Im not going to pull punches on this rant. I am so exhausted by this rhetoric and unfortunately it is pervasive in my personal life and online. I spend most of my productive time reviewing literature on various global issues. Namely land grab discourse, genocide studies, conservation efforts, state development policy, IFI reports etc etc.
Let me tell you something about the lives of rural and Indigenous people in the global south. They get their homes burned down and murdered in their sleep. Their lands are stolen from them with techniques perfected by colonial powers, especially from US settler colonialism.
The state will steal their lands and “preserve it” for use of private capital, for white settlers, or to create a national park or preserves that wealthy foriegners can hunt game and so they can parade to the world how “modern” they are becoming.
If they cannot steal land outright they will use other more complicated manners to incentivise rural people to be tied into market relations, such as dependence on ecotourism or even biochar and other technologies presented as liberatory or as needed due to damages colonialism has done. “A bit of colonialism will help your colonialism problem,” if you will.
These relations will contradict and then corrode their lifeways and distracted from effective traditional methods because white tourists don’t want to see the cattle of pastoralists when on vacation. They are also shamed by the excess wealth of tourists, and the settlers that facilitate tourism, encouraging them to become more enfranchised into modernity so their lands will either become vulnerable to direct theft or the market relations will mold them into what settlers want them to do for the benifit of their estates.
These extreme minority settlers often own like half of an entire county, while the county next door is over half conservation area. This means fewer lands for grazing and fewer water sources available for rural people. It leads to starvation and death, especially during dry periods such as the current drought in east Africa, all while the state concern trolls about food security and executes the development dance to attract aid and FDI. It also means that lands are degraded by over use because these people are being choked out of their ancestral lands. The state and white settlers then blame the pastoralists and forest dwellers and weaponize Human Rights against them, saying the rural peoples are preventing the states quest for water security as they redirect all waters to metro areas and settler estates.
All of this is the genocidal process of primative accumulation or accumulation by dispossession. It is a privilege I am able to research these situations. It is a privilege that I am able to work with organizations that work with local Tribes on the issues they are concerned about. It is a privilege I am a grad student that is paid to do this, although our union has to fight the university for a fraction of a living wage.
I am not privileged to not vote Blue. It is more like a curse of understanding. Who do you think backs these violent efforts of dispossession? USAID is never far away. The EU is never far away. The IFI are always right there. Conservation as we know it was created in North America to conquer the continent and take the land from Indigenous peoples and it has exported these methods abroad. All of this is supported by institutions and policies that democrats and republicans alike believe in and enable globally. It is supported by finance capital which is the foundation of the present democratic party
Let me tell you what people who vote blue do about this. Kenya or some other post colonial state will massacre people and burn down their homes and create a national park. Netflix will then hire Obama to narrate a docuseriese on the glorious national parks of the world. Blue voters will then consume the erasure and genocide of rural people as feel-good, green™ content with satisfaction that the world is becoming a better place. That’s it. Then they go vote blue.
Anyone who says I am privileged to not vote blue has no clue or no care regarding how the world works and is a combination being hopelessly US centric, too focused on bourgeoisie partisanship and embarrassingly naive about the world. Voting blue is the opposite of solidarity. The people who say they are not privileged enough to not vote Blue fail to see their own privilege of living in the Disney land of the global north. What ever gains they think Democrats will give them will either never happen or will be cut from the flesh of people they are happy to sacrifice.
I will not be extorted by bourgeoisie partisans. My moral worth and political identify is mine to create, not theirs to demand. My concern is with the fundamental machinations of capital and the devestating impact it has on people while it reproduces itself, and it is most destructive in places far from the minds of democrats regardless of issues in the US. I’m not going to be tricked into supporting a party that enables the process of accumulation by dispossession, and that stands on a foundation of genocide. They only have moral arguments but they do not have moral standing.
To those who downvoted: Read it again, tell me how this doesn’t fit perfectly on Lemmygrad, then proceed to go fuck urself 🖕🖕Anti-Imperialism means more than the half-assed gains by Democrats. They literally calculate this shit to do as little as possible while winning elections. The Democrats care about the Democrats winning seats. They have a different audience than the Republicans so they take different stances on social issues.
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Harm reduction for the already-privileged, and fuck everybody else. ‘Well, fuck them too’ is what I say.
