• chaonaut@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    What an absolutely deranged claim. What is it that “SJWs” are advocating for that you think is invalid? Because if it’s something along the lines of “they should stop advocating for an oppressed group of people” you should really consider what it means to try to build political power. Unless you’re going for “if we give the billionaires more stuff, maybe they’ll let us have medical care, as a treat.”

    • JimSamtanko@lemm.ee
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      3 days ago

      They’re essentially just disposable social justice advocates. They bitch and moan during election years then banish right after only to return as victims of their own inability to do the actual work to net the change they demanded.

      This happens every election.

      • chaonaut@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        See, doing the work, I see a lot of people pushing back online saying “but are you going to vote for my candidate for the promise of maybe one day doing the work you’re doing”? Like, genuinely, I’ve been being asked if I’m voting for Biden in 2024 for years, as if the only thing that matters is the election. Caring about a very specific election for four years is not all that distinguishable from only caring once every four years. And when the alternative political power structures try to express what little political power they have, the establishment runs back to “but if you don’t vote for us regardless of what we do, the other guys will be worse”. Even when there are examples of doing something as “awful” and “dangerous” as withholding an endorsement in an election year can be shown to be actually effective and get actual good work done (see: the UAW holding off on endorsing Biden until he actually went to bat for them and helped get landmark contracts passed). Should we considet the Biden or Bust crew that’s been beating the drum the past four years just as disposable and unable to effect change they demand?

        • JimSamtanko@lemm.ee
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          3 days ago

          Okay… either purposefully or not- you’re twisting the topic into something else.

          If you’re voting- good. If you’re not, you’re part of the problem. It isn’t “Biden or Bust” it’s “Democracy or Bust” and it’s late enough in the game that everyone knows this. I’m not going to argue the nuance of the situation. We’re past that. If you want the change you so badly desire, maybe do the work between elections- and if you have been, maybe stand with us against those that are using your work to represent the ideology that not voting nets change.

          Because it’s undermining everything you’ve done.

          I’m done discussing this.

    • Oni_eyes@sh.itjust.works
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      4 days ago

      It’s not that it’s invalid, it’s that typically most people have no desire or input into the political sphere through their own choices right up until the presidential election and then get pissy that the things they want aren’t being done.

      No shit, if you want them done you have to show up for more than one election to build the political capital to do it. Does that mean their ideas are invalid? No, just that you can’t sit out 90% of the time and then expect to be taken seriously.

      • chaonaut@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        If they are “SJWs”, the claim isn’t really that they aren’t politically active, is it? In fact, the claim is that they aren’t spending the four years between presidential elections focused on the next presidential election. As it happens, if you are building political power, spending all that time and energy focused on a single national race is almost certainly a waste of resources. So, what’s the claim here? That “SJWs” spend far too much time concerned about the actual lives of people to engage in “enough” political advocacy to convince a preexisting party to handle those issues instead?

        I think it makes far more sense to do the work and advocacy that is required to make people’s lives better directly, and thus have built a popular movement that the major parties want to jump on the bandwagon of, rather than spend years trying to convince these lumbering facets of the establishment that they should do the work instead.

        • Oni_eyes@sh.itjust.works
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          3 days ago

          The claim is that they glom onto good causes when visibly suitable, which is for major elections. It’s that the vast majority are not active in any election other than when they pop up for a presidential election. Posting on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and other message boards does not mean politically active per se unless you count screaming into an echo chamber.

          What you’re talking about in the second paragraph is what is desired, what is usually seen are Instagram and message board posts with little actual action until a presidential election where suddenly they pop out of the woodwork and scream that things aren’t fair.

          No shit things aren’t fair, those of us actually being active trying to get local support for the same ideas get pissed at the sudden influx of people with good intentions but no idea how to act on them other than lambast the groups who aren’t perfect enough for them.

          I don’t know how you got “only focused on the presidential election for four years” fromy previous post.

          • chaonaut@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            I don’t know how you got “only focused on the presidential election for four years” fromy previous post.

            That would be the context of the thread you were responding to. As in:

            Maybe if the SJWs would fucking pay attention in between elections and not pout and withhold their votes on Election Day…

            And, yeah, limiting the focus to visibility campaigns on social media does mean that the focus is limited to visibility campaigns. So, you know, don’t do that. There are plenty of orgs doing lots of work, and complaining about this poster’s visibility campaign or that poster’s lack of practical activity on social media is an exercise in second-ordrr futility. Expect activity other than visibility campaigns in places where activity other than visibility campaigns can actually happen, and not on social media where they mostly can’t.

            • Oni_eyes@sh.itjust.works
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              3 days ago

              I still see no context for “they should only focus on presidential elections” from “maybe if they paid attention in between elections, and not pout and withhold votes on election day”.

              The only time we hear them complain is when the presidential election comes up, so if we take that as a standard and ask them to focus on between that means pay attention to the elections that aren’t the presidential one… I am active in non social media campaigns, so when I see the lack of support there but massive support on social media every four years, it does drive the narrative that they don’t care in between for the people that could actually do what they want. They’re complaining about the final product while not involving themselves in any step of the process getting there, WHICH INCLUDES GETTING THE LOCAL REPS ELECTED TO SWAY THE DIRECTION OF THE PARTY BEYOND JUST THE PRESIDENT.

            • JimSamtanko@lemm.ee
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              3 days ago

              Ahh… so, we can just make up all the unverifiable work all the SJWs do so as to have a counter-argument.

              Okay. Let’s assume this is a proven point and go with that.

              If there actually is a lot of work in-between elections… then it’s NOT done by SJWs. Maybe understand that the term “SJW” is not all-encompassing. It doesn’t include people actually doing work.

              It’s a short-hand derogatory to mean- keyboard warriors that whine about social unjust and do nothing else.

              THOSE are the people I’m referencing. Savvy?

              • chaonaut@lemmy.world
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                3 days ago

                How are you verifying the existence of these keyboard warriors who only whine? I know plenty of people politically active in my community who also have a penchant for arguing online. It is somewhat more difficult for me to verify the behavior of people who I only know online, owing to the fact that I can only tell what those people do by what they post and what makes it way to my feeds.

                • Oni_eyes@sh.itjust.works
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                  3 days ago

                  I count how many are moaning in my local message boards vs the people that show up for actual actions in person. The difference is staggering.

                • JimSamtanko@lemm.ee
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                  3 days ago

                  So are you going to seriously suggest that there aren’t any movements during election years that tell people not to vote? Because I’ll have you remember something called “Bernie Bros” which as I recall, were urging people NOT to vote in 2016, and in 2020 some of them even voted for Trump.

                  THOSE PEOPLE WERE/ARE SJWS.

                  You’re too tied up in trying to defend people who aren’t considered SJWs. I’m not talkin g about the people you are. So just stop man.

                  We probably agree on this here but you’re FAR too busy defending people I’m not even talking about.

                  It’s essentially the newer slang-term for “keyboard warrior”

                  • chaonaut@lemmy.world
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                    3 days ago

                    Treating Bernie Bros and SJWs as interchangeable is a new one to me (overlapping, I suppose, but I remember some quite rabid anti-SJW Bernie Bros and visa versa), but I’ll grant you that both camps get hit with the keyboard warriors when they’re online, regardless of how active they are in meatspace.

                    And I’m less trying to defend them as I am calling out the absolute futility of trying to do activism beyond visibility and outreach campaigns online, and judging someone’s political efficacy based solely on their online output.

                    If we want to build movements that actually, y’know, have political power to do something, it takes a lot more offline work (even if the online work can shine a light on good offline work)