Progressives acknowledging the fact of genocide is a good first step, and it’s useful that Ocasio-Cortez and others have done so — “I think [unconditional aid to Israel] enabled a genocide in Gaza,” she said in Munich — but it is not in and of itself sufficient. Before anyone in the party can move on to selling a post-Biden vision of human-rights-first foreign policy, they must address what accountability for the war criminals in the Biden administration — those who aided, armed, and funded genocide — should look like.
You wouldn’t have been sacrificing Palestinians by voting for Democrats, because the genocide was going to continue regardless of who won, as we have seen. What you did do was sacrifice all those other groups you mentioned. Just today, Kentucky passed a law, effective immediately, invalidating all trans people’s driver’s licenses.
So, to turn your rhetoric back on you, how many marginalized groups are you willing to sacrifice to make a symbolic point that serves only to boost your own self image and benefits none of the people you claim to be championing?
If genocide is real, then it can’t be treated as a secondary issue. Harm reduction has limits. There has to be a point where support for mass civilian killing disqualifies a candidate, no matter what else is on the platform. For me, that’s the line.
How about instead of being mad at people that they won’t for your war criminal over another war criminal, you just stop nominating war criminals as your candidates?
It’s wild to me that people don’t seem to understand that anyone who supports genocide out of political convenience will immediately sell their constituents out to fascists the moment it benefits them. It’s like they can’t conceive of how horrible of a crime genocide actually is. Choosing between two supporters of genocide is no choice at all.