I couldn’t agree more. These tactics have been used to get people to support political figures that will not advance their goals for far too long. (not to mention how distracting electoralist positions really are from what could be more productive efforts)
Liberals oversimplify politics in a way that erases the dynamic political realities of everyone, especially colonised and working people. They obfuscate the imperialist function of mainstream political discourse. The colloquial left-right political spectrum that is enforced cannot explain the differences between interests of white settler workers, Black workers, or moderate middle income land owners, yet liberals live and die by it and demand coalitions be built with it’s logic.
Ultimately this is why the Democratic Party is a prison house of social movements and marginalized interests, just as the US is a prison house of nations.
Vote red then I guess? Republicans lock up their constituents and would love to actively harm you. But you… Proved a point, or something, right?
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You can’t even formulate the most common sense form of a thought.
What solution do you have that the average American can use, if voting isn’t the option?
Seriously, it’s either voting, or force. If America is as much of a powerful authoritarian police state as you people think, what choice does the average person have that isn’t going to get them thrown into prison?
And if you expect people to throw their lives away over this, where’s your molotov comrade?
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“Political” liberals I know who spew this line are only “political” insofar as they voot every 4 years and whine the rest of the time.
Even internal politics do not really matter. Roe v. Wade was reversed under a blue President, and all of these motherfuckers take that to mean is “we must voot even bluer and harder next time!”
How long until there isn’t a next time? How long until your comfy little homes are razed to their foundations by the very capitalist crises you decided were worthy of maintaining, of reaffirming?
Incredible, as well, is how the blue guys always make shit way worse than their predecessors did, yet liberals simply avert their eyes from that glaring truth.
What about those border camps, Joe-stans? What about police violence? What about continuously skyrocketing inequality and poverty? WHAT ABOUT GITMO? Drone strikes? Growing deportations!
Many liberals seem to love being lied to, over and over and over, and seem to be utterly incapable of learning their fucking lesson.
Great post, comrade.
addendum: “I would never vote for a rapist like Trump. Tara Reade? You mean the Russian agent?”
#believewomen amifuckingrite
Roe reversed under a blue president by justices appointed under Trump. What exactly was Biden supposed to do? If there were a viable alternative to president I would love to see one but we only get the options we get.
What if I told you there are other options beyond voting for either “slow death” or “fast death”?
That maybe, if the choices given aren’t actually representing what the people want, then maybe the system is undemocratic, even if you do get to tick a box every 4 years. There are solutions beyond just “vote for the guy who does nothing instead of the guy who actively makes things worse.” This is a communist instance on Lemmy, I’m sure you can find some people talking about those alternatives somewhere around here.
What exactly was Biden supposed to do?
He’s the fucking president!. Pack the courts, threaten to withold reelection support from party members who don’t get in line, do anyof the underhanded power moves that the republicans live and breathe. Play fucking hardball as if millions of lives are on the line because they are.
Of course, the real answer is that he doesn’t care because he’s a thousand year old catholic mummy who lowkey agrees with the killing of Dobbs. This is what vooting blue no matter who gets you.
they’re ultimately all on the same team so it’s ridiculous to expect anything different
you don’t get to be a candidate much less president unless you’re on that team. that team is controlled by money and violence and the shit that floats to the top is someone who is more than okay with that.
mfers out here thinking a Catholic rapist cares about women’s right to choose lol.
People say that when non-democrats don’t vote blue we are enabling republicans. Nothing more.
Then they go and say stuff like this.
Well what is the problem then? Are we wrong for somehow enabling Republicans or are Democrats the ones enabling Republicans through not acting and then justifying not acting to save face?
Your commitment to democrats and to the US electoral game is what legitimizes and enables the political world we live in. But nothing that exists must exist as it is. Things could be different but when someone suggests abandoning democrats to build a new coalition it is shot down as unrealistic and enabling Republicans by splitting the vote or letting Republicans win by not voting. But yet even when Democrats win the Republicans win too because “what were Democrats supposed to do???”
What if bourgeoisie partisanism is just a scam? What if focusing on concrete social or material issues of our communities through organization and solidarity gives us a better shot at a better quality of life and you are wasting the opportunity by defending a party that stands on genocide, and that cannot even achieve a fraction of what people want without taking from someone else.
