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If you’re lost as to how that relates to the topic this conversation is beyond you.

Me: “I want to purchase healthy foods.”

You: Theres plenty of junk food out there that “brands” itself as healthy.

That’s true, so now what?

Do we give up on healthy food entirely and buy the chips for dinner?

Believe it or not, I think carrots and a bag of chips “branded” as healthy can be distinguished between.

If you care about the rights of Gazans then the ultimate right is the right of self determination and a right to life.

Those are two rights.

I believe the right to life is the ultimate right as one can’t access self determination if they are dead.

This is why the genocide takes priority over any worries about legitimacy.

So in that sense you should critically support Hamas in the Palestinian struggle against the settler-colonizers.

I support the Palestinian struggle against their colonizers but I appreciate that you put the word “critically” in their because I do also want to be able to say terrorism isn’t a good response and be able to say it’s wrong when anyone targets innocent civilians intentionally.

You want pretty elections in an apartheid ghetto.

No I want to stop the apartheid ghetto.

“Legitimacy” means nothing in a war zone. There’s nothing to talk about until the bombs stop.

How about they not have an apartheid ghetto and be integrated into a democratic process? Again, in order to do that they must not be under siege for decades…

Yeah how about that?

Haha I’m getting a but frustrated at the reading comprehension on this thread but at least we agree.

If you read through my replies you’ll see me consistently making this point as well.

“Legitimacy” is not a concept that exists in a war zone. The Palestinians are being robbed of the opportunity of legitimate representation by their occupiers.

I never felt I was presenting a moral framework based on legitimacy. You seem to be implying that just because I can’t label guerrilla fighters as a “legitimate government” I don’t think they have a moral right to resist?

Legitimacy and morality are completely separated to me. I think Trump is a perfect example of that. I accept he was elected as a legitimate leader, but he clearly has no moral justification for power and it is our moral duty to resist despite his “legitimacy”.

We must prioritize defending human rights before social constructs.

That’s why “legitimacy” breaks down here, legitimacy is a social construct we can only focus on in a collaborative environment when we’re not killing each other. It’s agreeing to international borders, boundaries, and non interference in each other’s governments. If we all start invading everyone then the construct we’ve built on a philosophy of peace time goes away which is why as you point out if it were a moral framework would be really flimsy.

Legitimacy as a moral judgement I think only works in a world where Israel is acting in good faith and actually wants to avoid war crimes and is held accountable for its crimes in a court of law.

Genocide is so much worse than illegitimate rulers so I’m really not interested in the legitimacy of Hamas as a question to begin with. Doesn’t seem important. I know they have a moral right to resist and whoever does the resisting isn’t going to be “legitimate” until after they’ve already won so I’m not gonna judge them for it.

Ideally let’s stop the genocide, let’s build back infrastructure, then we can hold elections and see who’s legitimate.

That’s a great example to bring up.

Ukraine has declared martial law and with that suspended elections that should have in peacetime occurred last year. Martial law continues to get extended 90 days at a time by parliament and this has happened 14 times now.

As I mentioned earlier, the longer time goes on without an election the less legitimate a government becomes. 4 year terms, 5 year terms, 6 years, I don’t think the micro details of it really matter but as a rule of thumb there should be elections at least twice a generation.

If we say a generation is 25-30 years that means every 12-15 years at a minimum.

Ukraine elected Zelensky in 2019, so it’s been 6 years since the last election.

All of this seems reasonable at this stage for me to say Ukraine’s government is 100% legitimate.

If 4 more years pass and it’s been a decade, I’m starting to think it’s time to give the next generation a shot at defending their land.

At 15 years i think its lost its legitimacy. Though I will likely still support it’s right to defend itself against occupation, I think a legitimate government would allow the new generation of Ukrainians to have a say on that and elections are necessary.

What are your thoughts? In 20 years do you think it’s okay if Ukraine still hasn’t held elections?

Yes, countries can invade and occupy other countries, suspend their governments, block future elections and violate their civil rights.

That’s what’s so bad about it.

But this shouldn’t be a surprise, Israel is doing much worse human rights abuses to the Palestinians than simply revoking the legitimacy of their government. They’re massacring them, they’re starving them and blowing up aid workers trying to bring in food, not even to mention the sexual violence I can’t even stomach thinking about.

It’s important to understand the severity of what a genocide implies. These are a people without a voice. If someone doesn’t stop the occupation and reallow legitimate elections, the very idea of a Palestinian people might be eradicated.

Hamas aren’t the ones preventing elections.

No, we’ve already gone over that it’s their occupiers fault for that

They don’t lose legitimacy just because other parties have illegally halted the electoral process. They’re not the obstacle.

