this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
275 points (89.6% liked)
Flippanarchy
2046 readers
635 users here now
Flippant Anarchism. A lighter take on social criticism with the aim of agitation.
Post humorous takes on capitalism and the states which prop it up. Memes, shitposting, screenshots of humorous good takes, discussions making fun of some reactionary online, it all works.
This community is anarchist-flavored. Reactionary takes won't be tolerated.
Don't take yourselves too seriously. Serious posts go to !anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Rules
-
If you post images with text, endeavour to provide the alt-text
-
If the image is a crosspost from an OP, Provide the source.
-
Absolutely no right-wing jokes. This includes "Anarcho"-Capitalist concepts.
-
Absolutely no redfash jokes. This includes anything that props up the capitalist ruling classes pretending to be communists.
-
No bigotry whatsoever. See instance rules.
-
This is an anarchist comm. You don't have to be an anarchist to post, but you should at least understand what anarchism actually is. We're not here to educate you.
-
No shaming people for being anti-electoralism. This should be obvious from the above point but apparently we need to make it obvious to the turbolibs who can't control themselves. You have the rest of lemmy to moralize.
Join the matrix room for some real-time discussion.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
As a non-American I have to admit that I don't understand how primaries work in that country. Why are the liberals who choose the candidate and not the leftists?
Primaries are generally much more extreme, because everyone voting is part of the party. So the candidates will be closely toeing the party line to pick up the passionate voters.
To be clear, the individual parties aren’t actual government-funded organizations. They’re private entities, who choose to hold primaries and then put the party’s support behind whoever wins. This is an important distinction because this means the individual primaries can be run however the party wants, even if that means not having a primary and simply running a sitting president (like what happened to Biden, then later Kamala after Biden dropped out). And registering to vote with a party is typically exclusive, meaning you can only vote in one pre-chosen primary election per cycle. Like if I were to register as a republican to vote in the republican primary, the democrat party wouldn’t allow me to cast a vote in their primary.
Then whoever wins the primaries goes on to the general election. While winning the primary is only a soft requirement for the general election, (anyone can run as an independent candidate), the US’ first-past-the-post voting system means it’s virtually impossible to win the general election without the support of one of the two big parties. And if you want to get that support, you need to win the primary. Independent candidates are generally thought of as wasted votes, meme votes, protest votes, etc…
Notably, in the general election, democrats’ campaigns tend to take a strategy of “move farther right to grab the center/center-right swing voters.” Since any registered voter can vote in the general, swing voters often determine who wins and loses the general. Which means candidates tend to disproportionately focus on appeasing those swing voters. And this tends to piss off the democrats/leftists/etc who prefer the farther left policies. Especially when those same candidates have spent the past month parroting the official democratic party platform to win the primary, then suddenly about-face and cozy up to the centrists in the general.
So even if leftists were able to get enough votes for a far-left candidate in the primaries, (they can’t, because America has no notable far-left/leftist voting blocks), that same candidate would then immediately shift to the center to grab the swing votes in the general.
We got layers of elections. The states administer them so you have a different system for each state. Primaries are different in every state, too. Then you have Federal elections that are still run by the individual states, just for federal offices, but then the President is elected through an entirely different system altogether that the states also individually have to administer.
The US doesn’t have leftists.
Well, if you get them to even tell you what a "liberal" is, you are lucky.
Their primaries are a real election they have inside each party to pick the candidates. If you have only 2 parties, it's a hard requirement. The people enlisted to each party vote on them (it seems that if you only have 2 real parties and primaries are your real elections, lots of people enlist in a party).
The vast majority of people don't vote in primaries for some reason so the demographics are different from the general, but also the DNC has plenty of tricks at its disposal to get the results they want. Now part of the reason those tricks work is that American leftist politicians tend to be pussies who are unwilling to take shots at liberals, but yeah the whole process is captured by DNC liberals.
Because most people don't know the difference. it's mostly just name recognition so you have to be known and at least somewhat popular.
In the 80's liberals got control of our progressive party, the DNC. Back then it was possible to pull voters from the right by appealing to wealth and so Clintons won by doing it.
But every election our candidates are supposed to be elected by popular vote within each party. Recently they just kind of stopped though because it turns out that was apparently just a tradition and not like an enforceable law or anything. And the Clintons wanted to have the White House again.
As an American, I can assure they don't work. It's a fucking party. Guess why that wasn't a misnomer and what they mean by "Jerry Rigged" and "Glass" house.
Or did you think Propane was just a coincidence in naming?
what?