Did they? I blocked his dumb ass after nonstop political astroturfing posts

Let’s say this:

I have no idea if you are a shill or a genuine person. But, there are some behaviors that are bad things to do regardless of which you are:

1. Recasting your opponents’ views as other ones that make less sense and are easier to argue against, consistently, as a way of muddling the discourse, instead of being honest about what you’re saying and what you are disagreeing with and why, and just letting your point of view speak for itself whether or not I personally would agree with it
2. Consistently posting a drumbeat of memes in support of your viewpoint (within that same dishonest framing)

I mean, you can do what you want to do. I’m not gonna try to tell you you are or aren’t allowed to say whatever suits you. But to me, saying “fuck the whole US politics join my coalition for positive change we need a level of change that the current system will not allow” would make sense. Sounds great. I actually would be right there in that coalition. Anything from Bernie Sanders to Ralph Nader to someone further out-there who is working for something to produce actual change in some other way.

But if instead of that, you misrepresent the “other side”'s viewpoint “fascism is so bad that we need to resist it even if the alternative involves continuing the US’s longstanding policy of allowing some war crimes,” as if it was “I <3 war crimes and genocide”, and post a drumbeat of attack against specifically the least war-crime-friendly big contingent in US politics, I think people will wind up accusing you of bad faith. They’ve got a right to say that too.

I mean, does that seem fair? If you were posting a big stream of memes about how to put pressure on Biden to do more (like, a fuck of a lot more) to stop the crimes, or in favor of some faction that was plausibly able to produce a better outcome, I don’t think you would be getting near this level of derisive responses. But the message you’re sending doesn’t match the outcome you say you want. I think that’s why you are getting these maybe unfair accusations.

It’s a shitpost kiddo. You know exactly what they are. It’s the reason you posted them. Who do you think you’re fooling? Because if anyone’s being fooled it isn’t us :-). And if you’re going to do it at least have the decency to not feign ignorance and cry when others call you out on it.

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I’m saying it would be a waste of their time.

Why exactly? Catching trolls is much easier on popular sites like the ones you listed. Sure, there are more of them, but also more of them are constantly flagged. Fediverse has no such overarching moderation, as you well know.

You don’t see how that’s a massive advantage?

I hope you don’t need another reply to understand, you’ll have to ask someone else.

Disagree. Trump represents real fascism in the US, but US international policy under both parties has repeatedly supported fascism and authoritarianism abroad.

Democrats have enjoyed the aesthetics of egalitarianism domestically while contributing to the problem of authoritarianism abroad in service of their global ambitions, and that is the contradiction i’m pointing to.

Both sides are not the same, but they share important similarities that should absolutely be opposed.

See I agree with pretty much 100% of this, with Israel as exhibits 1, 2, and 3 at least and probably more

I’m sorry. I read what you are saying, and cannot fathom how your brain survives those gymnastics without disintegrating.

“both parties has repeatedly supported fascism and authoritarianism”

Literally in your first sentence of your response, which is saying you disagree with “We have 2 far right fascist parties in America. That simple.”

Cant make this shit up.

I think this might be the third (or maybe fourth?) time i’ve responded to this question from you, but since you keep asking it I will continue answering it for others (since I think you either don’t care what I think, you keep forgetting somehow, or you’re not asking it for the benefit of your own understanding)

What would you want to do?

First I will make it known: go and vote for harm reduction. If you personally feel incapable of voting for Biden for reasons relating to Israel I think that’s valid, but still go vote for every other position at the very least. If your concern for politics starts and ends with federal election day then you are then free to check-out. The following applies for every other day except election day itself.

but

Putting pressure on democrats¹ is broadly the only way to stir action (in my opinion). So long as the electoral status-quo denies any platform for meaningful dissent then the only way remaining is to focus your energy outside of that electoral system. I do not think campaigning for a third party is a worthwhile effort (because electoral pressures still limit what even a third party can do, and because our capitalistic system effectively kneecaps any actual short-term successes). I think engendering dissatisfaction with democrats is the most effective strategy, not only because it would push them to move their platform to keep their coalition, but it also increases the body of people willing to spend effort outside of elections for direct action. At least in online spaces, the only effective strategy is agitation.

There is a spectrum of agitation that I think is effective, I won’t pretend to be the expert, but I think democratic apologia is generally unhelpful because it provides a feeling of reassurance that the limited involvement liberals have is sufficient to drive progress. Continual progress requires continual pressure, and giving a pat on the back because some policy or other is ‘more than nothing’ provides reason to feel good about what’s been done and gets in the way of higher aspirations. (If you didn’t catch it, this is a bit of a dig at you. I don’t think modest progress is anything to celebrate about when the bigger issues are still looming). There’s also a bit of self-selection here, because this obviously doesn’t work for a bunch of people (and as I continue beating that drum more people start muting me). But the people who happen to agree that more progress is needed are likely to push back against attempts at solidifying that partisan consensus, and that’s valuable.

The existence of Trump simultaneously complicates things and makes things easier, because on the one hand the threat of his existence is real (i do not deny that threat), but it also raises the urgency for action. Targeting agitation at the people who exist in the overlap between extreme concern over the rise of fascism and people who broadly agree that change is needed is the sweet spot. I don’t feel bad about hammering on that sweet spot, I think it’s created enough friction for some with more modest political leanings to find more ways to engage. There’s an honest concern that Biden cannot win on a pro-israel platform, so that’s the most urgent issue that needs addressing (it also makes the message clear so it can be addressed: address this issue or risk losing needed support). A more broadly anti-Democrat message would be more likely to inspire apathy, not action. If the Israel-Palestine conflict did not exist then a different one would be the target (you constantly point to this as evidence of bad-faith argumentation, but there’s a well of policy that needs changing so of course there’d be something else to push on).

Hopefully that answers your question. Maybe i’ll make this a copypasta for future questions along a similar line.

1: I mean democrats broadly, not just democrats in power. pressure on political actors involves engendering discontent among their base, otherwise agitation is ineffectual

This assumes that Biden voters want to compromise on genocide. We don’t. We hate it. But life isn’t a storybook. The guy going against the pure evil isn’t a paragon of justice. But that doesn’t mean you give up fighting against pure evil. You prioritize so that you can achieve what is currently achievable, and wait for more to become achievable.

Myself included. Im not going to let the guy whos party complain the current guy is not doing enough for israel and who did that assasination on the iranians and recognized jerusalem as the capital of israel to win.

And a lot of people are divisively using a genocide to try and shrink the vote for one candidate when both support it. As the commenter above said, the horrible people won’t care. We all k ow a third party vote is an abstention.

So the choice is vote for the boring candidate that does good things but supports genocide. Or vote for the crazy vindictive candidate that does terrible things and supports genocide and nuking hurricanes.

Either way, democrats

Politicians…

Not Dem voters.