cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/58550623
The Democratic senator Ruben Gallego has proposed that, should Donald Trump try to sabotage the midterm elections, Americans should respond with a general strike that would “grind the country to a halt”.
Earlier this week the US president called for Republicans to “take over” and “nationalise” voting in at least 15 unspecified locations, repeating his false claims that elections are plagued by widespread fraud.
On Thursday Gallego, a senator for Arizona and an Iraq war veteran, warned that Trump could seek to interfere with the November midterms that will determine control of Congress – and urged citizens to fight fire with fire.
So you’re saying it’s generally a good idea but because now some of the Dems support the idea, we should no longer publicly support that plan because it might legitimise people you don’t consider left enough?
And you think that makes your point… Better, somehow?
No, they’re very clearly not saying that. They’ve explained themselves already, but to add to their point: Liberals have a long and consistent history of coopting working class movements, using them to achieve their own ends and then throwing the working class under the bus, going so far as to violently suppress the movement if it doesn’t fizzle out on its own. There is no reason to believe US liberals (aka Democrats and any Republicans willing to defect) won’t try to use this very successful playbook, so it needs to be counteracted starting right now. Organize a general strike and don’t let anyone who won’t support universal healthcare within a mile of it. The DNC isn’t currently the one holding the guns, but that doesn’t make them any less of an enemy to the working class.
This guy’s red line in the sand response is too little too late.
No. Let me be more explicit: I support a general strike. In fact I support more than a general strike. If the Democratic Party actually manages to organize (lol) a general strike or anything else (which won’t fucking happen because the Democrats don’t do shit), the working class needs to still do the strike, but appropriate and usurp control from the Democrats of whatever movement forms.
IMO the ideal situation would be that the working class organizes a sustained general and Democratic politicians show up in fake solidarity, and working people literally light the politicians on fire for just now deciding to act.
“We should fight for democracy” straight to “we should literally light politicians on fire who don’t sufficiently agree with us” is quite the take.
Yeah we should fight for socialism, preferably anarchist communism, against liberal democracy. And to do this, we need to actually fight our battles in the ongoing class war. Which might involve lighting some bourgeois politicians on fire. Which is less deaths than letting the capitalist machine keep chugging 🤷♂️
Aaaaaand straight to “we should fight democracy”. Unbelievable.
“Damn fascists, killing people and destroying democracy! To protect people and democracy from them, let’s kill people and destroy democracy!”
Ah yes, liberal democracy = democracy, just like urinal cakes = cakes 🙄
Liberal “democracy” is democracy for the Epstein class but a dictatorship for the working class, and
is bar-none the biggest enemy of democracy. If you want democracy to flourish, then of course you need to fight against 
!
Please, go ahead and explain what kind of democracy you’d prefer to that one and how you’d get there by having a mob burning people.
Direct democracy within freely associated autonomous stateless groups.
Actually it would be things like a general strike, mass mobilization, counterinsurgency, etc., that would get us there. Lighting the politicians and capitalists on fire (or any other way of fucking their shit up, I’m not really attached to the method) would be one very small front for proletarians to actually fight the ongoing class war, specifically against the politicians who would be serving as bourgeois infiltrators and soothsayers. And while winning the class war is not necessary to propose and establish liberatory alternatives in the short term, it is clear that these alternatives would soon be crushed and have no chance of long term survival if we do not smash capitalism and the state.
Frankly, revolution is gonna require some level of violence. Like I even think we should keep the violence to a minimum, IMO means should resemble the ends, but the capitalists have shown every day of our lives that they’re not gonna let us change things without some level of violence; if not from us, then from them, like they do to us every waking moment.
Nope, still not getting better.
Yeah we actually should be killing the power-wielding politicians who did the genocide and then think they can go into public spaces and be a part of our proletarian actions like we fucking forgot, and go fuck yourself if you are willing to excuse genocide so that your life can maybe get a little better
The left: “yes, you got that right, we should totally kill people that support our cause but in the wrong way.”
Also the left: “why can’t we get people on board?”
Oh my fucking God you 🧱 wall motherfucker we don’t WANT the fucking bourgeoisie and their politicians on board, so unless you’re a billionaire or politician then this isn’t fucking about you holy fuck why are you doing defense for the fucking rich people and their goons
Liberals try not to make everything about themselves challenge: IMPOSSIBLE!
You do know that by taking such a stance on politics and being active about it, you’re pretty much a politician yourself?
I mean, where do you draw the line? After you burned Bernie and aoc on the stake, each for being too much of a politician, who’s next? Anybody who’s willing to take political responsibility in any way? Anybody who ever had a public office? You’d burn the middle management of NASA next? Or do you need to have been voted for, do you’ll just kill anybody who ever participated in some stupid school board?
But yeah, whatever, you’re obviously unhinged and insane, so go ahead and keep agitating against people you consider not left enough. You know that there’s someone like you left of you doing the same thing about you, right?
I’m not a politician, and in that circumstance I wouldn’t be a bourgeois politician. My goal is to abolish politics.
Everybody responsible for the genocide
No lol to the rest of those
True and based. It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Good I hope so, then at least I’d die happy knowing that the masses rose up.
Stop using quotes when it’s not a quote. I know people think it’s cute but you are coming off as being pretty unhinged here.
As unhinged as suggesting to burn people?
As unhinged as letting the
capitalists keep genociding Palestinians, keep diddling kids, and keep destroying our species and our planet? Because that’s way the fuck worse than lighting the people who are doing and enabling all the previous things on fire.
Why don’t you get into politics to create laws against this so you can take those that are responsible to court and get them into prison then? That would seem a bit less unhinged than calling for a mob to burn people alive.
Because we already have laws against all this stuff, but it only applies to the working class, because it’s a bourgeois government working to preserve bourgeois interests. A new state would simply reproduce the conditions of capitalism.
Well okay if you would like to brainstorm a more humane way to deal with these monsters then please go out and do that and prove me wrong. Frankly, I’m more interested in stopping them than in the “fire” part.