This is such a weird strawman
Nobody on Lemmy likes genocide, as far as I can tell. I saw somebody who was in favor of it a couple days ago, which makes 2 users I have ever seen.
So first a whole bunch of people got up and said, I’m never voting for Biden because he ruined the economy and fucked up on climate change and made marijuana illegal again and did family separation and caused Covid and also personally did a genocide and is super happy about the war in Gaza because it’s exactly what he wanted
Then a second whole bunch of people said hey every single one of those things except part of the last one isn’t true, also, Trump is worse on the genocide piece
And so now the first people are insisting that what the second people said was, “Don’t criticize support for genocide”. That wasn’t the point. The fact that a good bit of what the people in the first group are saying, is wrong, means they get people disagreeing with them, which always gets misrepresented as some lunatic pro-genocide silencing of criticism. But it’s pretty much never a message of “please stop criticizing my genocide guy otherwise Trump might win.”
If you want to express urgency about helping the Palestinians, please do so. Send messages to your congresspeople. Vote “uncommitted.” Go to a protest. Tell Biden he’ll only get your vote if he (X, Y, Z). Any of those things, or something else. Sounds great.
I think the thing you’re hearing is more “I want to end genocide just as much as you do, now let’s talk about how to do it, and also yes how to avoid one that’s 10 times worse that depending on how we go about it might be one of the possible outcomes.” I don’t see why that would be frustrating to hear. And I don’t think it’s at all the same as “please stop criticizing Biden that’s not allowed” or anything like that. Most of the threads on this topic have their most upvoted comment as “Jesus Christ I wish he wouldn’t do that” or something along those lines; this fiction where criticizing Biden for enabling this genocide is at all unpopular is not at all the reality.
I wonder if they think the Palestinians find it very convenient.
Actually, one of them weighed in on Lemmy on this exact narrative, where people are using his dead relatives to justify this one very particular political stance about being reluctant to vote for Joe Biden (and for some reason not to justify getting involved in some electoral or non-electoral way to actually help his relatives who are still alive). He wasn’t about it.
Is it a straw man, though? Just look at the post we’re in. OP, at face value, wants the democrats to win but thinks they’re bungling the odds by supporting genocide. There’s already multiple commenters accusing them of being Trump supporters, as well as at least one commenter I’ve seen so far suggesting that we can’t be critical about this now because the election is too important.
There’s already multiple commenters accusing them of being Trump supporters
Yes, because he framed his point in one particular emotionally resonant way that just maybe by pure coincidence tends to do more or less nothing at all for the Palestinians except hurt them, and by pure coincidence happens to feed Trump’s chances in the election.
The strawman I was specifically responding to was that commenter “you’re a Trump supporter if you call genocide genocide”. I’ve called it a genocide many many times; never got called a Trump supporter. I’ve said Biden is enabling it, said all the Palestinians will be dead by the time he works his way around to real consequences for Netanyahu at this rate, compared the Biden State Department to the Nazis, lots of stuff. I said we should contact our representatives and left some links (not that it did a fuckin thing.) Linked to a Ralph Nader interview where he talked about how to demand concessions in exchange for your vote, to put pressure on elected officials like Biden, particularly as it applies to this genocide. Never got called a Trump supporter.
You know what I didn’t do? Get all emotional about how I really don’t want to vote for Biden now, and suggest a particular framing for the issue that will help Trump, but won’t help the Palestinians. I suspect that if I started doing that, and did it consistently every day from a variety of different viewpoints and combined it with a bunch of other criticism of Biden that wasn’t true, then people might suspect I was a Trump supporter. But I don’t do that. Why? Because I’m not a Trump supporter.
Yes, because he framed his point in one particular emotionally resonant way that just maybe by pure coincidence tends to do more or less nothing at all for the Palestinians except hurt them, and by pure coincidence happens to feed Trump’s chances in the election.
I’ve seen so many tinfoil hat comments from you at this point that I’m sure you must be feeling lonely.
I’m not rooting for a trump presidency. I’m rooting for Biden to stop a genocide, and I believe 1000% Biden will lose on this issue alone if he doesn’t address it.
Every additional issue Biden ignores he looses a portion of his base’s enthusiasm. Sure, some of these people would never vote for Biden for a bunch of reasons, but everyone has a limit to what they’re willing to concede on, and I have to say that supporting a genocidal project is a pretty big one.
It would be irresponsible if we weren’t sounding the alarms that he’s strayed too far away from his winning coalition. That’s not me being principled (even though it is), that’s me being pragmatic.
Everyone else who’s rallying a couple hundred users on lemmy to ignore that issue is covering their eyes to the oncoming train.
So first a whole bunch of people got up and said, I’m never voting for Biden because he ruined the economy and fucked up on climate change and made marijuana illegal again and did family separation and caused Covid and also personally did a genocide and is super happy about the war in Gaza because it’s exactly what he wanted
For the record: this is a strawman. You know that saying about Republicans always accusing others of the things they’re guilty of themselves? I would suggest not following the Republican playbook.
