Honestly, like 99% of Americans don't care about Gaza enough to not vote for Biden over Trump. The internet echo chamber has warped your sense of what normal people actually care about.
I think you underestimate the Arab/Muslim population in the US who stopped believing in “blue no matter who” because of what is happening.
Also on a side note, what do normal people care about? I’d argue if you don’t care about the fact that a Holocaust level genocide is taking place then you aren’t really that normal.
I’d argue if you don’t care about the fact that a Holocaust level genocide
17 million people died in the holocaust. IRC the population of Gaza is roughly 2.4 million of which just over 1% have died. That figure includes Hamas militants. The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between combatant and civilian casualties in its reports.
It is possible to criticize and condemn Israeli war crimes and ethnic cleansing, which are without doubt horrific, without distorting the facts.
In fact, it actually makes your criticism more convincing and harder to discount by supporters of the current hard right Israeli government. The fediverse is a bubble on this conflict, but we should be aware that hyperbole does not serve the interests of the Palestinian cause or win the argument outside of this bubble.
Maybe you'll be the exception, but I say this knowing full well that some will call me pro-Israel for this comment. But if anything these extremists are useful idiots for Israel's far right government and its supporters, as they allow them to paint any criticism as anti-semitism or disingenious.
e: this comment already had downvotes within seconds of me posting it. This is not long enough to finishing reading it...
While I appreciate your thoughtful response, I disagree with the fact that we need to wait for 17million Palestinians murdered before we can liken the current genocide to the Holocaust.
The way I see it, the Holocaust was/is attributed to the systematic cleansing and expulsion of an ethnic group at a mass scale and not measured by the number of murdered people (not death, murder because that’s what it is).
You can call it whatever you want, but at the end of the day what is happening in Palestine is an ethnic cleansing at a mass scale similar to the Holocaust.
The comment I replied to said:
a Holocaust level genocide is taking place
30,000 people have died. 17 million people died in the holocaust. That is not on the same level and it is not on the same scale. 30,000 is a significantly smaller number than 17 million.
If you support the Palestinian cause, pretending otherwise is a home goal.
I get that it feels right, because people are understandably angry about all this, but it's not a winning argument. Quite the opposite. If you're provably exaggerating the scale of what's happening, it allows supporters of Israel's far right government to sow doubt and claim you might also be exaggerating about the very very real war crimes and ethnic cleansing they are engaged in.
I feel like you and I are NOT on the same page, as a matter of fact, I feel like we are arguing to different points.
You seem like you are gatekeeping the definition of the Holocaust based on number of murdered casualties, I argue that the act of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people is comparable to the Holocaust.
Please don’t create another straw man to argue over, the number of casualties was never the point, rather the act itself.
I argue that the act of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people is comparable to the Holocaust.
Your comment above:
if you don’t care about the fact that a Holocaust level genocide
Maybe you misunderstood my criticism, but I wasn't disputing that what was happening was genocide or ethnic cleansing. I was disputing the level or scale of what was happening. Clearly what is happening in Gaza (and the West Bank) is on a smaller scale. 17 million vs. 30,000 in Gaza.
This doesn't make what is happening ok. It just means that it is on a smaller scale than the holocaust.
Please don’t create another straw man to argue over, the number of casualties was never the point
This is not another argument. The number of casualties was my argument from the beginning. The number of casualties may not have been your point, but it was mine when you said that what was happening was on the same level or scale as the holocaust.
This is also not a strawman argument. I am literally adressing something you said in your comment.
On a more general note, this is why comparisons to the Nazis or the Holocaust are rarely helpful, and partly why Godwin's law is a thing.
For example, just because someone isn't Adolf Hitler or a Nazi, doesn't mean they're not a fascist. Calling someone like Ben Gvir or Smotrich a Nazi might feel good, but it allows them to say "Aha! But I don't believe x, y, z. Also, the Nazis hated Jews. I'm a Jew. So you're wrong." It undermines your argument, even if they are quite similar to Nazis. Call them a fascist or racial supremacist, based on things that they actually said and did, and it's far harder to deny.
I have much respect that you are willing to engage in a civilized argument.
Now that you have pointed out what I have posted, I understand that I wasn’t being explicit enough in my definition and argument so I’ll do that here:
When I said Holocaust level, I didn’t mean it in the sense of the total amount of victims, but rather the act itself (systematic cleansing and expulsion of an ethnic race).
I hope you and I are now on the same page.
The other key distinction, of course, being that in the Holocaust, the Nazis were not striking military targets in the course of killing Jews. They were just lining up civilians and shooting them into mass graves, that is before that sort of up close violence affected the morale of the Nazis and they invented the gas chambers and death camps instead.
There is literally none of that going on in Gaza. There's also the fact that for virtually all of these airstrikes there is a legit military target, being the tunnels underneath the cities.
I agree that the victims of the holocaust are 17 million by many estimates, but did you notice how the wikipedia page of it only mentions 6 million Jewish deaths under the Holocaust definition as an event?
Curious to know what you think about that because it irks me. I don't see how all those dead Polish people aren't part of the tally.
Ethnic cleansing = 1% of the ethnic population dead?
Not doing a very good job are they?
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction.
Capturing 78% of Palestine in 1948, followed by colonizing and taking control of 60-88% of the West Bank for a total of 91-97% of all of Historic Palestine; dispossessing millions of Palestinians while violently maintaining an apartheid under permanent occupation isn't doing a good job to you?
Unfortunately, we can't go back in time. Second-guessing Israel's creation and settlement by Jews does literally nothing to address the current problem.
October 7 changed the calculus: the tunnels have to be destroyed now and Hamas cannot continue to remain in charge. It is Hamas who built the tunnels under people's homes and it is Hamas who encourages people to ignore their own safety and stay in harm's way so that they can be killed as proud Martyrs.™
Hamas should surrender right now and bring the violence to an end but it won't. The West certainly isn't going to demand a ceasefire, that's a courtesy we might extend to a state power in a political settlement of the war, but not to literal terrorists that only recently stopped using suicide bombers.
The death toll is horrifying but I blame Hamas for these numbers. It's why they built the tunnels under people's houses in the first place, it's called using human shields. Then, Hamas acts all shocked Pikachu, "why would the IDF do this?!," which is called lawfare.
