While I think the third-worldists / ultras / anti-electoralists are generally right about the prospect of electoral work within the Great Satan, I feel like the pushback against Mamdani (specifically thinking of a couple well known Twitter users here) is an over-correction, and their criticisms come across as lazy and reflexive to me.
First is the criticism of electoral work being a misdirection of resources. It is worth noting that New York is just one city within the Great Satan. Circumstances are different than e.g. the Bernie campaigns of 2016 and 2020. We don't have "the left" dropping everything from sea to shining sea to get this man in office. It is a local struggle, and placed in the context of a city which has seen a militarized police force repeatedly deployed to crush and evict several anti-genocide encampments, it has the potential to change the way these other non-electoral tactics unfold moving forward, and a lot of people involved in the campaign are likely involved in these other tactics. It isn't a this-or-that situation at all.
Then there is the criticism of Democratic Party entryism. We all know the Democratic Party is a dead end institution, but also it is an extremely loosely defined institution. There is a big difference between building independent campaign infrastructure which is capable (among other things) of capturing the Democratic Party ballot line in a municipal election vs. planning to take control (or attempting to reform) institutions like the DNC, county and state level party organizations, the constellation of think tanks, PACs, and corporate media which define the party more broadly. The electoral strategy is a consequence of the shit-ass voting system we've got. I wouldn't call all cases of contesting a Democratic primary election entryism. It really depends on what your goals are. Do you think the party will embrace you if you win? Do you think you can influence them? Or are you doing it just to get on the ballot while eliminating some centrist goblin and forcing people to choose between social welfare and fascism.
I have several hopes for this campaign. I hope it activates people who have been unactivated. If it manages to do this, I wouldn't consider it a misdirection of resources. I would consider it more along the lines of "meeting the people where they're at." And from there people have the potential to grow.
I don't understand how people can write this off simply as entryism. The idea of entryism being bad is that the party cannot be reformed so it is a waste. Well, LOOK at the reaction of all the elite party and media figures to this news. They are destroying themselves. Is that a waste? If an act of "entryism" does more to undermine and destroy an institution than other tactics, can we really be mad about it?
No, this won't stop the genocide, or bring down the empire, but I also don't see any harm coming from this, at this stage at least. For the moment, it is making all the right people go apeshit.
, but to clearly illuminate the causes of oppression and the means by which they are overcome. When we canonize revolutionary figures, we are holding them up as an example to be followed.
)
(to the tune of "Fly Like an Eagle")
Dicks keep on slipping, slipping, slipping,
Into my butthole