1501
To those in countries where democracy might last another election - harm reduction is not optional
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
1501 points (95.8% liked)
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For fuck's sake, have you not looked around to see what's happened these past six fucking months?
"Stop performing one of the core functions of harm reduction that attempts to reduce harm!"
...
Pointed out below. But I guess it's not fast enough for your tastes, so let's do nothing and usher in the fascists to power instead. After all, politics are like a magical pendulum, where one side winning means the other side must get an equivalent win eventually!
When the fuck are progressives shutting down serious action?
You're absolutely right. In the wise words of a political party canvassing for seemingly everything a good fucking third of the 'left' commenters here have come to adore, we're all going to die someday. So why not as soon as possible?
Critical support for harm acceleration! Fuck those minorities anyway.
"We've managed to make 'socialism' into an acceptable word in politics and almost got a democratic socialist into a major party's nomination twice in the past ten years, in a country which has been immensely hostile to any socialist ideas for at least 70 years, and in an intensified period of anti-government right-wing insanity since 1980."
"Clearly you haven't been making any progress, shitlib! Time to abandon all levers of power to the fascists."
I have, and I know that without the serious action I was talking about it was a question of whether Alligator Alcatraz would've been opened in 2025 or 2029, with maybe a small chance of 2033. There was nothing unique about 2025 that made it the ideal timing for a fascist takeover.
Well as long as all or most of your energy is going to harm reduction you'll only ever end up with fascism.
Oh I'm under no illusion that fascists winning would (or, well, will given that they've pretty much already won) bring about a socialist revolution or any of that stuff.
Remember Uncommited? Palestine protests? Calls for Biden to step down? I have seen all three get called Russian psy-ops by supposedly left-leaning people on Lemmy. You probably know better than me whether that's a representative sample of American politics, but holy hell for a time you couldn't say anything bad about Biden without getting showered with downvotes around here. This sort of cannibalism was one of the many forms of complicity that allowed the march to fascism to proceed unimpeded.
I mean, in this case we're more talking about whether it's worth it to pay through the nose for life support when you already know what you have is terminal.
That would be nice-ish progress in saner times, and a few decades of it and you might've had a shot at sane government (if the establishment didn't manage to tank the whole affair, anyway), but like what makes you think you ever had that kind of time? The clock was already ticking with Bush, really got going with Obama and Trump 1 pretty much sealed the deal. When I say fascism was inevitable I don't mean it was coming within decades; I mean America was going to be fascist by 2033. Much more direct action was needed to prevent fascism within that timeframe. So with that in mind,
No, it's not fast enough for the reality on the ground.
This is just accelerationism. Which like ok but let's call it what it is and admit that it's a dangerous idea with a horrible and immediate human cost.
What? No. Accelerationism would be "we should vote for fascists/not vote at all," which is not at all what I'm saying here. My point is that the left's strategy needs to radically change if it wants to have a hope of stopping fascism. To repeat, I want fascism to be stopped here; my argument is that the way the left has been attempting to do so is woefully inadequate.
Cool, so, the thinking is to buy yourself enough time to convince the left to radically change?
No? "We haven't changed enough yet for my tastes, so this is all pointless"?
And that you see no point in buying more time, don't forget, calling it a 'farce' at first, and then, after conceding that there was significant progress, dismissing it as 'not fast enough' to be worth considering.
There's a good fucking chance that I'm a dead man walking. The projections for additional deaths caused directly by this administration are in the millions. Quite literally every fucking left-wing cause in this country has been set back immensely by this fascist victory, and fascists internationally significantly strengthened. And yet there are people here, people like you, who aren't stupid but seem quite content to bang a very stupid drum, insisting that preventing this would not have been all that big an issue - because we're all going to ~~die~~ become fascist in the end anyway, so what does it matter if it's four years from now or today?
I fucking take my meds every day not because I think I'll gain immortality if I keep doing it, I do it because it staves off death one more day at time. Despite the fact that it doesn't cure the underlying problem of chronic illness/mortality.
So yeah, I'm a little fucking pissed whenever this comes up.
I agree people should have voted kamala to prevent what's happening now...
But for progression now, nothing about shaming the voters disenfranchised by the Democrats is worthwhile.
The Democrats were never entitled to any votes, they shouldn't have been so conceited as to tank their own popularity with conceit in the interest of capital.
The ones who voted for trump are to blame in the immediate for sure, what's happening right now in the US is tragic. But to be so myopic as to pretend that's all that matters is foolish.
