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Comment by dudefeliciano | Hacker News Reader

How did it contribute to bringing trump to power?

It altered voting intent by both Jewish and Islamic groups in ways which were net negative for Harris. The margin of error in voting was less than the number of votes swayed.

All of this is out weighed by the "didn't vote" but democrat didn't vote was larger than before. If this issue stimulated a vote boycott it could have affected democrat voters more.

That argument is not really credible to me, saying that democrats did not vote or voted republican because Harris (and Biden before her) were too favorable towards Israel, ignores the fact that it was glaringly obvious that trump would be even more favorable towards Israel.

I have certainly heard people say that they couldn't support Harris because the Biden administration was too close to Israel, so instead didn't vote at all. I know it doesn't make sense to hand the election to somebody objectively worse on an issue they claim to care about, but there it is.

I suspect that whole thing was driven by some clever folks trying to get Trump into power.

I have multiple people in my life that followed this mindset as well, to offer some more anecdata.

I never got a rationale when asked, which still perplexes me considering these people weren’t fans of the republicans in this past race.

No need to rely on anecdotal evidence:

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/03/nx-s1-5249686/arab-muslim-vot...

Trump was an isolationist in his first term, and his campaign used this to convince muslim voters that he'd continue this in his second term and withdraw support for Israel.

Instead, he announced a US funded ethnic cleansing campaign in the region, and the cornerstone of his budget is funding to illegally deploy the US Military in the US. One of their main goals is rounding up "anti-semetics" which seems to mean anyone that's against genocide, especially this exact group of Trump voters.

My suspicion is that they fell for it because they're less familiar with US politics, either due to a language barrier or due to being 1st and 2nd generation immigrants without grandparents that remember the McCarthy trials, or the US deporting jews back to Nazi Germany.

Whether Trump would continue it was an unknown. Whether the Democrats would continue it was a known. And they wanted to punish people who were supporting a genocide. It's a fairly rational choice. My entire family didn't vote because of this and the friendliness with Cheney and neocons.

And how do you feel about the outcome? Do you think you would be happier having voted Harris?

Neutral I suppose. I think it was good that Democrats were not rewarded for supporting a genocide. No, Harris was a bad candidate in many other respects too, and even considering just this issue, I think it was the right decision.

I think this take comes from a place of western privilege. Biden has always been extremely pro Israel, more than even the average politician here. Biden refused to recognize the ICC war criminal ruling's on Bibi and Israel and also gave them whatever weapons they wanted. It doesnt really make a difference if Trump is more rude and annoying about it, neither of them like Alive Palestinians.

I mean, the whole thing went down under the Biden Presidency. If he thought getting those votes was important he couldve shut it down, it wouldnt even be the first time a president did that. Reagan reigned them in all the way in the 80s.

Some fantasy about how millions of leftists voters either boycotted the election or voted for Trump because of Biden’s position on Gaza. Complete nonsense of course, but it’s a popular conspiracy theory among certain democrats circles.

It was also funny to see democrats suddenly realizing that Arab Americans vote republican. They always have and they always will. Just like how Latino Americans, and generally most immigrants, will always vote republican too. Arab Americans are very culturally conservative. They would rather see a 100 Gazas than accepting that 2 gay men can get married.

The left pretty much falls into the same trap all around the world. Its almost funny to watch when a leftist realises that immigrants are right-leaning. The typical reaction is to fall back to elitism and claim those immigrants must be stupid somehow.

Not stupid, just lacking class consciousness

I would love if the public discourse would allow for more diversity of opinions. Unfortunately, where I come from, the left has simplified the rhetoric to "If you are of a different opinion then we are, you are either badly educated (read, stupid) or a nazi." Unfortunately, this elitist attitude has only contributed to the divide of the people.

> If you are of a different opinion then we are, you are either badly educated (read, stupid) or a nazi

Depending on where you are from, this could absolutely be true, as "elitist" and insulting as it might be. Well, fascist is more appropriate than Nazi because Nazi is superset of fascism with a heavy anti-semitic element, and I'm not aware of many rabidly anti-semitic parties in the mainstream in many countries.

Minor quibble but wouldn’t it be a subset?

> Well, fascist is more appropriate than Nazi because Nazi is superset of fascism with a heavy anti-semitic element, and I'm not aware of many rabidly anti-semitic parties in the mainstream in many countries.