That article you linked to about Hamas tunnels is wtitten by a guy namrd John Spencer. Same said guy said elsewhere that the IDF is takinh more measures than the US in Iraq and Afghanistan to protect civilians. Just for reference so that you know that what you consider "unbiased recognized law" is just yet another staunch pro Zionist writer.
Seems like almost any opinion you hsve echos that guy's opinion. :/
Are you John Spencer?
He even loves Bibi.
You have been tricked, my bud.
Hamas should surrender right now and bring the violence to an end but it won’t.
I think it's absolutely naive to think that Israeli oppression of Palestinians would end by anyone surrendering.
So the whole "Lawfare" hinges on the premise of human shields. In bad faith of course, as it ignores all IDF use of Human shields and assumes all Hamas as a given despite any verified evidence. This also ignores the history behind the occupation, the daily violence needed to maintain the occupation, the conditions in Gaza before Oct 7th, and any comprehensive historical analysis of the development/actions of Hamas and other Armed resistance groups.
The IDF uses one or two people as human shields. There's literally like 25 reports of it, ever. It was made illegal and people were prosecuted for it.
Hamas used human shields 3,500 people at a time, building tunnels under their houses, forcing people to stay, convincing people evacuation orders are a hoax. There is zero denying this. There are five hundred miles of tunnels in an area 25 miles wide.
No, I did not ignore all the times the IDF have used human shields. It's just not even remotely comparable to using the entire population of major cities as human shields.
Also, re: the ridiculous claim that Israel is an apartheid regime, totally ignores all reason. South Africa apartheid was a system of minority rule. When it's a system of majority rule, it's called democracy. I could understand if you said Israel has some apartheid like policies, but you lose all credibility and reveal yourself as a know-nothing when you say it's literally apartheid. Like, for fucka sake guy, a Palestinian Arab sits on the Israeli supreme Court. You think there were any Afrikans on the South Africa Supreme Court during Apartheid? Ha.
The IDF uses one or two people as human shields. There's literally like 25 reports of it, ever. It was made illegal and people were prosecuted for it.
Straight up untrue. You are at best being willfully ignorant at this point. Even after it was ruled illegal it was still used in subsequent wars like Cast Lead and up to present day with little to no consequences. Since April 2004, DCI-Palestine has documented 26 cases involving Palestinian children being used as human shields by the Israeli army. Nineteen of the 20 cases have occurred after the Israeli High Court of Justice ruled the practice to be illegal in October 2005.
Hamas used human shields 3,500 people at a time, building tunnels under their houses, forcing people to stay, convincing people evacuation orders are a hoax. There is zero denying this. There are five hundred miles of tunnels in an area 25 miles wide.
The existence of the tunnels and that Hamas told residents to stay put after Israel ordered the evacuation are true, yeah. Not forcing people to stay. That's not how human shields work. You're comparing real coerced human shields to this made up third definition.
"Now, what we claim is that there is a third kind of human shield," Gordon told CBC News. "That is the human shield that does not volunteer and is not coerced, but just by being where they are, they become human shields. Or more precisely, I would say they're framed as human shields. "In the Gaza Strip, for example, if the Hamas tunnels are a legitimate military target, and the tunnels span 700 kilometres, then they are under the whole Gaza Strip. So anyone above them becomes a human shield. And so you are casting or framing the whole civilian population almost as human shields.
"When Israel bombs a mosque or a school or an apartment building and kills civilians, it blames Hamas for using human shields. And yet Israel's military command centre is in central Tel Aviv, and its Southern Command centre is in the centre of Beersheba," he said. "And when Hamas bombs these cities, no one in the Western media says that the Israeli civilians around these centres are human shields.
By that made up third definition, you're also saying that the IDF is using every Israeli near their command centers as human shields. And then using that to justify them as legitimate targets. When you apply the same standards, it becomes quite clear how blatant the double standards are. This entire human shields argument by the IDF is to legitimatize all Palestinians in Gaza as legitimate targets. Israeli officials have said this on record.
Also, re: the ridiculous claim that Israel is an apartheid regime, totally ignores all reason. South Africa apartheid was a system of minority rule. When it's a system of majority rule, it's called democracy. I could understand if you said Israel has some apartheid like policies, but you lose all credibility and reveal yourself as a know-nothing when you say it's literally apartheid. Like, for fucka sake guy, a Palestinian Arab sits on the Israeli supreme Court. You think there were any Afrikans on the South Africa Supreme Court during Apartheid? Ha.
Do you somehow think that if there was a single Black person on the South African Supreme Court, making a white majority of 14/15, that would somehow make South Africa not an Apartheid State? Despite the apartheid policies on-the-ground? What if they expelled 80% the black population into bantustans (to ensure a white majority) so they didn't need to include them as part of their South African population demographics? With a white majority population, they would have a stable basis for a white democratic state. Well, now in that case, I suppose it's actually a democracy instead of an apartheid state. After all, they would have a Black judge on the Supreme Court and the remaining 20% non-whites could still vote democraticly like the rest of the population. You can ignore the bantustans, they're simply occupied disputed territories with stateless people. /s
This makes it extremely obvious you don't know much about Apartheid South Africa. What you're referencing is Petty Apartheid. Which is much less present in Israel than it was in South Africa. There is much more of what is considered Grand Apartheid. Less so for Arab Israelis in Israel proper, much more so within the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This is extensively detailed in the UN, HRW, and Amnesty hundred page reports on how Israel is an apartheid state. Again, you are being willfully ignorant by refusing to engage and take these reports seriously. Israel never needed Petty Apartheid to function as a democratic ethnostate. The majority needed for it was ensured by the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 and the Military Law that governed the Palestinians within Israel until 1967.
Ben-Gurion in an address to the central committee of the Histadrut on 30 December 1947:
“In the area allocated to the Jewish State there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment will be about a million, including almost 40 percent non-Jews. Such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority…. There can be no stable and strong Jewish State so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60 percent.”
Addressing the Mapai Council, Ben-Gurion declared:
“From your entry into Jerusalem, through Lifta, Romema… there are no Arabs. One hundred percent Jews. Since Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, it has not been so Jewish. In many Arab neighborhoods in the west one sees not a single Arab. I do not assume that this will change… What had happened in Jerusalem… is likely to happen in many parts of the country …in the six, eight or ten months of the campaign there will certainly be great changes in the composition of the population in the country.”
(Ben-Gurion, War Diary, Vol. 1, entry dated 7 February 1948. p. 210-211)
As you noticed, @JustZ@lemmy.world just skipped over your entire explanation and now claims that you are defending Hamas. Classic.
