Trump got fewer votes than in 2024. Dems ran a pro-genocide empty suit that did not distinguish themselves from a disliked incumbent and got even fewer votes than Clinton in 2016.
And the party itself doesn't really care that they lost aside from how it impacts individuals' careers. They are not your friends or allies. They probably would've won if they just had Harris pander on Gaza and introduce 1 (1) major policy plank people could grab on to. She wouldn't have even followed up on either one of those topics, it would've just been the usual false promises and it probably would've worked. That is how closely they stuck to the donor class: they could not even construct their usual bad faith strategies. So instead you got Liz Cheney constantly on the campaign trail, lmao.
I've asked 4 Harris voters irl to name a single major policy plank and they each just plain went silent for around 10 seconds.
If you want to actually fight for yout causes, it is important to look at this with clear eyes. The failures of the Democrat political class are not your failures. They don't listen to you and you had no input whatsoever on theit policy platform or choice of candidate. You don't need to defend their failures or act like they don't bear responsibility for running historically unlikable campaigns and candidates. Just because there is a dang cheeto does not mean Dems are redeemable for what they do. It has been a year of naked genocide and they demanded your complicity and still lost.
To oppode the right it is necessary to join and build othrt organizations, organizations grounded in working class power.
Biden beat Trump during COVID and when Trump was the incumbent. Being, "not the other guy" works a lot better when you aren't currently the president when the bad things are happening.
Given high inflation that was never balanced by wages or deflation and an ongoing sponsored genocide, "more of the same" and a near complete lack of major policy positions means hewing close to the unpopular incumbent.
Also she literally never won a primary. She lost to Yang lmao. This was donors shoving a pro-gemocide empty suit candidate down peoples' throats. "Winning" is a secondary goal to choosing the candidates.
America has already used all of the tools of fascism before, often to greater extremes. Lebensraum found its inspiration in Manifest Destiny, for example.
Expect to see things you have seen before, but now with clearer eyes. When Dems want to double their police forces and tighten preparedness of the national guard instead of maintaining or increasing social spending, recognize that the boots they are lacing are intended for your necks.
Most information is not under new threat of disappearing like in a book burning, at least not by a concerted right wing effort. The censorship that removes information at the level of basic availability will continue to be corporate enclosure and censorship of academic work, like results that run contrary to business interests not getting published at all or by academic paper publishers that want $30/article. Both have already been here for decades. The latter is adddressable through systems like SciHub. The former is not addtessable except through overcoming a substantial ruling class profit seeking interest, which the people of the US are currently incapable of doing because they are too disorganized and politically miseducated. The answer to that, which is of course not easy, is to engage in political educwtion and to join and build an organization that challenges capitalism.
The forms of censorship that will increase, at least in a more overtly reactionary form, are purely in the political and social realm. It will be narratives used to justify policies and misinformation about the marginalized. The solution to this is the same, however: to join and build anticapitalist organizations and work on political education. Once you are in that space there is still plenty to deliberate about, but it is the essential first step. You cannot displace or oppose a false narrative without being able to draw attention to your own and to teach others correct narratives. And if you rely on ruling class formations to do it (like the Democratic Party) you will be faced with a different form of false narrative over which you do not have control and that will be wishy-washy. For example, Dem messaging narratives in support of abortion have a false premise that Dems actually fight for it at the federal level and often includes implicit transphobia. The net result of following their agenda there will be to sheepdog those who care about abortion access back into an ineffectual and relatively passive political engagement rather than building power to demand abortion access. To spread accurare information against false narratives is our task, and to tie this to robust leverage-building activity.
In other words, the primary form of censorship is in which narratives enter "discourse" and which do not. Who makes the decisions on that. What is the realm of mainstream speech and political work? What is the actual activity that can be engaged in that will challenge the sociopathic power status quo? Will anyone hear the answer(s) or will they be ignored for cynical PR firm-tested talking points, diverting focus and time and thought away from what is needed?
The best thing to do, as an individual, is to join an org and emphasize political education.