Scratch a little deeper on the things popular Republican politicians and members of the current administration have been saying and promoting for the last few years.

Conspiratorial movements almost always end up at "it's The Jews", and so do theirs.

If you see talk about their opponents engaging in dark "rituals" involving child murder or abuse, you can be 100% sure you've found one that'll get you there. It's just blood libel, keeping reading and listening and you'll see that they're fully at that point before you've had to do much work. It's tedious.

True, but other than the "Jewish space lasers" brain worm lady, the others aren't outwardly anti-semitic. Unlike the Nazis who were very very much so.

So for now, I'm billing them as fascist.

No. Just because a conservative is not willing to support a liberal position, that doesn't make them automatically a fascist. In fact, thats the core of my criticism. Political views are a spectrum, and you can't just push someone to the far right just because you disagree with them. This black-and-white thinking is doing far more harm then you might imagine.

> Just because a conservative is not willing to support a liberal position, that doesn't make them automatically a fascist

Their methods and their positions make them fascist, not their support or lack thereof for opposing positions.

Say, a coup attempt. Or someone in power talking about ignoring term limits. Or getting bribes and favouritism for corporations (corporatism is a heavy component of fascism). Or silencing opposition with brutal and illegal methods (such as kidnapping in the middle of the night by unmarked and masked men). Those all scream fascism, regardless of the fact that e.g. the person in charge of healthcare is an antivaxxer.

I don't know what to tell you, I'm never going to be happy about people voting against my rights or about secret police disappearing people and ignoring the court system

You seem to be completely ignoring lynx97's actual point.

If you're not happy about those things, stop telling everyone who disagree with you how stupid they are and how they're literal Nazis. Then at least some of those who disagree with you on some issues will be less driven to vote for the people whose positions appall you.

Thanks for rewording my point. You pretty much nailed what I was trying to say.

Decades of name calling and refusing to compromise from the right and it’s the left with the bad attitude that’s dividing people?

people have absorbed so much american "the left is always evil and the right can do no wrong" propaganda they dont even realize it.

Yes. If you pretend to be the better person, you better make sure you act like it. If you give up and fall back to name calling, people will judge you based on your actions. "But I used to be the good guy" doesn't count at all.

If people judged name callers based on their actions then how did we get here?

I agree, it's a huge trap. The right exploits leftists who insult normal people as dumb. It worked when they insulted George W Bush, who people identified with and found likeable, and was probably coached to bungle sentences despite likely not talking that way at Yale and Harvard; and when they insult Trump and his ideas, though he's perceptive and effective.

Many say it works because liberals now represent the professional-managerial class, who often come across to workers/poor as infuriatingly patronizing, slick and humiliating. Whereas many don't know who owns their big corporation, so they don't inspire such visceral feelings.

While some may argue that liberals aren't leftists (but are rather good-cop), nevertheless many leftists do this too. The dynamics are explained in Thomas Frank's book "Listen, Liberal", David Graeber's essay "Army of Altruists: On the alienated right to do good", and Participatory Economics's coverage of the coordinator class.

Army of Altruists, by David Graeber: https://harpers.org/archive/2007/01/army-of-altruists/

Thanks for the pointer, that was a very interesting read.

sure this sounds bad, but we also currently have, in the USA, and administration who deports student protestors and does Nazi salutes. Ive been hearing about how "oh, the left just calls us Nazis for any opinion that differs from them" and now they are in power doing Nazi salutes. They were Nazis the whole time. No one is getting called Nazi for their opinions on tax rebates.

Class consciousness is entirely too intellectual and nerdy to ever be popular, you'll never convince someone swayed by bumper stickers to read and thoughtfully consider your 500-word ultra-concise argument for it.

"Vibes" and populism drive voter behavior. Cheap populist messages will always resonate at least as well as even an ultra-simplified "it's all of us versus the owners of capital". Us vs. Them is what populism is, but getting the right Them according to class consciousness is really hard (and it'll constantly be at risk of someone subverting it to something else, probably "the Jews and other child-sacrificing Evil Cultists in their sway" because it's usually that for some stupid fucking reason).

Even Bernie had to settle for the shitty and inaccurate "the 1%" to get even a little traction with class consciousness on a mass scale.

