If I understand you correctly, then I very much agree, but I don’t see this happening very much.

It happens all the time on a per-organizer basis if you actively do it. The left is currently small but has the capacity to rapidly snowball if it is principled and follows good practices. When you recruit 10 people per year per organizer and 2 of them become organizers, etc etc. And these things will come in waves if you make yourself known and build capacity for onboarding. One year it’s 10 per organizer, the next it may be 50.

My organizations experienced rapid growth under Trump and in Winter-Spring 2024 due to us actively doing work.

On one side I see people saying “vote for the lesser of two evils, and then we can focus on changing the system/changing the democrat policies” without actually any clear idea how to do that.

Yes this is just a line, they don’t really man it. They can’t even say what their goal is most of the time. They just say “push left”, leaving it vague. And of course they’re really telling you to stop making demands when you have the most leverage, to then give up that leverage by pledging to be a guaranteed vote then make their demands when they have the least leverage and gave already proven that they will vote blue regardless.

This line is repeated constantly because it keeps empathetic voters contained and powerless while also gaining some votes for their monstrous candidate.

On the other side I see “don’t vote for either party, neither major party deserves to win” without any clear idea of how to give any realistic chance for a third party to win.

Why does the third party need to win? There are many other outcomes to shedding the false consciousness of lesser evil voting. At the moment, I am highlighting liberals normalizing genocide. One outcone is to recognize that this “democracy” is a genocidal sham and you need to work against its underlying forces. Another is to effectively boycott so as to demonstrate illegitimacy of who is elected, which has a long history. Another us to begin creating a voting bloc that doesn’t ounch itself in the face every 4 years and actually makes demands with a credible threat. That voting bloc would also eventually fail because again, this “democracy” is a sham, but those people can then be organized against the genocidal status quo.

Here again you are using bad faith tactics to dismiss the idea that people in favour of voting might have valid reasons to, instead presenting it as if these people think normalising genocide is a good thing. This is divisive and not constructive at all.

It is not bad faith, it is the truth. Treating genocide like a typical lesser evil you have to accept is normalizing it. It was, allegedly, a red line, and now liberals are falling over themselves to erase that line.

This revelation probably makes you uncomfortable, but it is not false or unfair. You can see it throughout this thread. They try to avoid the topic at first, then speak euphemistically. Try asking them to say this: “I am against genocide and will never vote for a genocider”. Can you say that?

Yes I know how quickly controversial discourse can go downhill

“Controversial” my ass, I said they were panicking and racist. So much for “good faith”, eh? Don’t whitewash my framings and pretend it is what we are talking about.

but to be that seems all the more reason to not allow our arguments to disintegrate, even if the other sides are.

You are being so vague that I can’t even tell what you are recommending. This topic is something you brought up, trying to both sides communication, and what I am telling you is that there is a verifiable imbalance.

I definitely agree, I think all widespread “truths” should stand up to scrutiny, but my point is about the way this is done. Challenging a truth/point of view should mean approaching the logical base of that view, and presenting an alternative with reasons why the alternative is better.

Incorrect. That is fine for internal strategy discussions among people that agree with one another. It is absolutely terrible media and discursive strategy.

There is not a logical base for most political views. That is usually a rationalization for more basic feelings, like status, security, whether you are a good person, whether the bad people are getting what they deserve.

But so often I see people ignoring the logical base of the other side’s viewpoint, and instead creating straw-men to attack instead, or simply just dismissing the other side entirely through one tactic or another.

Because it isn’t about the logical base. I can present concrete facts and demonstrate pure logical contradiction in another person’s arguments and they will simply deflect. Their ego gets in the way, an ego taught to them by a society where having an opinion is important for status and self-worth and every disagreement is about destroying the other side. They will lie, deflect, insult, say racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic things. Having revealed that they have no logical base and are just Himmler Lite, any pretense that you are just going after logic and debate will undermine you and become a trolling session for them.

These are not the people you are trying to reach anyways. It is the audience at the borderline that need that, “oh shit my side is racist and I reject that” kind of push. Again, not about a logical base.

To be clear, this is done by all sides, I see many people dismissing the argument to vote as simply being “supportive of genocide” (which is obviously riduculous)

It is not ridiculous you are literally voting for someone doing a genocide and telling other people to do the same. Despite your complaints you have not addressed the clear basis for this claim and are doing that thing right now: deflecting through dismissal built entirely on sentiment, not any logical basis. I should not need to explain to you that “I am voting for a genocider and so should you” is a pro-genocide stance. But your discomfort in your complicity, the threat to you feeling like a good person, means you need to start dissembling.

while people dismissing the argument to vote third party as being “stupid/ignorant” or other things to that effect, which is also obviously false.