What if a dialectical understanding of US partisanism reveals that the Republicans and democrats rely on each other for the development American politics and its discourse? One could not stand without the other.
What use is it to even ask what Biden should do? I have no recommendation for Biden, tho it’s true I think he has the ability to take a much harder stance but chose not to.
But I dont want Biden to succeed because it legitimizes a genocidal party that relies on primative accumulation to enrich it’s financiers. It relies on massive exploitation of miners and factory workers. It relies on the erasure of peoples, cultures, languages. It relies on the complacence of the privileged and the oppressed. It relies on planned obsolescence, waste, pollution, the warming of the planet, and the destruction of life. It relies on a narrative of developmentalism that forces the world into a wealth arms race that will kill us all. It relies on the destruction of humanities future.
Why would I support the destruction of all human futures just to defend someone that wont even raise his hand high enough to ruffle some feathers?
What I want is for the people of this land to figure out how to achieve solidarity with people around the world to build their own sovereignty so they can build a future that is fully disconnected from American politics and that directly challenges imperialism, indeed the very imperialism democrats support and require. I want people that can be critical of the status quo and critical of their own interests so that the social virus known as capital can be dethroned and we can begin to heal.
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this is so much a part of the problem. how is it okay to continue a system that is corrupt to the core by participating in it to lend it legitimacy? what other options exist? a different system maybe? communism perhaps?
he should have done something at least
That’s the point. There’s always a reason why the Dems can’t do progressive politics. Which raises the question, why bother voting for them except to feel good about oneself?
And what can they do? The point of a FPTP system is so the winners can legislate. If Dems can’t do that even when they get elected, the final pretense of liberal ‘democracy’ has fallen off the side of the ship into the deep blue ocean.
When I saw the upvote/downvote ratio I was bracing myself for some kind of poorly contstructed polemic, but it turns out nothing makes libs seethe like the exact opposite. Well written as fuck
Nothing makes them madder than pointing out how ineffectual and privileged they are, and how empty and meaningless voting in the west is. So they are forced to bring out the ultimate in lib praxis: The Downvote.
If downvoting didn’t matter, tankies wouldn’t be trying to take it away from you -liberals probably
What country effectively utilizes tactics other than voting to guarantee change? Are gay Russians doing well? Have the French stopped police and privacy violations? Do Indians have enough infrastructure for their population? Any African countries doing well in stopping warlords from embezzling aid?
You sit on your hypothetical utopian high horse and complain about some fantasized westerner, despite likely being a westerner yourself.
Move to China or India or Russia if the West is so incompatible with your worldview, then complain about how ineffectual the average person is there as well.
Thanks for reading.
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No but a complete moron wants to ensure fascism
Very well written.
If I copy and share this, how do you want to be attributed? A link back to here or some other name or _ ?
I like a low profile. If it’s useful id like it to be used without attributing it to me directly but I appreciate you asking.
Yeah that’s why I thought I should ask 👍
Excellent argument.
Have you read anything by Brenna Bhandar? You might especially like Colonial Lives of Property: Law, Land and Racial Regimes of Ownership. Although it sounds like you’re already well-versed in the underlying ideas. https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/25873/
Always appreciative of reading recommendations! Especially books. I do not have this one but it looks great.
I am privileged… to not live in USA.
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I’d Yeonmi Park this country in a New York minute
Problem is I can’t think of any lies about this shithole that are worse than the genuine truth.
Step outside in Amerika, you immediately get shot, probably by police. In Amerika, it costs over a years’ salary for most people to have a baby – in Amerika, you are born into debt. In Amerika, you can be enslaved for jaywalking. In Amerika, skin pigmentation is a matter of life and death. In Amerika, it is your fault if you get assaulted.
Fuck, at least that train those folk were supposedly pushing in (DPR)Korea existed. In Amerika, there are only a few trains and they all smell like piss, shit, and decay.
I could do this all day. Appreciate it if you hmu when you land a defector mouthpiece job, I’m on that shit, too.
Dems count on GOP asshattery to bring in votes because they refuse to advance any progressive policies. The cudgel is their only motivation: “Better vote for us or those crazy republicans will get into office and you know what they’ll do!”
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I actually wrote a quote relating to this for my fanfic, although I was thinking more of imperialist invasions on native homelands.
completely off-topic but I keep hearing about fanfics and worldbuilding here but I’m not aware of if there’s a comm specifically for posting those. Are y’all posting those somewhere?
