Communism
Discussion Community for fellow Marxist-Leninists and other Marxists.
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Hm, if America is already a fascist country, why would they need your votes to get their candidate elected?
Narcisstic western-liberal brain-corralling, mostly. The uniparty isn't exactly subtle anymore; but until recently, they at least pretended to want the People's consent regarding their invasions and genocides.
EDIT: hol up is this you?
We're FiGhTIng FoR tHe sOuL Of AmErIcA!1!
Continues criminalizing refugees and poverty, continues funding genocide, escalates economic warfare against China, sends hundreds of thousands of bodies to die or be maimed to protect unipolarity.
"soul of America", "American values", "freedom", "our democracy" are the only things that Democrats can say they "fight for" now because the moment they point to any actual material fight they supposedly uphold even Trump supporters will fact-check them at this point. And leftists will ask "you're the president, why can't you do that right now?".
Ironically, those sound basically identical to age-old Republican talking points. Blue MAGA has never been more accurate.
They don't, but the elections help sell the idea that the US is a democracy rather than a one-party state. Most ppl don't vote, because they know from experience that it changes nothing.
Also the US is far worse than fascist, which is an ideology that grew out of a desire to emulate the US colonial project.
Fake elections are great to give yourself legitimacy both domestically and abroad.
Let's reframe the question so you better understand the answer.
If dictatorships are happening in North Korea, Venezuela, Russia, China, and Cuba, then why do they keep having elections?
Everyone needs to have elections for legitimacy, domestically and internationally.
So, yes, dictatorships still need votes. If they don't get those votes, then either there is a coup or the election is rigged so that the people who were supposed to win now win anyway. I'm sure you would say this happens in Venezuela with Maduro, for example. In the US the Presidential elections, at least, are a sham because, off the top of my head, we already know within the popular consciousness that two elections were recently decided against the will of the popular vote: Trump v. Clinton in 2016 through the electoral college and Bush v. Gore in 2000 through the Supreme Court. Popular votes are just a recommendation, not a mandate, in US national elections. Putting aside all the hurdles and assuming they were all equally on the same ballot nationwide, do you think that if 51+% of the population all voted for the PSL Presidential candidate that the Republicans and Democrats would actually allow them to take power, or would they use one of these already established apparatuses to prevent it?
Is this a genuine question or sarcasm?
That's exactly why, they discovered that blatant fascism generates resistance. So they go for obscurant fascism, plausibly deniable fascism. As long as they can keep enough people thinking "it's not that bad yet" they get to keep playing.
Showmanship.
Real talk? They don't, as happened in 2016 and 2000. They just understand that when you do things like throw tens of thousands of people into concentration camps or support an ally's ethnic cleansing, it helps minimize friction with your populace to have some tissue-thin veneer of a public mandate for the news to beat plebs like us over the head with so we don't get ideas about charging things. Just shut the fuck up, pull the lever every four years, and enjoy your treats. Congratulations, this is a democracy, the sound of children screaming has been edited out.