What I have learned:
- Russia has already won the Ukraine war
- Which NATO started
- A lot of people in the West think that Ukraine should surrender
- Also Ukraine was the world’s main provider of CSAM
- Also Ukraine is exploited by the West but if they can unite with Russia then their economy and everything else will finally be alright
It’s literally like a bizarro world and everyone is over there agreeing with it. I’m genuinely confused by, who even are these people (what is the mixture of Russian bots / Russian-aligned ordinary people / confused Westerners / some other explanation.)
Slrpnk.net leans anarchist, and historically there has always been a vocal subset of anarchists who advocate abstaining from electoral politics on principle. The upcoming US presidential election is the perfect storm for this stance to thrive and still it is a minority position even among the most anarchist instance on Lemmy, so I’m pretty happy with the diversity of opinion expressed there. I think it’s important we hear those minority voices and a bit unfair to call them shills.
Oh no, I wasn’t talking about the general “don’t vote” contingent on slrpnk – that seems fine; just like you’re saying, it seems authentically arrived at. I was just saying that there are a couple of users there that seem to have a particular and very specific focus on this exact election and specifically on not voting in this election, and not much interest in anarchism beyond its application to parts that would be generally applicable to someone who was trying to engineer a result for Trump in the election.
I mean, what the hell, no one needs my permission to say whatever they feel like saying. But to the extent that my opinion on it matters, I don’t think slrpnk overall or its general “fuck the system and yes that includes the voting system” vibe that it has are indicative of anything shill related, no.
I know we’ve had our run ins about this but it’s really about this election because Biden is doing egregious stuff. It’s not this election for no reason. And the shills that are just trying to make people never want to vote again are getting a ton of ammunition.
Have we had run-ins?
IDK, other than his absolutely war-criminal support for Israel I’m not aware of all that much about Biden that is real ammunition. (Not that that’s a minor issue 😢) Pretty much everything else has crumbled into weird half-truths and propaganda when I’ve been poking at it, I think; what were you thinking of when saying he’s doing egregious stuff?
I also don’t think that refusing to vote for Biden is going to make anything any better. If someone is doing direct action to change things, or an influence campaign to try to push him to the left, that all sounds frickin fantastic. Just committing to not voting doesn’t really make sense to me though – it’s functionally the same as saying you’ll vote for Biden no matter what; i.e. basically no pressure at all to change his policy (but with the added horrifying danger of maybe electing Trump.)
Oh you’re not horrible or anything. You’ve just been on the other side of some of those conversations. Also as far egregious stuff he just dropped an EO on immigration that’s sure to get the ACLU fired up. Which doesn’t really spark joy in my life.
You can join the conversation here where I talk a little more about the background of that decision – because it came up over there, I looked it up, and migrants are currently waiting years for their cases to be heard (just to put some facts behind what I was saying in that comment).
Oh then they’re getting that entirely wrong. You’re not supposed to check out of the system and never vote. You’re supposed to withhold your vote, that you normally use. Those are numbers they can see and run polling to figure out how to better represent people, (in a good faith system). If you just never engage then you never get represented. And if you never get represented then you’re just watching the country walk away from you.