Right now outright conspiratorial thinkers are ascendant and doing the usual thing of being some of the elites (the capitalists) we should all be against, while painting everything as the fault of other elites (how are they differently elite? Well, follow their stupid threads of "evidence" and you always end up at blood libel, truly, it's so consistent that it's boring)

> Class consciousness is entirely too intellectual and nerdy to ever be popular,

well yea, and Marx is a taboo, nothing new there. Those ideas can be repackaged though, in a way that won't make people foam at the mouth because of the "communist sounding words" (thinking of gary's economics for example). I agree with what you said, it's easier to package an "Anti-something" message, as we see with all the anti-immigrant messaging in the US and Europe, the Anti-Billionaire movement still has not gained even a fraction of the traction though.

Well, I dont remember any "immigrants for the poor" movements. But I know from personal experience that Lions Club and Rotary people actually sometimes do something useful for the poor with their money...

Given that context, do you really not understand that you shouldn't bite the hand that might feed you?

Immigrants are never going to feed the poor and disadvantaged.

The oh-so-bad-and-evil rich people might at least sometimes.

Immigrants are a net positive contributor to the welfare and pension system in the EU, they are statistically very likely to be the literal hand that feeds you when you will be old and in need of care.

I never said rich people are bad and evil, just that they should pay their fair share. For their own good too, to live in a more harmonious society, but maybe this is better.

Let me expand a bit on this. I personally think it is a very bad sign for our society that we are about to outsource the responsibilities around caring for the elderly to (mostly) female workers from neighboring countries to save a few bucks. Personally mostly because I find the prospect of a language barrier in care horryfing. I don't want to imagine how it must feel for those we already subject to this treatment to be cared for by someone who barely understands your language. In that context I find it hard to feel cozy about the future of care being "solved" by using immigrant workforce. Regarding pensions, all I can do is hope the statistics you are refering to are actually true. The cases I know about are heavily blocked on the language barrier when it comes to finding a "good" job. The best positive example I can think of are construction workers where it seems to work quite well that one or two guys speak the local language well enough to translate/coordinate with the rest of the crew. But most other cases of immigrants I know are actually pretty much blocked on the language issue. Only some are talented enough to learn a new language fluently in a few years, and some languages are actually pretty hard to learn. I count me in on that group. If I had to learn a new language at my age, I would probably do very badly. I didn't even pick up enough spanish during a 2 month trip through south america to do any interesting conversation. It would probably take me years to be able to respond to a random sentence from a native speaker of anything other then english and my native language. You might be able to survive with just English in the tech industry. But in pretty much every other industry, especially service, it is hard to find a job without good language skills. So most of the examples in that area that I am currently thinking of actually ended up depending on the welfare state for income instead of contributing to the pension system.

Nothing to feel cozy about, that was just an example of how immigrants do in fact help the poor and disadvantaged. In the same way that you mention how working class jobs are now also increasingly done by immigrants. Now if the rotary clubs want to donate money that’s great, but the fact remains that there is a redistribution of wealth happening before our eyes, and the direction is not wealthy -> immigrants, it’s middle class and below -> ultra rich. We are effectively subsidizing the profits of billionaires, while they skirt taxes and lobby for cutting even more funding to the welfare system. The economic divide between the super wealthy and the ever fading middle class is increasing year by year. How is this supposed to function?

I think they don't fall into the trap, and their position on migrants is formed not from the assumption that migrants have leftist views, but from the assumption that it is easier to make migrants dependent. And when someone is dependent, it doesn't matter what cultural views they are inclined to.

I don't think you mean leftists you mean liberals. Leftists ostensibly have a materialist understanding of the world, not idealist. Of course many immigrants are right-wing, the US exported counter-revolution globally during the 20th century.

I went to eat out at a Guatemalan restaurant the other day and they had a poster for a right-wing ultranationalist paramilitary group.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mano_Blanca

Is it shocking? Not at all. I have heard the same violent rhetoric from petit bourgeois in Colombia and in the USA because the exact same forces of reaction in the USA have been at work globally for decades.

> Its almost funny to watch when a leftist realises that immigrants are right-leaning

The claim that all immigrants are right-leaning is a generalization.

I would appreciate a broader examination of how this site politics function because no one here seems to understand the difference between liberals and leftists.

This site is mostly wealthy and older who have benefitted from the neoliberal status quo. It's why many commenters can shrug off the insane shit happening like opaque deportations of random people to a fucking concentration camp in El Salvador, it only affects people on the margins who they think they are very far removed from.

