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I have problems with people who abstained. The hard thing is, how do you change voter behavior?
this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2025
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I have a (conspiracy) theory that those “genocide Joe” and “killer Kamala” folk are astroturfing for MAGA.
It’s not wrong to say that the right/outside actors made the issue more pervasive, but let’s not exonerate the “adults in the room” who decided it was better policy to unflinchingly support war criminals and a slow motion genocide, instead of defusing the wedge issue and forcing Bibi’s hand. Israel is nothing without US political support and weapons. Recognize “who’s the fucking superpower” and act like it when your client state gets out of line in a way that’ll cost you domestically. China does it with North Korea all the time when they got testy. Russia routinely interferes with domestic politics of CSTO members.
Nor should we pretend that all criticism was astroturfing. Some of us wanted to drop Biden before “we beat Medicare” made him obviously unelectable. And called it that Harris was going to lose swing states like Michigan for maintaining Biden’s posture on Israel. If team blue is all I can realistically vote for, I’m going to call out shitty policy that loses elections and kills voter enthusiasm. It’s up to you to listen and understand that we need to do better
There was definitely a large amount of foreign influence pushing that narrative.
Okay so this may come across as crazy, but myself and many other people didn't want to vote for a candidate that supported ethnic cleansing, even if they were on "our team".
And given the shitty system we have, any vote, or non-vote, that wasn't for Kamala was a vote for trump (by way of it being one less vote he needed to win). Can't walk into a chess tournament and start putting checkers on the board just because you don't like chess...gotta change the game first or you just lose and get kicked out.
I get that; I do. But there was no better alternative. I’m all about changing our electoral system, but at the time of an election is not the time to do it. How is Trump better than Joe of Kamala?
A vote for Kamala is a vote for Kamala.
Any other vote or not voting is one less vote trump needs, and is a vote for trump. (Statistically it would have been a blue votes because they tend to be people that don't align with conservative views that are pro Palestine)
They will never understand that.
Both are bad on Gaza, so it is irrelevant. One could be talked to and has some sense of empathy and could potentially be swayed, the other is going to destroy Gaza without remorse, ruin lise for the most vulnerable Americans, and make sure the US is a a part of the new Axis powers on the wrong side of the global power struggle. These people chose the second option.
He's not, don't get me wrong. But at the end of the day, Kamala Harris still supported genocide. If I voted for her, I'd have been voting for this fundamentally evil policy. Frankly, I'm not interested in doing that, and I stand by that.
By not voting for her, you enabled even worse for Gaza AND the dismantling of the US government and protections for many folks like transgender people and women. Great work.
Yup that is a conspiracy theory and super not cool of you.
It's mostly information warfare from the various social media. There have already been a few analyses showing that pro-Republican anti-Democrat sentiment was algorithmically pushed on tiktok, Facebook, X(obviously), Instagram, YouTube, etc. I do believe a lot of people even here on lemmy were Russian/Chinese just stoking the flames because a divided america is good for them.
I think there are significantly more "useful idiots" than actual state actors trying to sow division. Most of them probably had good intentions, they just refused to listen to reason.
It's a funny and depressing situation that Lemmy users are so adamant that no one could possibly have a different perspective than them and if they do they must be Russian assets.
Despite those exact positions being reflected in real human American/western political voices--when it shows up in our special little space suddenly it's spoooooky foreign astroturfing. I believe the kids call that behavior "cope." XD
Oh there's certainly real belief too but the "loudness" is certainly amplified beyond what it would usually be. A lot of those accounts have been entirely silent on the conflict since the election which is suspicious to me.
Can you cite a few of said accounts so I can take a look? For me, I still see a lot of pro-Palestine sentiment. But to me, it makes nothing but sense that after the election people stop talking about... the election, y'know? You'll notice MAGA voices also stopped talking about the election too, haha.
I got better things to do than go back and find them. Just a trend I noticed. I still see pro Palestinian sentiment (which i agree with) but i don't see the level of blame assignment Biden and Dems got. I see some outrage about like the golden pager but not about rereleasing 2ton bombs. For people who seemed so single-issue its odd.
I mean yeah why would anyone talk about the election anymore unless they've got some new take or perspective on why dems lost.
fair enough!
for what it’s worth i’m probably one of the people you thought was a russian troll. so here’s some blame for old time’s sake: Biden is partially responsible for the estimated 200k deaths in Gaza and still has blood on his hands. i voted for Harris but like many i advocated for her to diverge from Biden on Gaza for her entire campaign.
That's not the view the people I'm talking about were voicing. The people I'm talking about were saying Biden/Harris or Trump would be the same for Gaza so they weren't going vote or were voting third party that way magically the blood isn't on their hands. "How is Trump worse for Gaza?" was a common response to calling them out.
This take of vote harris and advocate for her to do better on Gaza is not the take I was seeing and it's not one I have an issue with since it was my view as well. Espousing that view in those threads just resulted in obtuse takes per the above.
ah also fair! I only assumed because i myself have also been accused of being a Russian operative many times
I guess the real "both sides" was all along just the answer to "who here works in a troll farm?" ;P
They won't, it's a talking point they were always going to deploy and has nothing to do with evidence. Of course, political discourse was always going to die down after the election, and there's also several accounts they're not seeing because they got banned (lol). BlueAnon isn't based on reason.
They see us speaking up in every thread like this and still... At ~~dinner~~ some point you get so sick of it you just stop responding because the election is over.
Maybe I should just start talking about how all the pro-Kamala people suddenly disappeared after the election, proving that they were feds. Turns out you can just say stuff.
Of course there's absolutely evidence of pro-Republican, anti-Democrat manipulation. But find me evidence algorithm manipulation of pro-Palestine anti-Democrat sentiment. Otherwise you are doing some pretty hateful fearmongering.
The "everyone on here is a Russian bot" narrative here is so embarrassing. Get real.
I certainly didn't say everyone just that they're here and they enjoy stoking the flames. Propaganda is everywhere from all sides.
The "sides" are not even remotely the same
All the .ml crap that is suddenly silent was often revealed to be pro-ccp accounts doing exactly that.
Source?
Go read old posts, I'm not here to spoon feed you out of your ignorance.
> Pretending we didn't see it happen already
Allow me to remind you of Rally Forge's "America Progress Now" and Jeff Ballabon's "Jexodus" as two recent examples.
Cite a proven example of pro-Palestine manipulation, and we can discuss it. Otherwise, no.
Both examples you provided are trivial as they don't interface with literal apartheid or genocide. This is a significant difference being overlooked, and without evidence, I have no reason to believe this conspiracy.
New "Leopards Ate My Face" dropped. In this fun twist, however, after seeing the Leopards Eating Faces party feed people's faces to leopards multiple times, the user continues to give the party the benefit of the doubt when confronted with the likelyhood that it's happening again.
So no example, got it. It's fine for you to engage in fearmongering and unevidenced cynicism. I choose not to. My regards. Free Palestine.
It's about to be free of Palestinians. GJ protest voters!
There's a big difference between being realistic and fearmongering. For instance, if there was no history of domestic and foreign entities utilizing astroturfing to undermine democracy and people were saying it's happening now, that's fearmongering. Considering that there is, however, and that it seemed to work last time, it's naive to assume that it wouldn't happen again, especially when similar patterns of behavior emerge, including the presence of a new hot-button topic that can be utilized. That's realism.