Bro seriously in here defending Hamas building terror tunnels under everyone's houses and you're comparing it to Israel...checks notes...merely having military bases? Israel is a legitimate state. It is allowed to have military bases. Gaza is not.
What conclusion can be drawn from your hypocrisy other than that you just don't like Jews?
Gaza is forfeit now and it's because of the tunnels and it because it has no ability to govern itself.
Your human shield and apartheid analysis are nonsense. There's a huge difference between a minority group controlling the majority in all things, without consent, as compared to a majority group, duly enacting laws that discriminate against minority. Discrimination is not great, but in a democracy that can be fixed.
You let me know when Hamas and their backwards ass culture does anything to stop discrimination. Actually, if you ask them to, they'll will probably stone you to death as an infidel.
Israel is a legitimate state. It is allowed to have military bases. Gaza is not.
Why not? Don't Palestinians have the right to self determination and a state?
Discrimination is not great, but in a democracy that can be fixed.
Then why has Israel not managed to "fix" this? Maybe because no Palestinians are allowed to vote and rarely ever to Palestinian and non-Jewish Israelis make it to a high political position?
Actually, if you ask them to, they’ll will probably stone you to death as an infidel
Do you have any proof of this?
Hamas does all kinds of shit, but I've never heard of them stoning anyone.
You seem to be lumping a bunch of Islamophobic stereotypes into one then projecting it on Hamas. Why?
What right do I have to tell people how to fight back against their occupiers? I wouldn't to Jewish people in the Nazi Ghettos fighting back either. I disagree with plenty that Hamas has done, and I criticize them for it. They've done war crimes, that's unacceptable. That doesn't change the fact that they have the right by international law to fight back against their occupiers.
The right of Palestinians to resist their occupation is enshrined in international and customary law, a fact that is denied and violated by Israel and wilfully overlooked by the rest of the world
You're conflation between anti-Zionism / criticisms of the State of Israel and genuine antisemitism, is in itself very antisemitic. You're attributing the actions of Israel as representative of all Jewish people, which is really fucked up. Israel doesn't even represent all Israelis, and nowhere near all Jewish people. Just because Israel claims otherwise doesn't make it true. Do you think B'TSelem and Jewish Voice for Peace are antisemitic too?
I'm advocating for equal rights for both Israelis and Palestinians,.You are literally advocating for the destruction of the entirety of Gaza, including at best the expulsion of millions of Palestinians and at worst their execution for being 'terrorists.' You are exactly the same kind of person who would've supported Nazi Germany in the 1930's and the forced transfer of millions of Jewish people because it's an act of 'self-defence.'
Wartime propagandists universally justify the use of military violence by portraying it as morally defensible and necessary. To do otherwise would jeopardize public morale and faith in the government and its armed forces. Throughout World War II, Nazi propagandists disguised military aggression aimed at territorial conquest as righteous and necessary acts of self-defense. They cast Germany as a victim or potential victim of foreign aggressors, as a peace-loving nation forced to take up arms to protect its populace...
You've grossly overdramatized and exaggerated what I've actually said.
Hamas also thinks their position is a moral one. Does that make them Nazi propogandists too? When they cast east Germany as victims of foreign aggression, they were actually lying. Don't have to lie to say literal terrorists are in charge of Gaza, and Gaza is not a sovereign state.
And yes, saying Israel is an apartheid state is an anti Jewish statement. You want to say it's like apartheid, fine, but apartheid means something very different, and is in and of itself a crime against humanity. Not all discrimination by the state is a crime against humanity, though. The thing that makes apartheid a crime against humanity is that it is a system of minority control over the unconsenting majority.
Saying Israel is literally an apartheid state is to treat it as inferior; it is to say that, when other states do it, it's a matter of local custom or just a different culture doing things differently; but when it's Israel it's a war crime.
Apartheid is a system of minority rule. Israel is it not a system of minority rule. It is not an apartheid state. It's guilty of barbaric, racial discrimination, for sure. In no way is it literally apartheid, and I think you'll find that there's not very many serious people who say that it is, not in foreign service and not in law, anyway, which is what we're talking about, here.
I'm advocating for equal rights of Palestinians, too, just that I realize that Gaza has no government and no capacity to rebuild itself since the tunnels were so extensive. It's sad that Hamas put them under the highest density neighborhoods in Gaza and then encouraged people not to evacuate after using them for decades to indiscriminately target Israeli civilians, but hey that's the strategy the people in charge of Gaza have chosen.
There's a right enshrined in international law to disguise soldiers as civilians so they can more easily violate international law? Haven't heard of that one but you're the expert. ✅
I see the denial is kicking in even stronger. The uglier Israel's crimes are, the more pathetic your excuses and analysis.
That dude's denial runs so deep. I'm just glad there are others like you that debunk the Israeli propaganda and dehumanization of Palestinians.
Thanks. Admittedly this person just drives me up the wall /: they don't like it when I respond and has said they tried to block me... I offered help to show them how and I'm still unblocked so I will continue to challenge their crap
Meyer repeatedly argued that there are parallels between the Nazi treatment of Jews leading to (but not including) the Holocaust, and Israel's dehumanization of Palestinians.
Ingram says experiencing anti-Jewish hate, losing family members to the Nazi killing machine and surviving the Allied bombing of Hamburg as a child all inspire her to speak out for peace. “What Israel is doing will not end this conflict. It will only exacerbate it,” says Ingram.
The rally was loud in its claim that Israel has the unconditional support of the U.S. government. But the U.S. people do not support Israel’s attack on Gaza, which Holocaust scholars have deemed a genocide.
My father was also deprived of medical care as a child, and that legacy scarred him for life physically and psychologically. While he was in hiding, he got sick with whooping cough; the sound of his coughing threatened his own life and the life of the family who sheltered him from Nazis. To spare everyone, he was taken to a Catholic orphanage in the countryside of Belgium.
What about these guys? ... Meyer repeatedly argued that there are parallels between the Nazi treatment of Jews leading to (but not including) the Holocaust, and Israel’s dehumanization of Palestinians.
???
Ie. Meyer is explicitly NOT arguing that it is comparable to the holocaust, but only to the treatment of Jews leading up to the Holocaust.