Nice! Been a while since I don’t read actual fiction.
I am American, so my lense is quite…American. the amount of propaganda that I’ve begun to shed is pretty crazy.
I see alot of “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” rhetoric, and “third party is a wated vote” …OK so let’s let good enough be the enemy of better, got it! I can’t bring myself to shill for corporations, sorry. Sure, the R is way worse than D. But both are problematic and the issue is in the bedrock of the system itself.
These relations will contradict and then corrode their lifeways and distracted from effective traditional methods because white tourists don’t want to see the cattle of pastoralists when on vacation
I would like to hear about the effective traditional methods, please
Since OP hasn’t given any further reading I’d recommend ‘cows save the planet.’ It’s not about colonialism really, but it does talk about how traditional pastoralist practices can be very beneficial to the soil. The book’s not that in depth or radical, but it’s a good intro if accompanied by anti-colonial stuff and whatever CountryBreakfast is reading.
Thanks
In short (because the idiosyncrasies of traditional land practices vary among communities and is hardly my expertise), for pastoralists, how cattle are managed effects the health of the land. Pastoralists know how the land reacts to different practices because they have thousands of years of experience with their ancestral lands. An example of this may be that some grasses will die if the grow too tall, some landscapes thrive by being periodically trampled by cattle and wildlife. When problems arise they have ways of determining what to do through informal institutions. Basically, the culture and the land co-evolve together so one will effect the other in a feedback loop.
When outside forces seek to integrate these communities with things like ecotourism it can slowly disrupt those relationships. And it is for little gain as the jobs are poverty jobs. Further, tourists unfortunately routinely feel they have a more authentic experience when they occasionally see poor Indigenous people, or hear about their struggle, but don’t want to see their cattle or lifeways being practiced because it challenges the “pristine” aesthetic they are hoping to consume. Another example is how forest peoples have ways of determining how to do controlled burns and other things that keep the forest healthy. The disruptions of the practices is well documented in North America and is why catestrophic wildfires are common now.
If you want to know more you will need to look at specific communities and possibly learn some new language to understand properly. Not all practices are known to academics. Some are withheld or protected by certain families because of the danger of appropriation, especially information about plants because corps will patent the genetics.
Thanks. I understand the disruption from tourism, but I was mostly curious in regards to efficiency comparison between pastoralist method of agriculture and planned, mechanised agriculture (like in China nowadays)
Let me get back to you on this because there is a lot to say and I am woefully busy. But this is something I would like to at least attempt to elaborate on with the attention it deserves.
Thanks in advance! (For the record - I’m not the one downvoting you)
Truth! It is your choice what you do with your vote. I might write in Deez Nutz 🌰 . Does that mean I support fascism? No. By giving me a false dichotomy in this broken system, they hope to force your hand. It’s your choice. If you want to vote for Dank Brandon to stave off fascism. Good for you! If you want to vote Marianne Williamson. Good for you! It’s your choice, not theirs.
Nah you just helped the cause of fascism. That’s somehow heroic
I don’t need you to think for me. I’m older. I’ve voted in 10 general elections. This slow slide to fascism didn’t begin with Trump, and it won’t end with Biden. America is going fascist whether I vote for Biden or not.
Lmao yeah the whole bOtH sIdEs lie that you gargled without hesitation. The US is fucked and your solution is to dump the gasoline faster
It’s called accelerationism. Sorry Biden’s not your savior. Because he’s not for you, he’s for corporate America. Somehow you know this, but hold out hope that “it’ll work itself out.” I’ve accepted that it never will. I may end up voting for Biden to spite conservatives, who knows. But I will decide.
You have no idea what my views are. Biden sucks. Trump is many times worse and I’m enraged by the cartoonish reality we live in where idiots force me to remind them of that repeatedly
Sorry. Didn’t mean to assume you are a Democrat. This is becoming circular. You’re tired of having to remind people that Trump is worse than Biden. I’m tired of having to remind people that voting is an individual responsibility, not to be forced due to a myopic goal.
It’s also just math. Complain about how our voting system works, please, because it could be better.
But, a vote that isn’t for the “better” party is still a vote that isn’t for the “better” party. Are you free to do that? Sure. Are you still complicit in whatever policies the other party produces? More than no.
