A couple of years ago I was in a far left messaging group, and someone posted an article that I wish I could find called something to the effect of “Ten Reasons Why the Far Left Should Take Over the Republican Party.” The basic premise was that populist sentiments growing within the Republican Party would make it easier to fight the uniparty establishment than attempting to fight it from the Democratic Party. One powerful example was the 2016 primaries. Love him or hate him, Donald Trump presented himself as an anti-establishment candidate. Even though, at the time, very few “high class” Republicans wanted Trump as the nominee, they did not prevent the base from making their choice. Compare this with Bernie Sanders’ 2016 primary run. The Democratic establishment pulled every dirty play in the book to ensure that their status quo candidate, Hillary Clinton, received the nomination rather than the left-wing anti-establishment candidate. Combine the anti-establishment sentiments, democratic institutions, and the leftist belief that right wing cultural positions disappear once one is awakened to one’s class consciousness, and you have a strong argument for why the Left could invade the Republican Party.
I don’t believe the Republican Party will become the far left party in the near future, however the article brings up an interesting point: the barriers between the parties are becoming less clear. The corporate, bootlicking, imperialist platform of the old Republican Party is slowly dissolving. In its wake, new ideas are sprouting up — many better, and many even worse. However, it seems that the faction coming out ahead is largely against war, doesn’t kowtow to massive corporations, and is distrustful of the surveillance state. Who would’ve thought that a couple crooked FBI operations oriented towards the right was all it would take for right wingers to realize that criminality has always been their modus operandi?
The Democratic Party, by contrast, is becoming indistinguishable from some of the worst factions of the Republican Party, save for some cultural virtue signaling while fundamentally changing nothing. Democrats have historically talked a decent game about money in politics, yet insider trading seems to be a bipartisan consensus (props to Ossoff and Hawley for supporting legislation to ban congressmen from trading stocks). Hillary Clinton, Establishment Personified, voted in favor of the Iraq War and the USA PATRIOT act. Last December, almost half of Democrats (and more than half of Republicans, don’t think I’m letting them off the hook), voted to support an arms deal to Saudi Arabia who is currently performing a genocide in Yemen. Additionally, the Biden administration chose to freeze assets and sanction Afghanistan following the withdrawal; this, coupled with the devastating effects of economic lockdowns on the global poor, has put a majority of Afghans at a risk of dying of starvation. The mainstream Democratic Party has no credibility when it comes to challenging power structures or defending the rights of the downtrodden..
All of this is to say, if you care more about preventing human rights violations than you care about LARPing and petty team politics, you must vote in the primaries, even more so than the generals. Vote out neocons like Mitch McConnell. Challenge corrupt politicians like Nancy Pelosi. Abandon corporate media outlets in favor of new media. As long as people only vote in the general elections, the false dichotomy is upheld and the establishment grows ever stronger at the people’s expense. Every year voters are asked to elect the “lesser of two evils,” and each time the candidates get more sinister. Voting in the primaries won’t solve everything, but kicking the tyrants out of power will go a long way in assuaging the worst pains of a dying nation — a nation that will continue to die, so long as the oligarchic ruling class remains in control.