I mean, I exaggerated for humor, but people did absolutely say:
- Biden ruined the economy
- Biden fucked up on climate change
- Biden betrayed us by not decriminalizing marijuana after he said he would
- “Separating families at the border” got worse under Biden
- Trump’s Covid policy was amenable to people steering him the right way whereas Biden cancelled a bunch of the safety things we needed
- Biden is the one doing the genocide
Aside from the genocide, the last few were so laughable that it’s easy to conclude I just made them up as a pure strawman, but yes I absolutely had people tell me the un-exaggerated version of them.
Would it be better if I spelled out exactly what were the literal things people told to me instead? Yeah maybe I shouldn’t “joke” in this way if I’m gonna be saying other people are using a strawman.
He’s not separating families at the border, but he is keeping children in open air detention camps without sanitation or adequate food and water.
Migrants who cross the border illegally wait under open skies or sometimes in tents or structures made of tree branches while short on food and water. When the number of migrants was particularly high last year, they waited for several days for Border Patrol agents to arrest and process them.
Gee said there was “significant evidence” that Customs and Border Protection, of which Border Patrol is a part, has physical control over minors at the outdoor locations. For example, CBP vehicles occasionally transport or drop off migrants to the camps and for a time, gave out wristbands to organize migrants by when they had arrived.
“This is a tremendous victory for children at open air detention sites, but it remains a tragedy that a court had to direct the government to do what basic human decency and the law clearly require,” Neha Desai, senior director of immigration at the National Center for Youth Law, said in a statement. “We expect CBP to comply with the court’s order swiftly, and we remain committed to holding CBP accountable for meeting the most rudimentary needs of children in their legal custody, including food, shelter, and basic medical care.”
Sure, and other people also had very different criticisms of him than your list that aren’t as easy to dismiss. The strawman is you cherry-picking these to argue against in order to demonstrate some blanket point about people who don’t want to vote for Biden, when only one of these is the actual point of the conversation (and not in the hyperbolized way you presented it).
So yeah, I would 100% suggest not committing a logical fallacy while you’re criticizing others for committing that logical fallacy.
I’ve been on the receiving end of names such as “Genocide Lover” and man is that just exactly what I wish my Dad who went to get cigarettes and never came back would have called me before he left. I agree with you. People for some damned reason seem to be stuck.
The Genocide sucks balls.
Trump sucks balls.
Trump + Power = Genocide Ball Sucking on a whole new level
Biden sucks a bit less balls, though would suck far less if he stepped up and actually condemned the Genocide properly. Currently, Biden’s big balls are on fire.
Like, none of this situation is good. Most of it is malicious and evil on too many levels, and faaaar more complicated than the majority of us realize. At the end of the day we do have three significant immediate problems:
- Ukraine and Putin
- Gaza and the Genocide
- Trump and the GOP
We CAN focus on all of these and it doesn’t have to be to the exclusion, or support/lack-thereof, of the others. Problem is, every time you say “Shit’s bad and this Genocide is evil, vote Biden for the love of God.” Someone comes screaming in with a, “BIDEN?! YOU SUPPORT GENOCIDE?!” and you can’t get a sideways word in.
I think a lot of it is this weird parasocial thing where it’s like you have to “support” a politician to vote for them. With very rare exceptions I don’t “support” any US politician, like I’m friends with them. I just want to get as good an outcome as I can for me and the other people in the world, and I think that’ll come from a combination of choosing better outcomes within the system that’s presented, and working outside the system to try to change it to introduce as much actual democracy into it in the long run as is possible.
I personally think the alternative perspective is a weird one, where politicians and policies are monolithic and unmovable, and challenging them necessarily means damaging the entire system. I was always taught that the strength of democracy was its enabling of negotiation, but you’re suggesting that there’s no negotiation to be had at all.
I think proactively committing to voting for a morally abhorrent candidate (a candidate promoting a morally abhorrent position, if you prefer) is less than submissive, it’s actually giving up the only possible leverage you might have had in order to accept a reality that hasn’t happened yet.
It’s absolutely a choice you are making, and even if you’d feel better if that didn’t make you guilty of ‘supporting’ genocide, i think it’s kind of self-evident.
Yours is probably the correct take, or near enough. The U.S., on a sociocultural level, tends to take sides. It’s nurtured into us. Sports is arguably the biggest reason, though throw in the news, social commentary, and a bit of high divorce rates, amongst other reasons, and you’ll have yourself a cake split down some middle. While far more complicated than this simple explanation, the reality is we are divided. This division makes it really difficult to want to agree with someone who doesn’t take your exact stance. Whatever reason justifies such firm footing on shaky ground is further falsely reinforced by those who exist just to rabble-rouse, 2024 Digital Digger Edition; “Our Words Harm”.
It’s become difficult to look at comments stuck in the social node of Biden=Bad or Bust in good faith, because they often don’t discuss and instead tend to yell.
Which really is sad, because we do need to come together.
Nobody on Lemmy likes genocide, as far as I can tell
As someone who frequents worldnews from lemmy.world, a sizable amount of IDF apologists who do actually defend genocide show up every week, although they consistently get banned.
There’s also a bunch of wackos on Hexbear and Lemmygrad who will sneer with joy at the idea of Ukrainians getting displaced to never be able to return, although you have to dig in to find them.