In wealthy urban areas there are a lot of liberals who don't have a materialist basis for their views and are hypocritical, so the more reactionary on this site think that these pearl-clutching libs are the end all be all of left-wing politics. Meanwhile actual leftists dont really differentiate between ethnic supremacists and YIMBY liberals because they both ultimately support the same outcomes.

I am also from a petit bourgeois background but being younger I think it was very clear that the direction we were heading in was not sustainable. There is no path that allows for me to have stable finances (enough money to buy a house and pay for my parents retirement) and also be spiritually fulfilled. The only way I can save up the money to take care of the people around me is to sell my mind, body, and soul to the machine (even then who says the current administration wont tank the stock market and erase all my savings). I think even for Gen X'ers this was the case, it was just easier to keep their heads down since the polycrisis was still a few decades out and would not yet seem "real".

Even as a relatively successful zoomer I have to walk a fine line of grinding away at my day job, and doing the community-oriented work that fulfills me spiritually. The market signals that stuff like home ownership and having a family is not "efficient", so I don't bother.

Anyways, there's a real disconnect and I'm not sure what it would take for the older and wealthier folks on here to open their eyes. If history is anything to go by they most likely never will.

> I'm not sure what it would take for the older and wealthier folks on here to open their eyes.

I think there are plenty of wealthy folks who understand the benfits of living in a more equal society, and that would gladly pay their fair share to live in such a society. The problem is they are not enough, and worse yet the middle class and what remains of the working class are actively pushing propaganda that goes directly against their own interests (perhaps because they think that one day they will too be millionaires).

Of course wealthy or "petit bourgeois" can be leftists or Marxists or whatever, they have typically made up the intelligentsia of most left-wing revolutions historically.

But the material interests of the wealthy align with the status quo that allowed them to acquire their wealth. This becomes less true as the "polycrisis" of climate change intensifies, since at some point there will be no future to enjoy, regardless of how much money you have.

Also I will argue that the reactionary propaganda comes from the top-down, not the bottom-up.

The wealthy are not trying to maintain the status quo though, they are actively trying to dismantle the remnants of the social/welfare state. I would argue that it is exactly that social system that allowed them to become wealthy, and they want to hold and hoard the wealth, stifling economic mobility and increasing the divide. This is stupid though as it increases social tensions and IMO puts them even more at risk of losing their wealth.

The reactionary propaganda does come from the top. Case in point: Elons “X the everything app” and him promoting afd - one has to wonder why he cares so much about immigrants. The answer seems simple, if they are not the target, he is.

> The wealthy are not trying to maintain the status quo though

I agree with everything you said, of course there are factions among the wealthy. Some want to keep doing business as usual liberalism, I think others anticipate climate change and want to pivot to a more violent system that allows them to horde even more wealth.

At the end of the day though, all factions of the wealthy have solidarity with each other when it matters.

> The claim that all immigrants are right-leaning is a generalization.

Yes, agreed. I probably saved a few words too much on that sentence. I should have thrown a "some" or "many" in there. OTOH, as a non-native speaker, I will loose every argument that ends up in native-speaker pedantery, so I am kind of unimpressed.

This is, of course nonsense. The data is clear that Latinos vote majority Democrat, though it was a smaller majority in this election than the previous.

Citation needed. A lot of the Latinos I know in NYC voted Trump. A few were Democrat voters who grew tired of being insulted by Democrats who casually lump Latinos into a big "left loving Latino pool" when they are Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Chileans, Ecuadorians, etc; Individuals with distinct cultures and backgrounds. Latinos are also heavily religious which is very influential as well.

Just Google Latino voting 2024. This isn't hidden information.

It's a record low for 2024 which is not insignificant. Next election will be interesting.

They USED to, it was about 47% for Trump in 2024. Most Latinos I know in NYC voted for Trump.

it was a huge anchor around the dem's neck, it was a huge conversation during the entire election. They were unable to convince people that Trump would be worse for Gaza than them.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42793303

Here's a quote from the poll: 以下是民意调查中的一段引述：

   When Biden 2020 voters cast a ballot for someone besides Harris in 2024 were asked “Which one of the following issues was MOST important in deciding your vote?” they selected:
   
   29% - [■■■■■■■■■■]
   24% - The economy
   12% - Medicare and Social Security
   11% - Immigration and border security
   10% - Healthcare
   9% - Abortion policy
   5% - Don’t know

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