No Elections on Stolen Land

A primer on why we should boycott and divest from elections

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Over the past year I wrote three different posts about voting on this Substack. None of them survived my reboot, not because I don’t stand by what I said, but because they were somewhat time-bound. So much has changed so fast in the past few months that I decided it is worth restating my thoughts with a fresh piece that ties it all together. Nothing I have to say here is original – my critique of electoralism is broadly shared by the revolutionary left, though I come to my stance as a collectivist who is opposed to top-down, authoritarian power structures. You might consider this a 101-level critique if you’ve never considered boycotting elections as a viable or responsible political stance.

A common leftist critique of electoralism is that our two-party system is a form of corporate fascism. I agree, though I will explain below why holding elections on stolen land at all is problematic. But let’s start with the more obvious phenomenology: how our political choices are presented to us. The illusory “choice” our system offers is between a more explicitly fascist right-wing party (Republican), and a covertly fascist liberal party (Democrat) that sells itself as the guardian of democracy against the rise of nihilistic authoritarianism. The choice is illusory because both parties share a broad consensus on neoliberal capitalism and US imperialism, which increasing numbers of people are realizing are bad things as they livestream the genocide in Palestine and struggle to pay their rent. People on the left are waking up to the fact that there is no “left” inside the US political establishment, and that Democrats and Republicans collude with each other to manufacture our consent for genocide, settler colonialism, and exploitative capitalism.

At the time I wrote my first two pieces I was reflecting on my own support of direct-action campaigns against Cop City in Atlanta and the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Appalachia. Both of these projects are backed by the Democratic establishment at the expense of marginalized communities. We have witnessed organizing and mass mobilization against both projects using a full spectrum of tactics, and the response from elected Democrats has been all-out repression that has exposed the deceptiveness of their rhetoric about defending the rights of marginalized groups. I say “deceptiveness” and not “hypocrisy,” because the latter word implies that they believe in the liberal, inclusive values they express, and can be held to account accordingly. They are lying to us.

In one of my essays I argued that the Democrats use human rights discourse as a smokescreen to manufacture consent for repressive policies. Their inclusive political rhetoric actually colludes with the explicitly fascist right, using identity politics and the wedge issues of the culture wars to capture the energy of the left, keeping them invested in the defense of regressive political institutions and political processes. It goes like this:

• Corporate interests hire both parties to rubber stamp lucrative capitalist projects like Cop City, MVP, and genocide in Palestine, and to manage public opposition to them.

• Corporate interests fund Republicans to put a gun to the heads of marginalized groups. In this election cycle, the targeted groups have been women, queer, and trans communities.

• Corporate interests fund Democrats to browbeat and shame the left to “vote blue no matter who” to supposedly protect the dwindling civil rights of the targeted groups.

• In response to the culture wars, the public on both sides invests massive resources in lobbying and elections and rushes to the polls to ensure that their corporately-backed partisans are installed in power.

• No matter which party wins the elections, opposing partisans collude on their core mandate to be corporate administrators: Cop City and MVP get built, colonial genocide proceeds apace, and we get more repression and a climate apocalypse. Marginalized groups are put further at risk by the burgeoning police state, the disparate impacts of climate change, and the eroding of their rights through bipartisan deals and compromises.

Heads they win, tails you lose.

When I first offered this critique of our electoral system, resistance movements to Cop City and MVP were exposing its true colors, opening up cracks in the foundation. Opponents of Cop City have been murdered, brutalized, jailed, and charged with racketeering for things as simple as handing out fliers or running a bail fund. The Democrats in power in Atlanta have shown that they only care about democracy or the rights of BIPOC residents when it serves their interests. When the will of the people is no longer convenient, the masks and gloves come off. They are shameless in their promotion of a militarized police state that criminalizes all dissent.

Their behavior vis-a-vis the proliferation of fossil fuel infrastructure has been largely the same. My own resistance to the Mountain Valley Pipeline escalated when I was arrested on the pipeline easement in early 2024. I joined the ranks of those being criminalized for defending the land and climate through the only means available: direct action. People are blockading the pipeline and facing jail and lawsuits because all other means of dissent have been shut down by the state, which waived all regulatory requirements and legal challenges to the project. The MVP is a bipartisan authoritarian project backed by the liberal establishment, its completion mandated by decree of the Federal government, which is currently led by Democrats. Like Cop City, the MVP is being forced on us as part of a broader program to prop up a dying Western “civilization” powered by fossil fuels. Once again, the mask and gloves came off. Democrats waive all pretense of democracy when democracy threatens the interests of their corporate backers.

And then the Zionist entity called “Israel” launched its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza last October with the full partnership of the US government. The genocide could be stopped at any moment with one phone call from President Biden, but he, along with the entire liberal/progressive establishment, has drenched his hands in blood, pursuing slaughter over the overwhelming disapproval of the US electorate. Pointing to the specter of another Trump presidency, Biden has been laughing at his base. He thinks he doesn’t have to listen to them because he is the only alternative to Trump. Democrats tell us they are the only alternative to the more explicitly fascist right wing. “You have to vote blue no matter who,” their base is told, “if you want to avoid authoritarian rule.”

…liberals are not the defenders of democracy against a hypothetical future authoritarianism. Fascism has arrived in full force here and now, on liberals’ watch. The covert fascism of the Democrat Party has become overt. But they are starting to pay political a price for it.

But in the case of Palestine, the manipulative ploy isn’t working. People aren’t buying it. As the masks and gloves come off once again in response to mass mobilization, and liberal college administrators and politicians unleash militarized police to brutalize campus protestors nationwide, people see through the lie: liberals are not the defenders of democracy against a hypothetical future authoritarianism. Fascism has arrived in full force here and now, on liberals’ watch. The covert fascism of the Democratic Party has become overt. But they are starting to pay political a price for it.