No they do not.

They lose legitimacy over time as it becomes longer and longer since the last election.

75% of the population has never had an opportunity to vote for anyone at all and 50% is too young to have even been born at the last election. I don’t see how we can say these people have legitimate representation despite that.

Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank have blocked elections since then.

Right, this is the primary reason I would argue that there’s no official representative.

But it sounds as though you’re presenting it to counter the point I was making. Can you elaborate on how this fact legimizes Hamas as an official representative?

But you are right that half of Gazans weren’t even born when Hamas won the last elections.

While that’s correct its even worse, once you factor in the minimum voting age of 18 years old, over 75% of Gazans were unable to participate in the last election.

What? There aren’t any?

If I explained to you ghettos are horrific and violate human rights, because as one example among so many other issues we would likely agree on, they strip a people of their right to fair elections and representation in the determination of their future.

And that the fact that Palestinians have not been free to organize, form new political parties and campaign in safe and uncoerced elections is a direct violation of their rights and the party to answer and blame for this is the one occupying them and preventing this from happening…

What are we disagreeing about?

What I disagree with is that an election an entire generation before the present that people alive never voted in should not be held up to represent their current politics and beliefs as a nation.

Hamas is the official representative of Gaza. They were elected.

What makes you say this? Do you not realize this “election” happened all the way back in 2006?

Do you know how long ago that was? 19 years.

Do you know what the median age in Gaza was in 2020 (before this recent escalation in genocide)? 18 years old.

In my opinion 20 years per election might not be an ideal timescale for a democracy.

I’m trying to assume good faith so I’m confused why you’d argue that’s adequate representation?

it’s just a sign that the people who did it have no idea what they are doing.

We’re in no shortage of those signs

The terrifying part is without the platform he’d be our mental health care.

There really isn’t any. It’s just a huge nitpick. * is commonly used for multiplication, especially in online contexts in order to avoid confusing multiplication with the letter x when wider symbols aren’t available.

I thought zionism was a belief that Israel should exist.

No, Zionism is the belief that all of the land should belong exclusively to Jews and that assimilation of other cultures is impossible.

If you believe in a 2 state solution then you are anti zionist because you think Palestinians have a right to what Zionists consider exclusively Jewish land.

therefore I’ve always taken anyone who says,"I’m not antisemetic, I just think Israel shouldn’t exist is a closet antisemite at best.

If someone says Israel shouldn’t you’re right to hear that as suspect.

But that’s not anti zionism.

Like a smug dork saying,“I’m not Republican, I’m Libertarian!”

Not sure I get the point. If the Republican votes for Donald Trump and the Libertarian votes for Gary Johnson that seems like an important distinction.

Those aren’t semantics.

I can say that I really think the current Israeli gov’t should be exiled on St. Helena and not allowed to leave or communicate forever, but that doesn’t mean I’m anti-zionist.

That means you’re anti-zionist.

Do you believe the current borders should expand in Israel’s favor to take more land, or remain where they are so Palestine keeps the land it currently has by international treaty.

One answer is Zionist, the other is anti Zionist.

People who are anti-zionist seem to only have a selective and limited knowledge of a few thousand years of the history of the area.

With respect, you don’t even know what Zionism is and are basing your response from a dictionary entry.

Do you have thousands of years of history of knowledge?

If so, instead of the dictionary, how would Theodor Hertzl define Zionism?

It was Argentina

Why can Democrats only offer candy bars for dinner when we need fresh fruits, vegetables, and actual healthy foods?

Corporate interests in politics. You and me donating to our favored candidates is nothing compared to the big money and lobbyists mega corporations are throwing around.

Democrats can’t offer fresh fruit because the chocolate lobby is funding the chocolafe democrat in the fruit democrats district.

The Democrats either don’t know the right way to govern, or they know but they don’t care. Do either of those options sound like a party that anyone should vote for?

It’s not any one party’s fault. It’s a systemic issue. People who don’t actually represent voters are being given disproportionately amount of money to run campaigns because they represent businesses.

That being said I don’t know if we should be looking at party as a whole but also who the candidates are.

If we pushed more progressive candidates like AOC who do call out Israel and show up to primaries we can steer the party to a more reasonable direction while realizing the 2 party system is broken and needs fixing.

I dont see how disengaging entirely from electoralism helps.

I did not vote Democrat in 2024 because the Democrats are not entitled to my vote by pretending to be less awful than the other team. I did not vote Democrat anywhere on the ticket because I refuse to be complicit in genocide. That is the hard moral line I am taking. There is no excuse for genocide.

You got to keep your “moral line” but if it was at the cost of worse material conditions in Gaza and means Gazans got more bombs and their aid and rights watch groups defunded then I’m not sure I agree that was worth it.