Here we go again. Not voting for the Dems was fine, because Dems aren't 'entitled' to anyone's vote. So glad people chose to punish the Dems at the expensive of the lives of millions of actual human beings. But surely, the Dems will learn not to act entitled after THIS defeat. I mean, it didn't work the last fifty fucking times, but THIS time, they'll learn their lesson, and all those people murdered by the fascist ghouls that abstainers let into power will at least have their deaths be for a worthy cause!
Yes, the Dems'll learn any day now... if only we let a few million more minorities get murdered, they'll surely learn...
The dems won't learn, I didn't say they will.
I am not saying that not voting for the dems is 'fine'.
I'm talking about spending your energy appropriately.
I'm saying you can hate the ones who didn't vote if you want, but it's a waste of your energy. Voter apathy and disenfranchisement is the fault of the party, not the individual, is what I mean by the entitlement to the vote.
If there are the perpetrators (djt voters and the literal ghouls), the victim are necessarily the remaining group. Just because there were those disenfranchised, doesn't mean those are the perpetrators, no they are also victims. Just like those who voted against it.
Usually, the party in power loses the election, rather than the opposition 'winning' per se on merit out right. They lose it by losing their support through their own actions, or public perception of their actions (which they should be trying to influence). So how did the dems lose 2024? Unless it was stolen which is, quite possible.
You know, like I know, the Dems won't necessarily learn the right lessons from non voters. I'm not arguing the merit of not voting.
The Dems will only change when they rally around something they see as winning them support. But the only recent example of this, Zohran Mamdani who has huge public support, is being fought with more gusto by the majority of Democrats than they have ever fought DJT.
If the Dems had some policies that they held and didn't compromise on, and didn't show such obvious contempt for their constituents during the election season, maybe they would have done better. Not to mention not listening to the consultants who seemingly intentionally tanked their campaign.
Anyway, not here to argue, I don't disagree with you, I read the other thread here after I left my comment and I agree with you on a lot. I just think if you should hold contempt and hate in your heart for anyone, it should be the perpetrators.
Because if you don't hold them in contempt, but instead hold other victims in contempt (even if they didn't vote or voted something silly), then you are essentially reinforcing the bad behaviour even further.
People aren't motivated by 'vote for us, we wont do anything tangible, but the other side is super bad', as much as I would have hoped. They are far more motivated by 'vote for us, we will do something tangible' even if the one saying that is lying blatantly, as long as the vibe is confidence.
Sorry, then. I see the "not entitled" phrasing all the time in the context of justifying not voting for the Dems.
I disagree. People can be, and often are, both victims and perpetrators of that same crime.
I mean, the sitting president was a Dem, so they were the party in the power.
The Dems lost for a number of reasons, but the biggest, I would say, are:
Biden choosing to run, and then dropping out. Dropping out was the best decision once it was clear that he was going to lose (something which his campaign, apparently, knew quite early on by internal polling but refused to acknowledge), but choosing the failing run, after implying he would be a one-term president, and then shunting it all to his VP at the last second was fucking ruinous. The resulting campaign was a mess, and there was a significant contingent of low-info voters who were, on election day, confused that Joe Biden wasn't running.
Harris being an empty suit without any ideals or charisma.
The Harris campaign being run by utter lunatics and incompetents.
This is untrue. Some high-ranking Dems have failed to rally around Mamdani like they should, and that is legitimately unacceptable - but the idea that Dems are fighting Mamdani more than they fought Trump is just not in-line with reality. Nor, for that matter, is it the majority of Dems.
Oh, don't worry. I have plenty of contempt to go around. Most of my contempt is towards the most active perpetrators of this fascist insanity, but as you yourself note here, failing to hold perpetrators in contempt reinforces bad behavior - and celebration of sabotage of anti-fascist coalitions is absolutely bad behavior.
It's not accelerationism. Accelerationism presumes that a good result will follow the bad one. This is more "Fascism is going to come, and it's not going to usher in a socialist revolution, so just let it come as quick as it wants to."
Jesus fucking Christ. Do you know nothing of the history of this fucking country?
Oh, what am I saying? History is terribly inconvenient.
Therefore, power should be handed over to the fascists as quick as possible. Great.
So your opposition to harm reduction is... what? The belief that getting fascism sooner is Good, Actually?
All three of those were championed primarily by progressives.
Golly gee, I wonder why people might be hostile towards beating the "BIDEN BAD" drum during the period of 2024 when he was the only non-fascist candidate with a serious chance of winning the 2024 election.
It must be because we're secretly shitlibs. It's that deeply engrained desire to not lose an election to a fascist that gives us away - don't we know that both sides are basically fascists anyway?
In any case, the 'Big, Beautiful Bill' has passed, so I get to have my healthcare stripped away and vomit blood on the floor until I bleed out, so thanks for your unrelenting support for anti-anti-fascism for being insufficiently pure! If you want, I'll send you a selfie once the black-flecked puke starts coming up, so you have a nice little souvenir to celebrate with.
