At the absolute least, voting (when possible) can stop things from breaking so quickly and making it easier to do the other things that fix things.
And once things are fixed, voting well will be one of the actions keeping things from breaking again.
Plus, it’s just one hour of effort with years’ worth of impact. Even if that impact is low, it’s a good tradeoff.
Voting out fascism never works except for all the times it has like the same fucking guy in 2020
Also Brazil, also Hungary.
Also, look up Pinochet Regime in Chile
A real authoritarian regime can’t be made to go away by voting. Look at Russia. Putin is still in charge, and his oppositions are dead, also his government can say whatever they want about voting results, and if you disagree you’ll end up dead too.
In America you also have authoritarianism, but it’s through oligarchy. It’s not the politicians in charge but the one’s with all the money. Nothing politically will change because they’ll just buy whatever it takes to prevent political change. That’s what gerrymandering is for.
That is authoritarianism.
Here in Europe we’ll be going up against riot police because American oligarchs are buying are politicians too. In America you have more bullets than any place in the world, and yet the oligarchs who buy their authority are feeling comfortable. Too comfortable.
I live in Hungary. What Fidesz did here was full on authoritarianism. They stole a significant, visible percentage of the GDP every year, they controlled like 95% of the media (by budget), they were actively destroying the environment by giving build permits to industry and such in areas that were previously beautiful, environmentally protected lands and not forcing companies to comply with emissions and pollution regulations (e.g. battery factories).
And they were fully above the law, they have installed every member of the supreme court and heads of every law enforcement and secret agencies, so they could never be prosecuted.
Last summer they have prepared a law that would have let them prosecute, dismentle and jail all of the remaining 5% of independent media - precisely from Putin’s handbook. However people organized large scale protests, so they did not dare to implement the law in the last second. This was because Orbán has built a private army, also like Putin (OMON), called TEK, but it was not big and strong enough (yet) to be able to protect them from real large scale unrests. Also, they needed to keep up some appearances, because of the EU.
They have also gerrymandered the election and changed the election laws to help them as much as possible, back when they first gained 2/3 majority. They were also outspending campaigning the whole opposition by like a 100:1 ratio, using hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal funding.
So yes, Hungary was under a full on authoritarian regime and like 5 minutes and this last election away from becoming a total dictatorship. There were basically like these three things separating us from the total dictatorship:
- Having the 5% or so free, independent media left
- Fidesz not cheating away the complete elections (they were cheating some and buying votes, but not on a big enough scale), only Gerrymandering and skewing it in their favor as much as possible.
- Not building up Orbán’s own personal army (TEK) enough to be able to crush any unrest or rebellion.
All three of these points were most definitely getting solved in the next four years, if they gained another victory this past election, completely solidifying their power fully and indefinitely, just like Putin has done in the 2000s.
This was Hungary’s very last chance of avoiding to become a full on dictatorship. And we’ve used it spectacularly well.
And by doing so you gave hope to us all.
I find the “we are doomed to fall into fascism” way easier to counter since Magyar was elected.
What about the Pinochet Regime in Chile?
Go Brazil!
Go Brazilian!
The slightly more nuanced steel man is voting alone doesn’t fix things. I.e vote and take other action
Serbia’s election results happened after almost 2 years of protests including worker strikes
Why are people attributing this to Serbia?
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Serbia didn’t win via voting, voting was a consequence of their victory
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Brazil is literally right there and makes so much more sense as a case study
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If I take a shower, that won’t suddenly make me attractive to girls. And yet, if I don’t take a shower, my stench will make me unattractive to girls.
On second thoughts, the “why bother voting” crowd would probably struggle with an analogy about taking a shower.
would probably struggle with an analogy about taking a shower.
Or an analogy about girls, for that matter.
Or an analogy about matter, since they are bots.
Voting got Trump into the White House. It works. Just because it didn’t work the way you wanted it to last time doesn’t mean throw a hissy fit and sit on your ass.
The secret is that the “voting doesn’t work” crowd actually like him there. They just want to see things fall apart and he’s a rabble rouser that they can make use of.
And you only need to look around the internet to notice the “Voting doesn’t work” or “Both sides bad” bots and idiots are coming out of the woordwork again for the next US election.
100%. If you come on to a liberal/left-leaning place like Lemmy and say things like “voting doesn’t work” and “both sides” it’s obvious where you stand.
Hi from Israel. Elections were today. Preliminary results show a very strong possibility for change. It’s still up in the air, but yes, voting can fix things!
I heard that both of the frontrunning candidates are pro-genocide, so what change exactly? Is the argument “Netanyahu isn’t killing Palestinians fast enough”?
The only possibility for meaningful change in the Zionist Entity is if its brought about by the IRGC. Palestine is not yours.
Israeli politicians are either Hitler, Super Hitler, or Mega Hitler. Wild to claim the elections will fix much.
Was going to make this comment. What’s the new guy going to do different, exactly?