The people dismissing that are repeating canards handed to them by their faction of the political class. They are only needed insofar as the person returns to feeling like they are good and smart for voting for a genocider. You can watch them fall apart in real time when you try to discuss their alleged “logical base”, like discusing game theory and electoral strategy. They were not actually convinced to vote that way because of simplistic half-understood electoral math, they were convinced by allegiance to a political program that aligns with their idea of being a good person. And as bourgeous morality goes, they will then start making personal moralizung arguments, and then they must be reminded they are voting for a genocider.

Then we come full circle and they fall apart. Repeat ad nauseum.

Like you say, we are all products of our societies with different values, but the vast majority of people are reasonably smart and have good intentions.

Not true. Intentions are not inherently good when the society that crafted them is racist, genocidal, misigynist, etc. Being the product of conditions means the dominant intention can be oppressive and violent. With education they could acquire good intentions. If raised in a less oppresser society, they could have good intentions. But you don’t get to whitewash the bad intentions of those shoring up violence and oppression, including genocide. Those are not good intentions, they ar self-serving corrosive behaviors learned from their social circles.

And dismissing people is not a good way of “calling them out”, it only causes further division and makes them even less likely to be receptive to your ideas.

100% incorrect, certainly when it comes to media and fronts, which is more like how social media operates. The most effective means of agitation is direct callouts, particularly when it comes to reactionary positions that need to be made socially unacceptable.

The person receiving the callout will get defensive, but they do that anyways regardless of how you frame the problem in what they are saying. But now they get to coast by and pretend to be in the right and the audience will also miss this. Over time, that defensiveness can and does lead to change, where many go and do some research and come back in a few months as if they had always held a different position. Online, they might just make a new account. I’ve seen users bullied for their transphobia do this repeatedly, they got less transphobic over time but were still recognizably the same user.

If, on the other hand, someone is already sympathetic and not oppositional, they will let you know this early on. The main thing they will do is commiserate and ask questions. These are the people you can gently correct as they are not just trying to reaffirm their biases - such as to the white race and whose suffering they care about - and status as a good person by retaining them.

If you cannot see the reasons for someone’s beliefs (even if you strongly disagree with those reasons) then you stand very little chance of changing their mind.

Buddy I have recruited more people than you’ve ever talked to online.

Good job responding to something I didn’t say to try and discredit what I did.

Don’t think that goes unnoticed.

I’m not excusing Hamas. The fact that you read what I did says that you are either responding in bad faith, didn’t read my response very carefully, or are stupid. I’ll go with the middle one to be generous.

I don’t excuse Hamas. I don’t control Hamas, and much more importantly, I don’t pay for the weapons that Hamas use.

I pay, or rather my country pays, for the weapons that Israel uses to bomb apartment building, schools, and hospitals.

Hamas has killed somewhere between 1000-2000 civilians in this conflict, and that is being generous because we know that a large number of causalities were from Israel enacting the Hannibal directive and intentionally killing their own to keep them from being made prisoners (If Israel gets to grab 11,400 West Bank civilians without trial or due process and call them prisoners, then Hamas gets to do the same). Furthermore, if we count anyone who was in the IDF or the IDF’s military reserves as active military, then the number of civilians goes WAAAAY down. Remember that the IDF considers the trashmen, police, and hospital administrators as active combatants with Hamas affiliation. So, once again, if that is the standard that Israel is setting then it applies to all parties, including Israelis.

Israel, by all best estimates, has killed somewhere between 100,000-200,000 civilians. That is between 5% - 10% of the ENTIRE POPULATION OF GAZA. In all honesty, the number is probably higher.

That is completely ignoring the systemized rape and torture camps that Israel has set up, and the Israeli media discovered. Also, something that there is no evidence that Hamas has set up.

Acting like those two numbers are equivalent, or pointing out that Israel is quantitatively a minimum of 2 orders of magnitude worse, or that the two sides are the same is either stupidity, or evil. Take your pick.

None of this is justifying Hamas. It is pointing out how much more fantastically, cartoonishly fucking evil the Israeli government is.

You should ask yourself why you view the above as justifying Hamas. You might discover something.

I am not a Democrat. At this point I’m closer to Independent because both parties have gone off the rails over that last decade. However I understand the importance of this election and I understand how our system works. Voting 3rd party does nothing but pull votes from Democrats. It happens EVERY election. I’m sorry to burst your bubble but voting third party doesn’t give you the moral high ground. It just makes you an idiot because not only will your candidate not be elected but more often than not you enable Republicans to win elections based on how our voting system works.