I invite you to read the later career section. Some of it:
In his last recorded interview, coinciding with the 2014 Israel-Gaza Conflict, he lambasted Zionists as Nazi criminals, asserted that German hatred of Jews was less deeply grounded than Israeli-Jewish hatred of Palestinians, and denounced PM Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks that demonstrations against the war were evidence of hatred of Israel.[citation needed] He was the first signatory of a statement by 250 Holocaust survivors and descendants of Holocaust survivors protesting that war.[19]
At one talk, organized and hosted by the leader of the UK's Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, in 2010, Meyer was later reported to have repeatedly likened Israel's actions against the people of the Gaza Strip to the mass killing of Jews in the Holocaust and likened the government of Israel to that of Nazi Germany.[14][15]
Ok.
But in the quote you used above he explicitly says he is not including the Holocaust. Perhaps use another quote next time.
To be clear, and I've said it here before, but IMHO it's not helpful to make nazi/holocaust comparisons, when you can call them fascists or racial supremacists (because plenty of them verifiably are based on what they have provably said and done) and call what they're doing ethnic cleansing or genocide.
It's far harder to deny.
But I suppose the language you use depends on the goal you have in mind.
I think they made the comparison to attempt to prevent a genocide. Sadly due to gatekeeping of the terms Nazis and Holocaust, they instead got called anti semitic and maybe lost their jobs.
Anyone call this a Holocaust level genocide is an absolute moron.
You're not entirely wrong, and I'm not accusing anyone here, but sometimes they're not stupid. Sometimes they are doing it deliberately to disconcert and because they know it will be hurtful to survivors (most of whom weren't Jewish, but I digress). Sometimes they're being useful idiots and uncritically parroting that propaganda.
Unfortunately a lot of anti-Israel propaganda does have explicitly anti-semitic undertones. For example, the Russian/Soviet inspired stuff. Twitter is also full of actual Nazis using this conflict for their own ends. It's important for people who oppose what Israel is doing, to avoid adopting those anti-semitic undertones even if they're justifiably angry, because it allows the Israeli far-right to paint all criticism of Israel as anti-semitic. It also alienates the many Jewish people who are critical of the Israeli government and how the Palestinians are treated.
For example, saying "Zionists control all Western Media" plays into the trope of Jews controlling the media, and is easy to disprove. Obviously not all Jews are Zionists, but if you go on a website like StormFront, they'll openly admit using Zionist as a dogwhistle for Jew. Hence, you'll occasionally see an especially blatant comment which says something about '''Zionists''' being cunning or the like. Plenty of western coverage is critical, which those who defend what Israel is doing will happily use to claim that there is no Zionist bias in Western coverage. Meanwhile if you don't engage in hyperbole, and simply state that a lot of (but not all) western media are very often (but not always) biased(not fully controlled) in favour of Israel, that's very hard to disprove because IMHO it's largely true.
But you've been heavily downvoted, I've been heavily downvoted above, and this comment will inevitably also be heavily downvoted too. The fediverse is a bit of a circlejerk like that.
It's not as if what we say will actually influence anything anyway, and we're certainly not going to stop the killings. I participate in the fediverse to practice my English.
Uh... No? Polls have consistently shown that Biden is losing younger voters over this issue. And let's not forget that there are multiple swing states (Michigan is just the most famous one) where losing Muslim votes is enough to cost Biden the state. Enough Americans care about Gaza to cost Biden the election.
Yeah bro...
The only reason to be upset with Biden is his support of Israel's genocide...
/s
There's also:
What he wants to do with our border
Pretending "the economy" is more about billionaires wealth and average Americans aren't important
Record breaking fossil fuels production
Just ignoring the healthcare crisis
And a shit ton of other things.
Supporting Israel could very well be all you care about, but lots of people aren't that simple.
Trump is worse on all of those issues, plus more.
If you get to pick between no food, or half enough food to survive...
How much effort would you put in to starve to death slower?
Running a bad candidate depresses turnout. And depressed turnout is the only way Republicans win.
Running Joe Biden is the biggest factor that helps Trump's chances of winning, and there's zero fucking reason we're handing it to him.
The vast majority of people will choose half food for the chance to live until more food is available. There is not another candidate from the Dems that has the national recognition as Biden, or the successes that Biden should be doing a better job of selling, that could take his place at this point in time.
Yes, I would rather they ran someone else. But with half the voting population all in on wish.com Hitler it is necessary to eat half the food now and hope for a better candidate next time.
Except we only get a presidential election every four years, and not everyone will still be alive then
That's not even part of the starvation example.
Literally people you're asking to pick the lesser evil right now will die because of that lesser evil before the 2028 election.
Maybe you're upper middle class and it's not a big deal.
Congrats, you're a very small percentage of Americans and the total votes Biden needs to win.
If you want to help Biden, try having some empathy for the less fortunate and start screaming your head off at the Dem party while there's time.
We should absolutely give Biden grief up until November when we need to grit our teeth and accept aomething less than perfection to vote against the Republicans who are worse on every single topic.
It isn't like Biden is the only Democrat who is supporting Israel. How many Dems are passing the funding legislation that Biden signs? Who are they going to put up instead of him that opposes Israel?
Nobody.
Biden is the best that the party can put forth right now, and we should give him grief to get him to change. The action agsinst Biden in the primaries is great!
But come November it will be critical to vote against Trump, and a vote for anything other than a Democrat is a vote for Trump because of our stupid voting system.
C'mon man...
The DNC blacklists companies for working on primary campaigns against House incumbents...
They straight up removed delegates from the first state primary because in the last two elections they picked progressives over party favorites...
"Just vote in the primaries" is about a decade outdated at the point.
I'll probably still vote D in the general, just like I've held my nose to do in all but a single general election. 08 Obama I was actually hype to vote D, and we flipped a bunch of red states the DNC gave up on
But not everyone will this year, and Biden doesn't have a lot of breathing room.
The best thing you can do to prevent trump from winning is do anything you can think of to drag Biden to the left.
Just shutting up and voting Biden isn't enough, he's too weak of a candidate to expect that to work again.
I'm voting Biden, but every time they ask me for money I'm telling them no and I'm telling them why. And they ask me for money A LOT.
I replied to one text explaining how I can't trust the DNC after the 2016 "donor sharing" and the NH primary was cancelled, so I'd only give directly to progressive candidates.
I was just venting, but it worked.
Haven't got a single email/text asking for money again and it's been a couple months.
Which honestly, is concerning.