While I don't want to reveal my academic background, I can say that in my work Chinese papers were just as good as if not better than those of other counteies. And to me seemed to be less focused on creating academic cliques.
It will be strikingly similar to the last 4 years but the partisan narratives will simply flip in various ways, as will those of allied media. The bad things that the Trump admin did in his first term that became suddenly tolerable, ir even "good" under Biden? They will be back to being good again. Dem politicians will be back to calling themselves "the resistance" despite losing another layup because they could not do more than campaign on "at least we aren't them" while presiding over a genocide and economic decline for the average person, both with intentional policies. Remember that they are all PR and cynicism and are lying to you about what they will do, as they are not beholden to a disorganized public in any way.
To be clear, bad things will be happening. It is only reasonable to feel some despair for them, but if you can allow that to motivate you to substantive action you can escape merely being a witness to suffering and can begin to work materially against it. Much of that suffering was going to happen anyways or a different form of suffering may have happened under a Harris regime. It's not like Democrats did much with their power, they tend to pretend they have no party discipline or power even when thry have the presidency and Congress, so they allowed the major shifts at state levels to occur largely unheeded and served a right wing agenda at the national level. So it is important yo ask the question of what action you can take that does not depend on expecting Democrats to save you. They won't. What we need are other organizations, ones that organize independently of ans often in opposition to the Democrats, Dems who otherwise suck up all political energy demanding improvements to people's lives and turn it into more cops and wars.
So, the two ingredients to effective organizations are political education and organization building. The former is just an organized form of reading and teaching, and it is essential because we have all internalized false ideas of how politics functions. They are taught to us by the ruling interests that keep us disempowered *because * this keep them in power. The latter is about growing and improving an organization so that it can have greater and greater leverage and develop strategies for gaining and wielding power (and power is not things like letter writing campaigns to already-elected ghouls, it is making demands that must be met or else).
You can enjoin this kind of project in many ways. You don't need to jump deeply into a hardcore organization straightaway; it can be useful to join one that is only oushing yourself moderately at first. Maybe a mutual aid organization or a single issue or single community group. The important thing is that it is of the left and therefore not of thr Democratic party. You can also engage in your own political education independently if you'd like, which can keep the pressure down when you are first starting out with irl left work.
And of course please do rely on whatever community you already may have, including here. I am happy to chat here or via DMs if you'd like and can answer basically any question you might have. I'm also happy to recommend readings that you may find useful or helpful.
The left inherently recuperates through political education, but cannot do much about the society of the spectacle without winning revolution, as it does not have cultural hegemony. Debordists would traditionally go on mindfulness field trips and such, which is fun, but not really building power.
The left needs to build: it needs more and members. This means political education and doing organizing work, with everyone levelling up skills, planning and executing actions, recruiting, studying, and running education programs for the recruited. And all of this means nothing without the context of an organization, so join one that looks good and revisit your decision every few years as you develop politically yourself.
Trump got fewer votes than in 2024. Dems ran a pro-genocide empty suit that did not distinguish themselves from a disliked incumbent and got even fewer votes than Clinton in 2016.
And the party itself doesn't really care that they lost aside from how it impacts individuals' careers. They are not your friends or allies. They probably would've won if they just had Harris pander on Gaza and introduce 1 (1) major policy plank people could grab on to. She wouldn't have even followed up on either one of those topics, it would've just been the usual false promises and it probably would've worked. That is how closely they stuck to the donor class: they could not even construct their usual bad faith strategies. So instead you got Liz Cheney constantly on the campaign trail, lmao.
I've asked 4 Harris voters irl to name a single major policy plank and they each just plain went silent for around 10 seconds.
If you want to actually fight for yout causes, it is important to look at this with clear eyes. The failures of the Democrat political class are not your failures. They don't listen to you and you had no input whatsoever on theit policy platform or choice of candidate. You don't need to defend their failures or act like they don't bear responsibility for running historically unlikable campaigns and candidates. Just because there is a dang cheeto does not mean Dems are redeemable for what they do. It has been a year of naked genocide and they demanded your complicity and still lost.
To oppode the right it is necessary to join and build othrt organizations, organizations grounded in working class power.