I want to draw attention to the elephant in the room.
Leading up to the election, and perhaps even more prominently now, we've been seeing droves of people on the internet displaying a series of traits in common.
- Claiming to be leftists
- Dedicating most of their posting to dismantling any power possessed by the left
- Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
- Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
- Attacking anyone who promotes defending leftist political power by claiming they are centrists and that the attacker is "to the left of them"
- Using US foreign policy as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the US political system
- Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism
When you look at an aerial view of these behaviors in conjunction with one another, what they're accomplishing is pretty plain to see, in my opinion. It's a way of utilizing the moral scrupulousness of the left to cut our teeth out politically. We get so caught up in giving these arguments the benefit of the doubt and of making sure people who claim to be leftists have a platform that we're missing ideological parasites in our midst.
This is not a good-faith discourse. This is not friendly disagreement. This is, largely, not even internal disagreement. It is infiltration, and it's extremely effective.
Before attacking this argument as lacking proof, just do a little thought experiment with me. If there is a vector that allows authoritarians to dismantle all progress made by the left, to demotivate us and to detract from our ability to form coalitions and build solidarity, do you really think they wouldn't take advantage of it?
By refusing to ever question those who do nothing with their time in our spaces but try to drive a wedge between us, to take away our power and make us feel helpless and hopeless, we're giving them exactly that vector. I am telling you, they are using it.
We need to stop letting them. We need to see it for what it is, get the word out, and remember, as the political left, how to use the tools that we have to change society. It starts with us between one another. It starts with what we do in the spaces that we inhabit. They know this, and it's why they're targeting us here.
Stop being an easy target. Stop feeding the cuckoo.

Check my edit. He campaigned for him after his first term (through which he actively opposed him), and only really saw him as an ally after the first 3 years through the civil war (and after Lincoln's own perspective had shifted).
Edit: keep in mind that Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation January 1st of 63, before Douglass had any interest in campaigning for him. He had literally already abolished slavery before Douglass threw his hat in for him
Leading up to the 1860 election, Frederick Douglass was conflicted about who to support. David W. Blight argues in "Frederick Douglass" that the activist saw Republicans not as true opponents to slavery but rather as just opposed to the power that enslavers could wield politically. Still, he saw supporting the Republicans as his only real option because they at least "humbled the slave power" and fought against it as an institution. Douglass expressed a willingness to work with the Republicans even though he was disappointed by their overall platform. He wrote an article a few months before the election that was positive toward Lincoln.
In the months leading up to the election, Douglass continued to stump for Abraham Lincoln by giving many speeches, and he was involved in other campaigns, like trying to abolish the racist $250 property requirement for Black voters in New York (per Blight). He also worked as a recruiter, getting Black soldiers to join the war effort. A month after the election, Douglass wrote an article in his newspaper, "Douglass' Monthly," in which he stated the nomination of Lincoln "demonstrated the possibility of electing ... an anti-slavery reputation to the Presidency of the
https://www.grunge.com/853161/the-truth-behind-abraham-lincolns-relationship-with-frederick-douglass/
I had to go and pull out my copy of Blight's book on Douglass, because it had been a while but I remembered that section of the book differently.
The whole passage is expressing a sentiment very different from the one that 'Grunge' article is representing - without transcribing that whole section i'll just quote the last little bit that summarizes his summer leading up to the election:
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The comparison is not quite as clear as I think you'd like, since Douglass's tentative 'support' of Lincoln was motivated by a desire to bring the north and south closer to outright conflict, not as a way of picking a lesser evil or mitigating harm. I'd say Douglass's sentiment is more in-line with current-day pro-palestinian activists, who acknowledge the political calculus of a moderately-favorable party against an outright hostile one, but who publicly oppose voting for them themselves. He'd be in that same 'protest-vote' pool that most people here keep complaining about. I'm actually lightly amused by this apparent reversal, since today it's more common to find people who say 'i will vote for democrats' but then actively campaign against them, but again I think the comparison is strained.
Either way, trying to argue that Douglass 'worked for Lincoln' is still incredibly misleading at best, and clearly a liberal self-centeredness that he (and most other black civil rights activists in our history) actively loathed and berated:
Doubtless he wouldn't have seen as much in the way of redeeming qualities in Biden or Harris, since far from Lincoln's willingness to engage the south (for the wrong reasons in Douglass's mind), Biden repeatedly cowered away from confronting Israel's antagonism and actively sheltered them from consequence. But then again I think neither of us can do more than speculate as to what he'd think of us more than 170 years later.
It's possible for good people to feel that someone isn't perfect and still work hard to get them elected.
What about voting against them?
Back in the day I used to know a group of old school Communists. Folks who'd gone to Spain to fight Franco and who had been blacklisted by McCarthy. One of the stories they told was about how back in 1968 they told young folks that they had to vote for Hubert Humphrey because Richard Nixon was going to be truly awful.
Guess nobody advised Douglass of that, then.
Keep going. I find your desperation amusing.
You wanna cover your gripe with MLK and the letter from Birmingham now?
Sure. Post all the times King explicitly talked about LGBTQIA+ rights.
? Does that have relevance to his letter from Birmingham...? Are you saying MLK was not one of Americas most effective civil rights advocates, or...?
Winston Churchill was a homophobe but that doesn't mean I think he was on the wrong side of WWII....
You keep on making my point for me.
Thanks for bringing in Winnie, because another thing I often post is that in WW2 many people who hated racism and imperialism joined hands with the racist USA and imperialist England to fight the Nazis.
As Winnie said, "If Hitler invaded Hell, I should find something nice to say about The Devil."
Again, thank you for proving me right.
Ok.... so it has no relevance with MLK's letter then? You agree fully with his methods and contentions in the letter, like the below? I don't have any idea what you're trying to say, you'll have to use more of your words.
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I'm waiting for you to post all the times MLK explicitly spoke out on LGBTQIA+ rights.
I've read the letter, and somehow the guy who worked hand in hand with Bayard Ruskin never mentions that stuff.
Almost as if King understood that you had to use strategy.