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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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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.