system