Getting big 2016 Hillary "if you don't already love me, fuck you I don't need your vote" vibes.
Last time Dems used that strategy, we got stuck with trump for four years. And Biden himself has always had a habit of lashing out when people don't bow to him. It's what crashed his 1988 primary and stopped him from running for president for 20 years until Republicans lowered the bar enough on what was acceptable behavior from a presidential candidate.
Back then lying about plagiarizing speeches, law school grades, and screaming at reporters about how much smarter you are was disqualifying.
I remember 1988... it was the plagiarism that killed it back then... and we ended up with Dukakis (sigh).
Edited:
Whoops, Mondale was 84 and not as progressive as I thought.
His dad was the Mondale that kept pushing the New Deal, this Mondale was already wanting to drag the party right.
Zero idea why I saw Dukakis and my brain jumped to Mondale
Ok
Stop letting perfect being they enemy of good enough. This line of thinking you're engaging in will only accelerate Trump's victory. Unless the finality of the United States is your goal, you may want to come up with a more apt analogy.
Quick, tell this to the 102,000 people in Michigan that voted uncommitted.
Honestly, like 99% of Americans don't care about Gaza enough to not vote for Biden over Trump. The internet echo chamber has warped your sense of what normal people actually care about.
I think you underestimate the Arab/Muslim population in the US who stopped believing in “blue no matter who” because of what is happening.
Also on a side note, what do normal people care about? I’d argue if you don’t care about the fact that a Holocaust level genocide is taking place then you aren’t really that normal.
17 million people died in the holocaust. IRC the population of Gaza is roughly 2.4 million of which just over 1% have died. That figure includes Hamas militants. The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between combatant and civilian casualties in its reports.
It is possible to criticize and condemn Israeli war crimes and ethnic cleansing, which are without doubt horrific, without distorting the facts.
In fact, it actually makes your criticism more convincing and harder to discount by supporters of the current hard right Israeli government. The fediverse is a bubble on this conflict, but we should be aware that hyperbole does not serve the interests of the Palestinian cause or win the argument outside of this bubble.
Maybe you'll be the exception, but I say this knowing full well that some will call me pro-Israel for this comment. But if anything these extremists are useful idiots for Israel's far right government and its supporters, as they allow them to paint any criticism as anti-semitism or disingenious.
e: this comment already had downvotes within seconds of me posting it. This is not long enough to finishing reading it...
While I appreciate your thoughtful response, I disagree with the fact that we need to wait for 17million Palestinians murdered before we can liken the current genocide to the Holocaust.
The way I see it, the Holocaust was/is attributed to the systematic cleansing and expulsion of an ethnic group at a mass scale and not measured by the number of murdered people (not death, murder because that’s what it is).
You can call it whatever you want, but at the end of the day what is happening in Palestine is an ethnic cleansing at a mass scale similar to the Holocaust.
The comment I replied to said:
30,000 people have died. 17 million people died in the holocaust. That is not on the same level and it is not on the same scale. 30,000 is a significantly smaller number than 17 million.
If you support the Palestinian cause, pretending otherwise is a home goal.
I get that it feels right, because people are understandably angry about all this, but it's not a winning argument. Quite the opposite. If you're provably exaggerating the scale of what's happening, it allows supporters of Israel's far right government to sow doubt and claim you might also be exaggerating about the very very real war crimes and ethnic cleansing they are engaged in.
I feel like you and I are NOT on the same page, as a matter of fact, I feel like we are arguing to different points.
You seem like you are gatekeeping the definition of the Holocaust based on number of murdered casualties, I argue that the act of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people is comparable to the Holocaust.
Please don’t create another straw man to argue over, the number of casualties was never the point, rather the act itself.
Your comment above:
Maybe you misunderstood my criticism, but I wasn't disputing that what was happening was genocide or ethnic cleansing. I was disputing the level or scale of what was happening. Clearly what is happening in Gaza (and the West Bank) is on a smaller scale. 17 million vs. 30,000 in Gaza.
This doesn't make what is happening ok. It just means that it is on a smaller scale than the holocaust.
This is not another argument. The number of casualties was my argument from the beginning. The number of casualties may not have been your point, but it was mine when you said that what was happening was on the same level or scale as the holocaust.
This is also not a strawman argument. I am literally adressing something you said in your comment.
On a more general note, this is why comparisons to the Nazis or the Holocaust are rarely helpful, and partly why Godwin's law is a thing.
For example, just because someone isn't Adolf Hitler or a Nazi, doesn't mean they're not a fascist. Calling someone like Ben Gvir or Smotrich a Nazi might feel good, but it allows them to say "Aha! But I don't believe x, y, z. Also, the Nazis hated Jews. I'm a Jew. So you're wrong." It undermines your argument, even if they are quite similar to Nazis. Call them a fascist or racial supremacist, based on things that they actually said and did, and it's far harder to deny.
I have much respect that you are willing to engage in a civilized argument.
Now that you have pointed out what I have posted, I understand that I wasn’t being explicit enough in my definition and argument so I’ll do that here:
When I said Holocaust level, I didn’t mean it in the sense of the total amount of victims, but rather the act itself (systematic cleansing and expulsion of an ethnic race).
I hope you and I are now on the same page.
The other key distinction, of course, being that in the Holocaust, the Nazis were not striking military targets in the course of killing Jews. They were just lining up civilians and shooting them into mass graves, that is before that sort of up close violence affected the morale of the Nazis and they invented the gas chambers and death camps instead.
There is literally none of that going on in Gaza. There's also the fact that for virtually all of these airstrikes there is a legit military target, being the tunnels underneath the cities.
I agree that the victims of the holocaust are 17 million by many estimates, but did you notice how the wikipedia page of it only mentions 6 million Jewish deaths under the Holocaust definition as an event?
Curious to know what you think about that because it irks me. I don't see how all those dead Polish people aren't part of the tally.
Ethnic cleansing = 1% of the ethnic population dead?
Not doing a very good job are they?
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction.
Capturing 78% of Palestine in 1948, followed by colonizing and taking control of 60-88% of the West Bank for a total of 91-97% of all of Historic Palestine; dispossessing millions of Palestinians while violently maintaining an apartheid under permanent occupation isn't doing a good job to you?
Unfortunately, we can't go back in time. Second-guessing Israel's creation and settlement by Jews does literally nothing to address the current problem.
