Disengagement from elections benefits the right, not the left

Evidence

It’s hard not to have some sympathy with Brand’s disdain for voting, which is part of a widespread disillusion with the massively circumscribed conditions of electoral politics under capitalist realism, in which the best that can be hoped for is the least worst. But the problem is that popular disengagement from parliamentary politics suits the right more than us. The right doesn’t need the enthusiasm that Thatcher could call upon from certain portions of the population; it doesn’t need legitimacy. Popular disengagement, ambient despair, the sense that nothing is at stake in elections, is in the interests of capital, now that all the defaults have been set to neoliberal options. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1780

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Fear of the right drove anarchist anti-electoral activists to vote nonetheless — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 545; The activist-voter trade-off is endogenous and self-reinforcing, not fixed — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 695; Election-centered organizing builds demobilization into successful activism — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still…, 617 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Election-centered organizing builds demobilization into successful activism #corroborates (0.85) — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 617
• The activist-voter trade-off is endogenous and self-reinforcing, not fixed #expands (0.78) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 695