Although personally in favor of Palestinian independence and critical of war crimes committed by Israel in its siege of Gaza, I attempted to explain in a back-and-forth discussion with a user (only afterwards learning was one of the community’s two moderators) why protest voting in the 2024 election to “punish” the democrats in favor of the republicans harmed the ultimate interest of reigning in Israeli violence in Palestine.
To further emphasize the damage caused by such a protest vote, I argued that not only is Palestine worse off with Trump elected instead of Harris, but as are a myriad of other social issues. The other user disagreed, arguing that Trump’s return to office facilitated the ceasefire, rather than my argument that Netanyahu deliberately delayed it to help Trump get elected.
After my fourth reply post in a reply chain that stemmed from my initial reply to the moderator’s comment, I was banned from [email protected]. Having at no point advocated in favor of the violence perpetuated by Israel in Gaza, I think the ban was unjustified, and demonstrates a bad precedent for maintaining echo chambers of moderator opinions, rather than communities that foster discussion.
Maybe for Palestine at this point in time a Harris administration could potentially have been less harmful. But do you see what has happened to America and the world by people choosing the lesser evil over and over? The entire narrative has shifted so much to the right, most people consider it normal when the “lesser evil” is openly pro fracking, pro guns, pro Israel, pro big corpo etc etc just to name a few. In that context I think it’s weird to blame third party voters in this election. And don’t forget that for American voters the situation in the middle east is just one of the issues they need to vote on and it’s probably not their first priority.