President Joe Biden says he will not supply offensive weapons that Israel can use to launch an all-out assault on Rafah — the last major Hamas stronghold in Gaza — over concern for the well-being of the more than 1 million civilians sheltering there.
Cool so what me and other people who have had enough genocide and think similarly are going to do is loudly tell Biden (which we are doing) that we want to vote for him, but we can’t unless he stops the genocide of Palestinians. Words are meaningless, small concessions are meaningless, he needs to stop the genocide NOW.
It appears at this point, this is the only way leverage will work because centrists democrats have proven thoroughly how cynically they see progressives and the ideologies they base their politics on. Crucially, I didn’t create these conditions where this is the only place progressives feel they have power in this coalition, centrist democrats like Biden did. I don’t accept the blame for that, I have always made it very clear I hope that genocide is a red line for me as a voter, full stop.
That’s a fair point and I don’t have a great counter to that not least because that pressure is working. In fact my only argument is a bit of a future hypothetical – that there are two consequences of this, namely: (a) it’s causing a lot of younger voters to not want to vote; (b) it’s causing a lot of problems for Biden with some voting blocs because he is not toeing the Zionist ‘party line’. IOW, it could endanger his election prospects.
And that comes down to a difference of opinion: Your red line is Israeli genocide, mine is a Trump administration and all that comes with it. For me anything that makes a Trump administration more likely makes more genocide more likely and about a dozen other things that are going to set us back decades, including more federal and possibly SCOTUS judges and, crucially, more baked-in support for Israel and Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
I appreciate that for you this may be a chance you are willing to take. I have trouble understanding why anyone would feel that way given the systemic issues of undermining US support for Israel that mean we cannot “stop the genocide” anyway. But thank you for having this dialog.
I understand you feeling that way. I feeling strongly about my position and I will not budge from it because it is founded in my beliefs, I can’t just see this as a tactical decision divorced from the aspect of me as a citizen directly endorsing probably one of the worst genocides in my lifetime (happening with my countries bombs, my countries military training, likely with military advisors from my countries military heavily assisting every level of this genocide).
This is a prototype for a darker future of mass scale violence against groups of people, for example how many US police departments have trained directly with the IDF, the entity that is slaughtering innocent civilians left and right in Gaza? The answer is a lotttt of them. This is a prototype and this is a test and if we do not reject this genocide with an existential disgust and fervor and a willingness to walk away from this voting coalition that benefits us in the near term, the prototype will have been demonstrated to be successful to the ruling class and that future should scare the shit out of you.
Shame on us for being afraid to defend our value because corporate democrats have set up an impossible choice and then argued for progressives to choose them by attacking them rhetorically.
I don’t see this as be willing or not willing to take a chance, I see this as there being no choice in the first place. This is a moment where it’s “ride or die”. Biden can put his chips on the table and prove he treats progressive voters as genuinely part of his core voting bloc. Or he can keep assuming that young progressives will fall in line no matter what and in my opinion that is equally as catastrophic of an outcome if we just fall in line and agree to sweep Biden’s despicable enabling of the mass scale slaughter of 70,000? Palestinian men, women and children (we don’t even know the real numbers because Israel has killed all the journalists it can get its hand on in Gaza).
Now is the time to wield our power, now is the time to shut this shit down. There is no next time, no “we just have to vote for Biden here and then we can do the good work later”. If Biden refuses to budge on this, we have already lost and centrist democrats leveling the blame for that at people like me is lazy and frankly absurd.
I want to vote for Biden and I will, as soon as he calls up Netanyahu and tells him this genocide is over, period. I am not being a troll, if Biden takes serious action and stops this genocide then he immediately gets my vote. Very simple calculation for Biden here.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply.
This prototype was proven “successful” time and again. This country was founded on genocide and authoritarian, racist control. I don’t fear that it will become that because it has been that and in so many ways is that still. As I see it Democrats may be participants and supporters of that but it’s given the options, there’s no question it’s the better of the two in that it allows some progress. Republicans want full-on fascism because they simply don’t believe in democracy or the compromise necessary to support democratic principles or any kind of shit toward a progressive or socialist future. And I’ll take the thin veneer of that over nothing at all.
I get that you are willing to let it all crumble. I felt that way in 2016 and you know what? It was so much worse than I imagined it could be because I had way too much faith in our “institutions” and the strength of our laws. I despise HRC for her right-wing neocon ways but I think often of how much better things would be if she had been able to take the office that she won.
It’s not a question of are we defending our values, it’s a question of how. I believe that both participation within our system and active protest against it are critical. If we don’t have the former we don’t have a foundation for the latter. If we break things so much that a Republican administration gets into office, we are taking so many steps backward we may never move forward again in our lifetimes.
I admire the sentiment and support you in that. Our conversation has softened my view and given me insight into the necessity of standing firmly on principle, even in this instance. I don’t fully agree with it but I can definitely respect it.