October 7 changed the calculus: the tunnels have to be destroyed now and Hamas cannot continue to remain in charge. It is Hamas who built the tunnels under people's homes and it is Hamas who encourages people to ignore their own safety and stay in harm's way so that they can be killed as proud Martyrs.™
Hamas should surrender right now and bring the violence to an end but it won't. The West certainly isn't going to demand a ceasefire, that's a courtesy we might extend to a state power in a political settlement of the war, but not to literal terrorists that only recently stopped using suicide bombers.
The death toll is horrifying but I blame Hamas for these numbers. It's why they built the tunnels under people's houses in the first place, it's called using human shields. Then, Hamas acts all shocked Pikachu, "why would the IDF do this?!," which is called lawfare.
That article you linked to about Hamas tunnels is wtitten by a guy namrd John Spencer. Same said guy said elsewhere that the IDF is takinh more measures than the US in Iraq and Afghanistan to protect civilians. Just for reference so that you know that what you consider "unbiased recognized law" is just yet another staunch pro Zionist writer.
https://www.algemeiner.com/2024/02/01/west-point-urban-warfare-expert-idf-implemented-more-measures-to-prevent-civilian-casualties-than-any-other-military-in-history/
Seems like almost any opinion you hsve echos that guy's opinion. :/
Are you John Spencer?
He even loves Bibi.
You have been tricked, my bud.
I think it's absolutely naive to think that Israeli oppression of Palestinians would end by anyone surrendering.
So the whole "Lawfare" hinges on the premise of human shields. In bad faith of course, as it ignores all IDF use of Human shields and assumes all Hamas as a given despite any verified evidence. This also ignores the history behind the occupation, the daily violence needed to maintain the occupation, the conditions in Gaza before Oct 7th, and any comprehensive historical analysis of the development/actions of Hamas and other Armed resistance groups.
When it comes to human shields, the only independent verification back in 2014 (Amnesty link) is of Weapons (not rockets) hidden at a vacant school, situated btwn 2 UNRWA schools housing displaced people, by a Palestinian armed group.
The Guardian journalists had encountered a couple individuals in 2014 too.
HRW on Laws-of-War Violations 2009
Amnesty on Hamas War Crimes 2023
Yet none of those come remotely close to making hospitals and schools bombing targets. Even if all the IDF claims were true, that does not exempt those hospitals and schools as protected under international law.
While we're on the subject, let's look at how the IDF uses Human Shields including Children (2013 Report)
This kind of apologia for Israel, where you blame the violence imposed on the Palestinians by their occupiers to be the fault of the Palestinians, shows you don't genuinely care about resolving the conflict or bringing an end to the violence. Whether you know it or not; you're justifing the brutal occupation, the apartheid, the martial law, the military courts, the theft and extortion of water, the exploitation of Palestinians as a workforce without rights, the settler violence, the deprivation of human rights for Palestinians, the destruction of schools, the destruction of hospitals, the destruction of homes, the starvation of children, the execution of women and children, the inhuman torture and abuse of Palestinians and yes even children in Israeli prisons. You don't see Palestinians as human when you justify all this. If you do see palestinians as human, the same as Israelis or anyone else. It's completely clear that this shit is completely unacceptable, yet it's been the reality for decades and decades. I don't know if it's intentional or out of ignorance, but I hope it's simply out of ignorance.
The IDF uses one or two people as human shields. There's literally like 25 reports of it, ever. It was made illegal and people were prosecuted for it.
Hamas used human shields 3,500 people at a time, building tunnels under their houses, forcing people to stay, convincing people evacuation orders are a hoax. There is zero denying this. There are five hundred miles of tunnels in an area 25 miles wide.
No, I did not ignore all the times the IDF have used human shields. It's just not even remotely comparable to using the entire population of major cities as human shields.
Also, re: the ridiculous claim that Israel is an apartheid regime, totally ignores all reason. South Africa apartheid was a system of minority rule. When it's a system of majority rule, it's called democracy. I could understand if you said Israel has some apartheid like policies, but you lose all credibility and reveal yourself as a know-nothing when you say it's literally apartheid. Like, for fucka sake guy, a Palestinian Arab sits on the Israeli supreme Court. You think there were any Afrikans on the South Africa Supreme Court during Apartheid? Ha.
Straight up untrue. You are at best being willfully ignorant at this point. Even after it was ruled illegal it was still used in subsequent wars like Cast Lead and up to present day with little to no consequences. Since April 2004, DCI-Palestine has documented 26 cases involving Palestinian children being used as human shields by the Israeli army. Nineteen of the 20 cases have occurred after the Israeli High Court of Justice ruled the practice to be illegal in October 2005.
Use of Human Shields by Israeli Forces
Israeli Veterans describe how they used human shields
In the line of fire: In Gaza, anyone can wind up a 'human shield'
The existence of the tunnels and that Hamas told residents to stay put after Israel ordered the evacuation are true, yeah. Not forcing people to stay. That's not how human shields work. You're comparing real coerced human shields to this made up third definition.
"Now, what we claim is that there is a third kind of human shield," Gordon told CBC News. "That is the human shield that does not volunteer and is not coerced, but just by being where they are, they become human shields. Or more precisely, I would say they're framed as human shields. "In the Gaza Strip, for example, if the Hamas tunnels are a legitimate military target, and the tunnels span 700 kilometres, then they are under the whole Gaza Strip. So anyone above them becomes a human shield. And so you are casting or framing the whole civilian population almost as human shields.
"When Israel bombs a mosque or a school or an apartment building and kills civilians, it blames Hamas for using human shields. And yet Israel's military command centre is in central Tel Aviv, and its Southern Command centre is in the centre of Beersheba," he said. "And when Hamas bombs these cities, no one in the Western media says that the Israeli civilians around these centres are human shields.
By that made up third definition, you're also saying that the IDF is using every Israeli near their command centers as human shields. And then using that to justify them as legitimate targets. When you apply the same standards, it becomes quite clear how blatant the double standards are. This entire human shields argument by the IDF is to legitimatize all Palestinians in Gaza as legitimate targets. Israeli officials have said this on record.
