MarxMadness [comrade/them]
There are plenty of legitimate criticisms of AOC. “sOcIaL fAsCiSt!1!!” is not one of them. There’s no path to a mass movement through calling one of the most popular and furthest-left politicians in the country a Nazi.
And we’re not talking about a choice between AOC and Lenin reincarnate; we’re talking about a choice between AOC and Joe Manchin. A legitimate critique of what passes for leftist candidates in the U.S. would acknowledge the many ways those candidates are still an improvement over the most conservative of Democrats.
It did some good things, absolutely. It got the cops charged, it showed people that direct action can move the ball forward where going through proper channels has failed (tearing down statues), it moved a lot of once-radical race and class discussions much closer to the political mainstream, etc.
But compare the material value of that to the cost people paid in time, effort, bail money, criminal records, and getting beaten by the police. How many people are going to sign up for that trade again? Isn’t it telling that there’s been no structural change, cops keep killing black people in egregious ways, and yet we haven’t seen protests anywhere near the scale of last summer’s? There are plenty of other factors in play (tons of people are still naively giving Biden a chance, or less-naively exploring local efforts that don’t center on protests), but it’s also rational to conclude that the cost-benefit of the BLM protests shows it’s not a winning strategy (at least not right now). People don’t want to invest in failed efforts, and if we’re even half as skeptical of direct action as we are of elctoralism, we’d call the BLM protests a failed effort.
Note also that you can come up with a list of modest wins accomplished by the Democratic Party, too. People aren’t going to look only at the good things done by protests and ignore the costs, but then flip that around when they consider the value of elections.
Setting aside the debate about whether anything “radical” can be achieved through electoral politics, I’d say Bernie was the harbinger of this. He didn’t even set out to run a serious campaign in 2016, but people were so fed up with mainstream Democrats that they threw tons of energy and votes at him anyway because he was actually a “legitimate” candidate (a sitting senator, running on an issue tons of people cared about, in a Democratic primary instead of a near-hopeless third party bid). In 2020, when he ran a serious campaign from the start (and when people had another four years to radicalize), he had more success than any U.S. candidate who’d ever embraced the word “socialism” (including Debs). It wasn’t enough to overcome the trifecta of Democratic ratfucking, poor luck with the timing of major campaign events, and an incredibly popular Republican opponent, but there was a pronounced upward trajectory. You can see that trajectory elsewhere, too, in the victories of additional DSA-backed candidates, progressive prosecutors, and explicit socialists like India Walton.
People will support the “radical” option if it has a chance. What they won’t do is get so wound up in radicalism that they spike the football when there’s nothing left to gain (e.g., after a leftist candidate loses a primary). Most will turn out for a backup option before not voting at all.
if the choice ever comes down between AOC-type candidate and a Manchin-type candidate, the libs will do everything possible to get the conservative elected
I mean, a lot of people on here aren’t exactly going to help. They’re going to call AOC a fascist and hold out for a protracted people’s war or general strike. How anyone thinks that’s moving the ball forward, I don’t know.