Your suggestion that the material conditions of Gaza under Kamala would have been equally bad doesn’t feel very convincing.

And that’s not even mentioning the genocide in Ukraine. Biden was at least on the right side of that, Trump is certainly not.

We “caused it”? We “allowed Trump to win”?

I only brought that up because it seemed at that time you were trying to accuse me of not doing enough by asking how many protests I go to.

I’m saying that if you chose not to vote against fascism, it’s unfair to blame the people who did for not protesting now that it’s way more dangerous and they might be abducted, tortured and deported for doing so.

Had Kamala won there would be much less fear of protesting against her government.

You guys didn’t cause it per se, but you still can’t seem to agree that a fascist is worse than a neoliberal and I just don’t get what’s not obvious about that.

Show me 3 examples

No

There ya go. Then I will continue to insist that the abduction and systematic targeting of students and academics on grounds of “wokeness” wasn’t happening under Biden.

I don’t think that’s true. Half of his kids have disowned him. He has a trans child he says was “killed by wokeness” who hates his guts.

Democrats lost all on their own by pretending the economy was fine despite everyone clearly noticing it was not, and continuing to double down on supporting a deeply unpopular genocide. There are by far not enough ‘tankies’ in the US to sway an election like that. If we had that kind of power we’d be pushing our own party instead. 90 million people didn’t vote in 2024, what are a couple thousand at most terminally online leftists compared to that?

Yes they did, and they’re to blame for terrible messaging and gatekeeping democracy to force Kamala as the candidate without voter input.

The Democrats dropped a candy bar on the ground and Trump shit on the floor. They then asked what I wanted for dinner.

While I blame the democrats for dropping the candy on the ground, I blame voters for not voting against poo.

90 million people didn’t vote in 2024, what are a couple thousand at most terminally online leftists compared to that?

OP threw out tankie as a bad faith term and we just kept using it

I assume when we say ‘tankies’ we’re using the term as OP originally did, ie anyone who abstained from voting for Kamala because they don’t support genocide?

Those are the people I’m talking about, not terminally online people.

The genocide was already bad under Democrats. No, we didn’t forget that Genocide Joe sent Israel hundreds of shipments of weapons and supported them full-heartedly in their slaughter of the Palestinian people.

Yes. Joe was sending weapons to aid the genocide. That’s terrible and no excuse.

In light of comparing him to Trump though, Biden tried to set up a dock to distribute aid to Gazans when Israel tried to block it and continually threatened to stop sending these weapons if Israel bombed certain regions or were undertaking operations with crazy high civilian casualties.

Trump’s policy is “let them bomb” and deporting people who disagree.

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

Voting for Democrats would not have lead to fewer Gazan lives lost, because the Democrats don’t give a fuck about Gazan lives. Biden was already giving them all the weapons they needed, and Harris made no indication she was going to change course. Harris would have enabled the genocide same as Trump.

Okay, that’s a genuine argument if true.

I just am shocked you’d say that. I already demonstrated that Democrats care at least slightly more than Trump. Do you need a source for Biden providing aid and pressuring for Israel to deescalate while also funding them?

My god please take a step back and look at yourself. Examine your views and have an ounce of introspection.

I have, but I agree I should continue doing so going forward.

It is important to think hard on our values and that goes both ways.

So what protests are you going to? What are you doing to put pressure on the Dems?

So first of all, there’s now the unfortunate truth that because of voters staying home it is now more dangerous to protest than it needed to be and could come at great personal risk, especially to non citizens.

That’s not an excuse not to protest, but it is hypocritical of you guys to cause it to be much more risky to protest by allowing Trump to win and then try to blame others for not taking the risk.

I’m in Canada so Im not sure how to effectovely protest US politics from here.

I am boycotting American goods, and I have a recurring donation to the food bank to help bring aid to Gazans and other starving people.

In terms of Canadian politics, our government put an arms embargo on Israel so we aren’t supposed to be funding them but as of 3 days ago apparently that promise is broken so going forward that’s an open question.

If your point is that I could do more, you’re certainly right. I’ll think on that.

Leftists did not cost the Democrats the election, Democrats just suck. Harris got 68 million votes in 2024 to Biden’s 81 million.

Yeah, they threw the election seemingly on purpose because transitionary president Biden who we already voted in as the lesser of two evils just to stop Trump’s second term decided he would take up space and prevent new candidates from stepping forward.

It was already happening under Biden, you were just content to ignore it.

I’m not content to ignore it, it wasn’t happening.

Show me 3 examples of university students having their green card revoked for attending a protest under Bidens administration and I will apologize.