Do you somehow think that if there was a single Black person on the South African Supreme Court, making a white majority of 14/15, that would somehow make South Africa not an Apartheid State? Despite the apartheid policies on-the-ground? What if they expelled 80% the black population into bantustans (to ensure a white majority) so they didn't need to include them as part of their South African population demographics? With a white majority population, they would have a stable basis for a white democratic state. Well, now in that case, I suppose it's actually a democracy instead of an apartheid state. After all, they would have a Black judge on the Supreme Court and the remaining 20% non-whites could still vote democraticly like the rest of the population. You can ignore the bantustans, they're simply occupied disputed territories with stateless people. /s
This makes it extremely obvious you don't know much about Apartheid South Africa. What you're referencing is Petty Apartheid. Which is much less present in Israel than it was in South Africa. There is much more of what is considered Grand Apartheid. Less so for Arab Israelis in Israel proper, much more so within the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This is extensively detailed in the UN, HRW, and Amnesty hundred page reports on how Israel is an apartheid state. Again, you are being willfully ignorant by refusing to engage and take these reports seriously. Israel never needed Petty Apartheid to function as a democratic ethnostate. The majority needed for it was ensured by the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 and the Military Law that governed the Palestinians within Israel until 1967.
Ben-Gurion in an address to the central committee of the Histadrut on 30 December 1947:
Addressing the Mapai Council, Ben-Gurion declared:
As you noticed, @JustZ@lemmy.world just skipped over your entire explanation and now claims that you are defending Hamas. Classic.
Bro seriously in here defending Hamas building terror tunnels under everyone's houses and you're comparing it to Israel...checks notes...merely having military bases? Israel is a legitimate state. It is allowed to have military bases. Gaza is not.
What conclusion can be drawn from your hypocrisy other than that you just don't like Jews?
Gaza is forfeit now and it's because of the tunnels and it because it has no ability to govern itself.
Your human shield and apartheid analysis are nonsense. There's a huge difference between a minority group controlling the majority in all things, without consent, as compared to a majority group, duly enacting laws that discriminate against minority. Discrimination is not great, but in a democracy that can be fixed.
You let me know when Hamas and their backwards ass culture does anything to stop discrimination. Actually, if you ask them to, they'll will probably stone you to death as an infidel.
Why not? Don't Palestinians have the right to self determination and a state?
Then why has Israel not managed to "fix" this? Maybe because no Palestinians are allowed to vote and rarely ever to Palestinian and non-Jewish Israelis make it to a high political position?
Do you have any proof of this?
Hamas does all kinds of shit, but I've never heard of them stoning anyone.
You seem to be lumping a bunch of Islamophobic stereotypes into one then projecting it on Hamas. Why?
What right do I have to tell people how to fight back against their occupiers? I wouldn't to Jewish people in the Nazi Ghettos fighting back either. I disagree with plenty that Hamas has done, and I criticize them for it. They've done war crimes, that's unacceptable. That doesn't change the fact that they have the right by international law to fight back against their occupiers.
You're conflation between anti-Zionism / criticisms of the State of Israel and genuine antisemitism, is in itself very antisemitic. You're attributing the actions of Israel as representative of all Jewish people, which is really fucked up. Israel doesn't even represent all Israelis, and nowhere near all Jewish people. Just because Israel claims otherwise doesn't make it true. Do you think B'TSelem and Jewish Voice for Peace are antisemitic too?
I'm advocating for equal rights for both Israelis and Palestinians,.You are literally advocating for the destruction of the entirety of Gaza, including at best the expulsion of millions of Palestinians and at worst their execution for being 'terrorists.' You are exactly the same kind of person who would've supported Nazi Germany in the 1930's and the forced transfer of millions of Jewish people because it's an act of 'self-defence.'
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/index.php/content/en/article/deceiving-the-public
You've grossly overdramatized and exaggerated what I've actually said.
Hamas also thinks their position is a moral one. Does that make them Nazi propogandists too? When they cast east Germany as victims of foreign aggression, they were actually lying. Don't have to lie to say literal terrorists are in charge of Gaza, and Gaza is not a sovereign state.
And yes, saying Israel is an apartheid state is an anti Jewish statement. You want to say it's like apartheid, fine, but apartheid means something very different, and is in and of itself a crime against humanity. Not all discrimination by the state is a crime against humanity, though. The thing that makes apartheid a crime against humanity is that it is a system of minority control over the unconsenting majority.
Saying Israel is literally an apartheid state is to treat it as inferior; it is to say that, when other states do it, it's a matter of local custom or just a different culture doing things differently; but when it's Israel it's a war crime.
Apartheid is a system of minority rule. Israel is it not a system of minority rule. It is not an apartheid state. It's guilty of barbaric, racial discrimination, for sure. In no way is it literally apartheid, and I think you'll find that there's not very many serious people who say that it is, not in foreign service and not in law, anyway, which is what we're talking about, here.
I'm advocating for equal rights of Palestinians, too, just that I realize that Gaza has no government and no capacity to rebuild itself since the tunnels were so extensive. It's sad that Hamas put them under the highest density neighborhoods in Gaza and then encouraged people not to evacuate after using them for decades to indiscriminately target Israeli civilians, but hey that's the strategy the people in charge of Gaza have chosen.
There's a right enshrined in international law to disguise soldiers as civilians so they can more easily violate international law? Haven't heard of that one but you're the expert. ✅
I see the denial is kicking in even stronger. The uglier Israel's crimes are, the more pathetic your excuses and analysis.
That dude's denial runs so deep. I'm just glad there are others like you that debunk the Israeli propaganda and dehumanization of Palestinians.
Thanks. Admittedly this person just drives me up the wall /: they don't like it when I respond and has said they tried to block me... I offered help to show them how and I'm still unblocked so I will continue to challenge their crap
Hey stop making reasonable nuanced points!
Anyone call this a Holocaust level genocide is an absolute moron.
What about these guys?
Holocaust survivors who are anti-Zionist:
Hajo Meyer
Marione Ingram
Tal Frieden, grandchild of a Holocaust survivor
Elliot Kukla, another grandchild of a holocaust survivors
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Marione Ingram
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
???
Ie. Meyer is explicitly NOT arguing that it is comparable to the holocaust, but only to the treatment of Jews leading up to the Holocaust.
I invite you to read the later career section. Some of it:
Ok.
But in the quote you used above he explicitly says he is not including the Holocaust. Perhaps use another quote next time.
To be clear, and I've said it here before, but IMHO it's not helpful to make nazi/holocaust comparisons, when you can call them fascists or racial supremacists (because plenty of them verifiably are based on what they have provably said and done) and call what they're doing ethnic cleansing or genocide.
It's far harder to deny.
But I suppose the language you use depends on the goal you have in mind.