It’s still up in the air
It’s not. The genocide will continue nearly unabated regardless. The best case scenario on the table is it goes back to the pre-2023 status quo of a slower genocide.
The best case scenario on the table is it goes back to the pre-2023 status quo of a slower genocide.
…
Isn’t that preferable, though?
I guess that depends on the outcome. Everyone was kinda ignoring the slow genocide. (just a few) Things started happening internationally when the quick one began.
Preferable, yes, sufficient, no. The primary factor that limits Israel’s genocide, which also have the potential to stop it entirely, is not domestic opposition but foreign resistance, economically and militarily.
No, that’s an .ml user. They hate Palestinians and trans people. They want BB and Trump to win because saying, I told you so, is more important to them than people’s lives.
God damn this shit is so annoying. I thought lemmy was supposed to be better than reddit.
You’re literally just circle jerking an opinion they didn’t state.
Elections were today. Preliminary results show a very strong possibility for change.
Which Israeli political party opposes the genocide in Palestine, again?
הדמוקרטים
have certainly said a thing or two about that
In the elections for the twenty-five Knesset in 2022, for the first time since its establishment, the Meretz Party did not pass the electoral threshold and remained without representatives in the Knesset
:-/
Good luck. We’re counting on you.
I hope so. Netanyahu sucks.
That is interesting to hear. It seemed like the people against Benny think that they’re not genociding hard enough.
Notably, this election was not won by the Serbian equivalent of “blue no matter who.” It was won by the equivalent of a third party.
It wasn’t one of the existing opposition parties that did it.
Serbia barely had a second party, as far as I could see (from Croatia). Yeah, there was some opposition, but very few had any sincere trust in it, incomparably fewer than the number of Americans who actually like and support Democrats. The Student List tapped into this vacuum.
And European democracies are generally a bit more loose with having newcomer parties being at least somewhat viable, for better and for worse (AfD, UKIP…). The US electoral system just erases 3rd parties wholesale, it’s particularly abysmal.
Btw, the Student List is not terribly left-leaning. They’re trying to be “apolitical”, in order to attract both the left and the right.
It’s great that that worked. Was this groundswell a risk which now replaces half of a two-party system, or do they use ballots which make third-party support safe?
We will have to see what sort of reforms they make. I’ll be following it closely
It was more of a question about this recent election. Was it first-past-the-post? Because if it is and they don’t fix that, they will be incorporated into a two-party system. Those don’t emerge because anyone wanted one.
They have proportional representation according to Wikipedia (emphasis mine):
The 250 members of the National Assembly are elected by closed-list proportional representation from a single nationwide constituency. Eligible voters vote for electoral lists, on which the candidates of the accepted lists are present. A maximum of 250 candidates could be present on a single electoral list.
Well the great thing about winning with a party that actually wants to change the system (if they do) is that regardless of whether it was FPTP before, it doesn’t have to be in the future.
Yeeeah a lot of third parties don’t seem aware that this is a thing to fix. Winning makes them even less likely to consider systemic change. It worked for them - what’s the problem?
Well, if the reason it “worked for them” is because they had promised electoral reform, then they could easily lose their support by breaking that promise.
In this specific situation, the coalition is very fragile without a clear ideological direction. It’s very possible that it will break apart, and so it’s in their interest to enact reforms that would allow smaller parties to hold influence.
Do you have historical examples to support that claim, btw? You say “a lot of third parties” but which ones?
voting is an expression of solidarity
Note that the student movement formed an incredibly unique decentralized political apparatus OUTSIDE of the formal institutions. They are exemplary and I am excited to see how successful they are going forward. Dismantling the Vucic corporatist structure won’t be easy but I think this movement is genuinely capable of it.
They did not vote blue no matter who, they built their own political bloc from fucking scratch.
Edit: I’d also like to be abundantly clear that the point communists make when they say voting doesn’t work is that voting won’t dismantle capitalism. These students and the political apparatus they built can change the leadership for the better but it isn’t going to smash capitalism and replace it with a society free from oppression.
They did not vote blue no matter who, they built their own political bloc from fucking scratch
And if my grandmother had wheels she’d be a bicycle.
The political landscape of Serbia does not seem to be one in which the concept of “blue no matter who” even resolves to an intelligible idea.
You can’t just transplant the political strategy of one set of conditions to a completely different set of conditions.
Certainly we have the same end goals, but your implied expectations do not match the conditions outside of Serbia.
Yes I agree. Serbia and America are not similar. Which is why the electoral success of the Serbian student movement does not mean electoralism is a viable strategy for significant political change in the united states as the post is suggesting.
Ooof. Two days isn’t long enough to know if the authoritarian regime is gonna go quietly. Hoping they’re able to make it stick. 🤞🙏🤞🙏🤞
Two days isn’t long enough to know if the authoritarian regime is gonna go quietly.
Or if the Student List delegates are going to be able to form a government and deliver on popular reforms.
People getting all excited like it’s Obama '08, fully forgetting what happened two years later.
