• AnyOldName3@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    You were the one alluding to historical leftist revolutions over democracies, so if you don’t know what I’m referring to when I say that I’m not aware of that ever happening, that’s an indication that we’re both referring to nothing because it’s never happened. If you don’t know what I’m referring to when I mention right-wing groups overthrowing democracies, there are plenty of examples like Iran in 1953, when the elected government was overthrown by an authoritarian monarchy in a coup backed by Britain and the US. If you don’t know what I’m referring to when I mention right-wing groups taking over after a non-right-wing revolution, then there are lots of examples like Iran in 1979, where a broad coalition overthrew the Shah, then the right-wing religious authoritarian faction had the leaders of other groups assassinated so they could form the new government. The big changes were just which countries Iran was allied with, which music and art was legal, and traditional religious dress for women switching from being banned to being mandated.

    The pushback against voting third-party in the US presidential election this year was specifically because the voting block that wanted to vote third party was small enough that even if fully mobilised, it’d still be a third party. Whether or not they were the best option, they’d lose, so they weren’t an option in this particular election, and lesser-of-two-evils voting was more prudent. The campaigning didn’t start soon enough or strong enough, and then totally stopped once the election happened, and it takes more than a few months to build enough support to accomplish anything in an election. That wasn’t a problem with elections specifically, though. If third-party supporters had decided to have a revolution the day after the results were called, it would have failed, too, as not enough people were in favour of the policies, let alone so in favour as to revolt over it.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      17 days ago

      You have no clearly defined idea of what a “functional democracy” is, nor have you addressed that what you can vote for in a bourgeois system is restrained to that which props it up regardless. The third party voters are demonized for abandoning the Democrats, but without commitment to abandoning them we cannot accurately tell whether or not a third party truly would have popular support. America has one of the lowest rates of voting because it changes the least. Furthermore, I am saying leftist revolutions have dramatically improved existing conditions time and time again.