In my first essay on voting I made a modest case for why, at the very least, voters on the left should consider withholding their vote from Democratic candidates as a legitimate pressure tactic. I offered a diagram that mathematically debunked the bad-faith argument that “not voting for candidate X is a vote for candidate Y.” In short, merely withholding one’s vote from Biden puts him down one vote against Trump, whereas swinging from Biden to Trump puts Biden down by two-votes. Trump makes the same bad-faith argument to his base. By this absurd logic, refraining from voting altogether is a vote for whichever candidate your friends don’t like. Or, it is a vote for both candidates. Or, it is literally a vote for neither.

Faced with unwilling complicity in genocide, many in the Democrats’ base have embraced this tactic. The movement to vote “uncommitted” in the Democratic presidential primaries has gathered enough strength to represent a threat to Biden’s reelection prospects. This is an essentially reformist pressure tactic. It says to Biden, “you can earn our votes back by changing your behavior,” but it doesn’t fundamentally question the legitimacy of our electoral system or the US government more broadly. It doesn’t implicitly represent a critique of capitalism, imperialism, or settler-colonialism. I don’t think it is meaningless if it can save lives in the short-term, but if we really want to see an end to genocide in the long-term, we need to act with more principled decisiveness. We need a decolonial revolution to abolish the settler state altogether.

That is why I am boycotting state and national (and some local) elections, and why I think you should, too.

If nothing else does, the genocide in Palestine should expose the fundamental illegitimacy of our political system. It should be a red line, a deal breaker, beyond which no further negotiations are conscionable.

If nothing else does, the genocide in Palestine should expose the fundamental illegitimacy of our political system. It should be a red line, a deal breaker, beyond which no further negotiations are conscionable. The system crossed my red lines centuries ago, honestly. That is because what is happening in Palestine is the same thing that happened (and continues to happen) on Turtle Island. Cop City and the MVP are inevitable outgrowths of my ancestors’ settler colonial project. It is wrong now, and it was wrong then, and no society or political system founded on genocide and ecocide should be allowed to live.

And that brings me to the more important point I alluded to before: no elections (or revolutions) on stolen land! Any change that leaves a settler society intact in whole or in part, even in a socialist form, perpetuates colonialism. A liberated future must attend to Indigenous sovereignty and the return of stolen land. It must contend with the legacy of stolen labor and wealth through enslavement. A revolution on Turtle Island is not revolutionary unless it abolishes the settler state. Settlers like me must face an un-settled future.

But even the crassest self-interest should be enough to turn even settlers into revolutionaries: with our complicit participation, the elites are literally burning down the planet and driving us to extinction, and we are living under the increasingly naked terror of a militarized police state. I can personally testify that not even the privileged will be safe for long - I, too, am facing frightening state repression for stepping out of my assigned role, for my messy resistance to fossil fuels and genocide. I have had cops in my home right here in my sleepy liberal town.

For those of us who are settlers, it is time that we unsettle, commit to landback, and withdraw our consent from this death-dealing project. For the oppressed on Turtle Island, it means refusing to collude in one’s own oppression: it means rejecting the empty promises of assimilation and inclusion in violent, exploitative power structures that tear apart cultures and communities. For all of us that means, at bare minimum, refusing to ratify the smoke-and-mirrors political process that reproduces oppression. It means boycotting the polls.

We should boycott elections because the system will not allow us to vote out capitalism, stop climate change, or end imperialism. We should boycott elections because they are empty theater, a perennial liturgical performance by which we affirm the illusion of choice and ratify the institutions that are harming us. We should divest from elections because election season is a parasitical circus in which billions of dollars of stolen and extracted wealth are invested in political campaigns that primarily benefit corporate interests. I could feed dozens of houseless folks for weeks for the price of the jet fuel my favorite candidate burns flying from one rally to the next. We could provide food and housing and healthcare to hundreds for a year for the cost of one candidate’s political ads filled with empty promises to provide these things on our behalf. Instead, they will take our tax dollars and use them to drop bombs on children and fund healthcare for the perpetrators.

We could provide food and housing and healthcare to hundreds for a year for the cost of one candidate’s political ads filled with empty promises to provide these things on our behalf. Instead, they will take our tax dollars and use them to drop bombs on children and fund healthcare for the perpetrators.

Ultimately, we should boycott and divest from elections because we are long past the point where voting can be considered “harm reduction.” Don’t fall for that emotionally manipulative parable about voting as a fire extinguisher (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry about it). Yes, the building is on fire, and yes, there are children inside who will be harmed by its precipitous collapse. But running around inside a five-alarm inferno with a fire extinguisher while the politicians we vote for are literally throwing gasoline is futile. At some point, we must grab the children and run. The building is coming down whether we like it or not. Are we ready for life outside?

We are living through a moment of upheaval as the world revolts against Western collusion in global genocide. There is revolutionary logic to the revolt: people are waking up and increasingly calling for the abolition of the systems, structures, and institutions that uphold capitalism and colonialism. Electoral politics are the mechanism by which these systems secure our consent, and this disruptive moment is an opportunity to critically interrogate the investment in those systems that our annual trek to the polls represents. As the state bares its teeth and doubles down on mass murder and ecocide, as neoliberalism impoverishes more and more of us, as more of us are criminalized for our dissent, we are being forced to develop alternative collectivist structures to care for each other in the face of state repression and economic collapse. We are getting bolder and more experimental with militant tactics, normalizing resistance to police power and delegitimizing violent law and order. But we have a long way to go. Only sustained, concerted effort will turn this moment into a truly principled revolutionary movement. In a liberated future, we will not be voting to ratify the state’s power over our lives or to mandate others to make decisions on our behalf. To get to a liberated future, we must begin by living together as if the state is already dead.

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