I think they made the comparison to attempt to prevent a genocide. Sadly due to gatekeeping of the terms Nazis and Holocaust, they instead got called anti semitic and maybe lost their jobs.
You're not entirely wrong, and I'm not accusing anyone here, but sometimes they're not stupid. Sometimes they are doing it deliberately to disconcert and because they know it will be hurtful to survivors (most of whom weren't Jewish, but I digress). Sometimes they're being useful idiots and uncritically parroting that propaganda.
Unfortunately a lot of anti-Israel propaganda does have explicitly anti-semitic undertones. For example, the Russian/Soviet inspired stuff. Twitter is also full of actual Nazis using this conflict for their own ends. It's important for people who oppose what Israel is doing, to avoid adopting those anti-semitic undertones even if they're justifiably angry, because it allows the Israeli far-right to paint all criticism of Israel as anti-semitic. It also alienates the many Jewish people who are critical of the Israeli government and how the Palestinians are treated.
For example, saying "Zionists control all Western Media" plays into the trope of Jews controlling the media, and is easy to disprove. Obviously not all Jews are Zionists, but if you go on a website like StormFront, they'll openly admit using Zionist as a dogwhistle for Jew. Hence, you'll occasionally see an especially blatant comment which says something about '''Zionists''' being cunning or the like. Plenty of western coverage is critical, which those who defend what Israel is doing will happily use to claim that there is no Zionist bias in Western coverage. Meanwhile if you don't engage in hyperbole, and simply state that a lot of (but not all) western media are very often (but not always) biased(not fully controlled) in favour of Israel, that's very hard to disprove because IMHO it's largely true.
But you've been heavily downvoted, I've been heavily downvoted above, and this comment will inevitably also be heavily downvoted too. The fediverse is a bit of a circlejerk like that.
It's not as if what we say will actually influence anything anyway, and we're certainly not going to stop the killings. I participate in the fediverse to practice my English.
Uh... No? Polls have consistently shown that Biden is losing younger voters over this issue. And let's not forget that there are multiple swing states (Michigan is just the most famous one) where losing Muslim votes is enough to cost Biden the state. Enough Americans care about Gaza to cost Biden the election.
Yeah bro...
The only reason to be upset with Biden is his support of Israel's genocide...
/s
There's also:
What he wants to do with our border
Pretending "the economy" is more about billionaires wealth and average Americans aren't important
Record breaking fossil fuels production
Just ignoring the healthcare crisis
And a shit ton of other things.
Supporting Israel could very well be all you care about, but lots of people aren't that simple.
Trump is worse on all of those issues, plus more.
If you get to pick between no food, or half enough food to survive...
How much effort would you put in to starve to death slower?
Running a bad candidate depresses turnout. And depressed turnout is the only way Republicans win.
Running Joe Biden is the biggest factor that helps Trump's chances of winning, and there's zero fucking reason we're handing it to him.
The vast majority of people will choose half food for the chance to live until more food is available. There is not another candidate from the Dems that has the national recognition as Biden, or the successes that Biden should be doing a better job of selling, that could take his place at this point in time.
Yes, I would rather they ran someone else. But with half the voting population all in on wish.com Hitler it is necessary to eat half the food now and hope for a better candidate next time.
Except we only get a presidential election every four years, and not everyone will still be alive then
That's not even part of the starvation example.
Literally people you're asking to pick the lesser evil right now will die because of that lesser evil before the 2028 election.
Maybe you're upper middle class and it's not a big deal.
Congrats, you're a very small percentage of Americans and the total votes Biden needs to win.
If you want to help Biden, try having some empathy for the less fortunate and start screaming your head off at the Dem party while there's time.
We should absolutely give Biden grief up until November when we need to grit our teeth and accept aomething less than perfection to vote against the Republicans who are worse on every single topic.
It isn't like Biden is the only Democrat who is supporting Israel. How many Dems are passing the funding legislation that Biden signs? Who are they going to put up instead of him that opposes Israel?
Nobody.
Biden is the best that the party can put forth right now, and we should give him grief to get him to change. The action agsinst Biden in the primaries is great!
But come November it will be critical to vote against Trump, and a vote for anything other than a Democrat is a vote for Trump because of our stupid voting system.
C'mon man...
The DNC blacklists companies for working on primary campaigns against House incumbents...
They straight up removed delegates from the first state primary because in the last two elections they picked progressives over party favorites...
"Just vote in the primaries" is about a decade outdated at the point.
I'll probably still vote D in the general, just like I've held my nose to do in all but a single general election. 08 Obama I was actually hype to vote D, and we flipped a bunch of red states the DNC gave up on
But not everyone will this year, and Biden doesn't have a lot of breathing room.
The best thing you can do to prevent trump from winning is do anything you can think of to drag Biden to the left.
Just shutting up and voting Biden isn't enough, he's too weak of a candidate to expect that to work again.
I'm voting Biden, but every time they ask me for money I'm telling them no and I'm telling them why. And they ask me for money A LOT.
I replied to one text explaining how I can't trust the DNC after the 2016 "donor sharing" and the NH primary was cancelled, so I'd only give directly to progressive candidates.
I was just venting, but it worked.
Haven't got a single email/text asking for money again and it's been a couple months.
Which honestly, is concerning.
Getting big 2016 Hillary "if you don't already love me, fuck you I don't need your vote" vibes.
Last time Dems used that strategy, we got stuck with trump for four years. And Biden himself has always had a habit of lashing out when people don't bow to him. It's what crashed his 1988 primary and stopped him from running for president for 20 years until Republicans lowered the bar enough on what was acceptable behavior from a presidential candidate.
Back then lying about plagiarizing speeches, law school grades, and screaming at reporters about how much smarter you are was disqualifying.
I remember 1988... it was the plagiarism that killed it back then... and we ended up with Dukakis (sigh).
Edited:
Whoops, Mondale was 84 and not as progressive as I thought.
His dad was the Mondale that kept pushing the New Deal, this Mondale was already wanting to drag the party right.
Zero idea why I saw Dukakis and my brain jumped to Mondale
Ok
Stop letting perfect being they enemy of good enough. This line of thinking you're engaging in will only accelerate Trump's victory. Unless the finality of the United States is your goal, you may want to come up with a more apt analogy.
Quick, tell this to the 102,000 people in Michigan that voted uncommitted.
Yeah... Genocide is not good enough.