Maybe you can find another country to asspat accelerationists in until the fascists win, and get a few more selfies of that sort. Then you'll REALLY be owning the libs!
... the sort of cannibalism of... trying to push the necessity of a united front against a literal and outright fascist who was projected to win nearly half the vote?
If that's cannibalism, I shudder to think what you consider attacking the anti-fascist coalition candidate as.
"You see, if we operate under the axiom that our fate is inevitable, our fate is inevitable."
Wow, I'm just blown away by the complexity of that analysis. I guess we're all going to die, though, so we might as well hand over all power to the fascists as soon as we can.
The fuck are you 'saving' that money for, anyway, if the end result is that you're going to die? Pure thrift? Want to be buried with it?
If you were alive in 1950, you'd be saying the American Auschwitz was going to open by 1960 or 1962 anyway, so harm reduction was pointless. We were on the inevitable path to fascism within a decade, and there was nothing that could be done about it so long as the SHITLIBS were still in power.
"It's not fast enough, so stop, give up, and die"
Again, that is literally not what I'm saying, and at this point you seem to be arguing with a strawman. I'm not anti-harm reduction; I simply believe that the efficacy of harm reduction is predicated on effective action that simply does not exist at present. What I'm calling for is for the left to shift gears to direct action to coerce the system into getting its shit in order. Also vote for the less shitty candidate, but that shouldn't be where you put all or even most of your energy, because losing that particular bet is a mathematical certainty.
See above.
Yes, there's a reason I called it cannibalism.
See? This is exactly what I'm talking about. Biden 2024 wasn't an outlier in an otherwise sane political climate; that shit was the new post-2016 normal. Any credible strategy needed to provide a path to victory through that new normal within a decade (more realistically five years, but eh) without letting fascists win in the meantime. So-called harm reduction focuses so much on the latter that it does nothing substantial to address the former.
Looking forward to it ;).
American Hitler wasn't winning elections in 1950 so... no?
Okay it's starting to feel like you're scanning my responses for keywords rather than actually reading what I'm saying.
Except your entire argument here is positing that harm reduction is worthless because it doesn't serve the long-term goals you see as necessary fast enough.
And reminding everyone that harm reduction under current circumstances is pointless, don't forget.
... losing elections is a mathematical certainty?
Because... progressives made campaigns, and largely, simultaneously, supported the Dem candidate...?
Okay? What the ever-loving fuck does that have to do with ensuring Biden in 2024 didn't lose, because his opponent was a literal fascist?
"He wasn't giving us a long-term strategy for victory, so fuck your anti-fascist coalition!"
This is the doomer equivalent of accelerationism.
"I wonder why these people are so worried about not dying of thirst today??? Don't they know that they haven't fixed the problems in water supply over the next decade???"
If only we worried less about dying of thirst today. Such short-term thinking!
Unsurprising. The lives of marginalized groups don't matter if they're insufficiently ideologically pure. I guess I was too interested in not dying because of a fuckwad fascist administration.
Oh, sorry, so you prefer 1896 or 1912 or 1968 or 1980 for your narrative of "America was going to fall forever to fascism in ten years, and there's nothing these silly 'harm reducers' can do about it"?
Your entire fucking point is predicated on the idea that fascism is inevitable because change wasn't happening fast enough, so harm reduction was functional worthless to pursue. I am absolutely reading what you're saying; the problem is you aren't following the logical conclusions of what you yourself are saying.
This isn't going anywhere, so I'll clarify my position one final time before I disengage.
Harm reduction alone was functionally worthless to pursue, yes. Harm reduction is fine, desirable even, but not at the expense of antagonistic action. Prioritizing harm reduction over the antagonistic action that's supposed to be facilitated by that harm reduction is putting the cart before the horse and self-defeating. By antagonistic action I'm mostly thinking of protests, civil disobedience, strikes and whatever Uncommitted was here, but for an easy example I'll use the early to mid-2024 calls for Biden to step down. Doubling down on hard reduction entailed shutting down calls for Biden to step down to not jeopardize the anti-fascist united front, but I believe that to have been a mistake. The play was to jump on and amplify these calls so that Biden would step down sooner and open the way for a real primary, because it's these sort of actions that give harm reduction meaning, otherwise it becomes simply kicking the can down the road. Harm reduction is necessary but not sufficient for fighting fascism, so it cannot happen at the expense of other necessary actions, such as coercing the Democrats into providing a viable unity platform. That's why I called it farcical (which, yeah, I still stand by that characterization); it's like filling a bowl with eggs and trying to make cake.