I'm glad to see this has been as positive a place for you as I have found it to be myself. Your thoughts are well formed and pleasant to read, and I'm thankful that you choose to share them here with us. :)
Perhaps they are thinking of the “anarchists” that just watch YouTube videos to get angry at “the tankies” based on a misunderstanding of history in the 1920s
Curious what that misunderstanding is. Do you feel the betrayal of the Anarchist Kronstadt sailors, Nestor Makhno's black army, CNT of Spain, or the lengthy list of offenses against the IWW were just an oopsie?
I think the worry is that, sometimes problems or concepts are too complex to be distilled into a short form. If someone only ever gets the short version of everything, they can lose a tremendous amount of nuance, and the desire for the shortest version may lead people to come away with a misinformed or caricaturized version.
We're already seeing how dangerous that is with how everything has to be a quick soundbyte or people lose interest due to a short attention span, to the point where they ONLY know the soundbyte but feel well informed, when they are in fact still ignorant. This can lead to people being easily manipulated, or coming to harmful conclusions that don't account for enough complexity or variables.
If tiktok and twitter train your mind to have a short attention span, reading long form books trains your mind to be able to hold large concepts in your head all at once, and how they relate to one another. In other words, it is training you to be able to form 'big picture' conceptions about things.
This video on the subject does a good job of delving into the issue.
Welcome! :)
I figure it's not too different from a regular text post here, so if there's a community that seems relevant to the post somehow, that'd prolly be best.
As to how to find them, I'd recommend the communities tab of lemmyverse explorer, and searching a word or category that seems close to what you're posting to see if there's a community that already exists for it.
- Creating or helping encourage worker owned cooperatives
- Helping organize people into unions
- Participating in or forming a local mutual aid group to tackle a problem that your community faces (feeding the needy, making small candle heaters to help vulnerable people survive in colder regions, help your community become more climate resilient, etc)
- Creating community gardens to help feed, nutrify, and bring together your local community, especially helpful in downtrodden communities where nutritive food is not accessible by walking or bicycle.
- Educating your local community that anarchism and or its principles are an incredibly promising solution to many of societies problems
- Participate in meaningful demonstrations (occupy wall street, physically blocking climate destroying activities)
Those are just a few examples I can think of.
Interesting article! It's a shame the documentation is lacking :(
Oh, and as for the different sorting options:
- Hot sorts by the number of upvotes and how recent the post itself is
- Active sorts by number of upvotes and how many recent comments a post has (lively discussion ranks higher)
- Scaled sorts like Hot, but tries to prioritize or give more weight to smaller communities
- Controversial sorts by giving comments or posts a higher rank if they have an even mix of down votes and upvotes
From what I've observed, only a minority of people actively engage with the political system heavily. I think most of society (at least in the US) does only engage with it at the elections, and otherwise are more concerned with their job, family, or favored sports activity.
I agree, it's a terrible shame that people will become so deeply involved with a broken system instead of putting that effort into prefigurative politics, direct action, or mutual aid.
Though at least for some people, the outcome of an election may indeed be a life or death scenario, such as those who may be deported back to countries that may be seeking asylum from political prosecution, or back into living conditions that are difficult to survive in, or women who cannot access a life saving abortion, or the stripping of medicaid for those who have medical conditions that would make it impossible to afford survival.
It also would likely effect the ability for people to unionize or strike, or to engage in rent strikes without legal prosecution.
I will say, at least in this particular election, I don't begrudge people getting politically involved quite so much, since it's not out of the question that one party may genuinely install a full on fascist dictator for life, and that'd suck way harder than the normal fascist-lite we've usually had. I hope that more people will do so with their eyes open as to what they're engaging with this time, and do not become deceived that it is a solution in itself.
But yeah, ultimately agree. Voting should've just been a box you tick quickly in between more important direct action, and it sucks that it ends up being more of what you describe instead.
Voting takes up a relatively small amount of time. In my case, just filling in a mail in ballot, so I didn't even need to drive somewhere. If that's the extent of the required participation every few years, I would do so even if the tangible benefits were marginal, since the costs are so trivial.
Some anarchists historically have refused to participate in voting to deny legitimizing the state. This is an ideologically pure and legitimate stance, but it's difficult for me to see what that achieves practically other than the ideological purity.
If I try to look as objectively and dispassionately as possible at the practical outcomes of democrat and republican governments in the US, the democrat governments, while still corporate captured and moving further to the right, does pass some legislation that has, at times, reduced suffering for some of the most in need. It is still completely insufficient, but for many, I'm sure it has made life more bearable, and in many cases saved lives.
Climate legislation has a similar result, with Republicans blocking all bills that could help, where as democrats were able to get some passed that, while insufficient due to still having to appease capitalist interests, are definitely way better than nothing. Seeing as we have so little time to impact climate change, I will generally prioritize practical outcomes more than ideological purity, because ultimately if global warming gets bad enough, there will be very little humanity left to be ideologically anything at all.
There are many other parts of society that would also very quickly suffer under this republican candidate and underlings in particular, such as trans people, immigrants, and women.
That leaves the genocide, which both parties will continue to participate in, and which makes voting for either party ideologically disgusting. Again, I personally try to detach my own feelings on this and to consider the practical outcome, which is that regardless of my choice to vote or not, that suffering and inhumanity will most likely continue, and my lack of a vote does nothing to reduce it. With that in mind, I only consider the things my vote potentially could change, which so far are still worth the 5 minutes I personally have to commit.
Ultimately I know that my vote only delays a fascist state, but it also makes it more survivable for some along the way, and that's not to be dismissed, even if the same group making it more survivable for some is simultaneously enabling genocide.
There's a lot of variables, and it's deeply unjust that I'm forced into a position to have to weigh these variables between greedy power hungry cretins who enable so much suffering, but that's what I'm left with. You could think of it as picking which enemy you want to face.
But as for your question of where the line in the sand is for me to consider it not worth voting; I would consider it pointless if either party would result in near enough the same amount of suffering overall, and the only difference is the flavor (a random example, choosing between a Soviet Union style authoritarian state vs a mafia state like modern Russia)
Or,
The election is so thoroughly corrupt that my votes, if counted at all, will consistently be rendered useless by an absurd number of fake votes to where the whole thing is a charade (modern Russia).
But that's just my two cents :)
Thirding Keychron! Had a great experience with them.
When I remember to, I try to add a message in the post body recommending Freetube combined with Libredirect, since that still works.
