IS VOTING EVIL?

Does Voting Necessarily Legitimize State Authority?

Jul 08, 2024

HEY FOLKS,

What you are about to read is an essay entitled Voting is Evil by Nemo Jones. It is being published as an op-ed, because I don’t actually agree that voting is evil.

That said, I am completely opposed to legitimizing state authority by voting to elect representatives who then work within a system in which the true power is held by the deep state, who almost always represent the interests of the rich.

So, basically, I’m against majoritarian democracy, which is what most people are thinking of when they hear the word democracy. I’m not against voting, though.

This might seem like semantic quibbling, but I am a bona fide semantic quibbler, but I think the distinction is worth making.

Furthermore, we here at Nevermore Media like to fancy ourselves the spiritual descendants of the classical anarchists. You know - Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman, Landauer, Malatesta, Nikiforova, and so on.

So, I feel impelled to set the record straight - the classical anarchists weren’t against voting.

THE CLASSICAL ANARCHIST POSITION IS AGAINST DEMOCRACY… BUT NOT AGAINST VOTING

I’m not going to spend too much time making the argument, because the amazing anarchist scholar Zoe Baker has already done so in a fantastic essay called Anarchism and Democracy.

Anarchism and Democracy is available on the Anarchist Library, and an audio version is available on YouTube.

THE CLASSICAL ANARCHISTS WERE AGAINST DEMOCRACY, FULL STOP

Throughout my life, anarchists have been both for and against democracy. Since I came up in the anarchist scene in the early 2000’s, anarchists have been opposed to electoral democracy but in favour of “direct democracy” or “participatory democracy”. This is likely due to the influence of the Zapatista movement, which developed a form of consensus decision-making based partly on their Mayan traditions.

You may be surprised that there was no such confusion back in the heyday of the anarchist movement. Most anarchists were against democracy, period.

The National-Socialist Critique of Democracy

Zoe Baker writes:

The majority of historical anarchists only used the term ‘democracy’ to refer to a system of government which was, at least on paper, based on the rule of the people or the majority. Errico Malatesta wrote that, “anarchists do not accept majority government (democracy), any more than they accept government by the few (aristocracy, oligarchy, or dictatorship by one class or party) nor that of one individual (autocracy, monarchy or personal dictatorship)”

If you want the essence of the anarchist critique of democracy distilled into a five-minute rap song, I refer you to the following video:

NOT ALL CLASSICAL ANARCHISTS WERE NOT OPPOSED TO VOTING ON PRINCIPLE

Although anarchists were mostly against democracy and majority rule, voting was a common practice in trade unions. Not all classical anarchists were opposed to voting on principle, and voting was used in anarchist decision-making.

During the 1907 International Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam, the Belgian anarchist Georges Thonar argued that the participants should not engage in voting and declared himself “opposed to any vote”. The minutes of the congress claim that this caused “a minor incident. Some participants applaud noisily, while lively protest is also to be heard” (Antonioli 2009, 90). The French anarchist and revolutionary syndicalist Pierre Monatte then gave the following speech:
“I cannot understand how yesterday’s vote can be considered anti-anarchist, in other words authoritarian. It is absolutely impossible to compare the vote with which an assembly decides a procedural question to universal suffrage or to parliamentary polls. We use votes at all times in our trade unions and, I repeat, I do not see anything that goes against our anarchist principles.
There are comrades who feel the need to raise questions of principle on everything, even the smallest things. Unable as they are to understand the spirit of our anti-parliamentarianism, they place importance on the mere act of placing a slip of paper in an urn or raising one’s hand to show one’s opinion.”

THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT SHOWED US THAT AN OVERZEALOUS INSISTENCE THAT EVERYONE AGREE ON EVERYTHING LEADS TO POLITICAL PARALYSIS

My personal view is that voting is not always bad, so long as those in the minority position are not forced to do the bidding of the majority.

Let me give a very vanilla example - a general assembly of 300 people wants to decide which date to hold their next meeting. Let’s say that most members of the group have regular jobs, meaning that the meeting needs to be held on a weekend.

The fastest way to decide when to hold the meeting would be a simple show of hands.

If I was facilitating the meeting, I would say: “If you would rather our next meeting be on Saturday, raise your hand.” After observing the result, I would then ask: “If you would rather meet on Sunday, raise your hand.”

If the result clearly showed that a Saturday worked better than Sunday for most people, it would be disingenuous to hold it on Sunday, wouldn’t it?

Obviously, this is a very bland example, but I think this illustrates an important principle - disagreements in groups aren’t always ideological. They can also be practical.

And voting can be practical.

LEARNING FROM THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT

Anyone who participated in the Occupy movement knows that there are some people who just like hearing their own voices too much, and will use up a lot of time advocating for proposals that are not supported by the group. These people are not merely annoying - they tend to induce political paralysis into any group that doesn’t have a way of dealing with them.

Honestly, a lot of the value of voting is shutting such people up. I’m just being straight-up. Let’s say that an Extinction Rebellion chapter consisting of exactly 4 people at an Occupy camp wanted to hold a protest in which a bunch of people glue themselves to Stonehenge to protest climate change or something similarly stupid, a facilitator could address their proposal with a simple show of hands. L This visibly demonstrates that a given proposal does not have the support of the group. Those 4 people then have the option of organizing that action autonomously. If they won’t drop it at that point, they are basically sabotaging the consensus process and should be asked to leave.

This is one of the main uses of voting, and it shouldn’t be overlooked. Anyone who participated in Occupy knows what I’m talking about.

So is voting evil? I don’t think so. What is evil is forcing people to go along with decisions that are morally opposed to. And democracy is a system in which voting is used to legitimize political structures that exist in order to force people to do things they don’t want to do.

If that seems like an overstatement, I would encourage you to look into early statecraft. The essence of government is extortion.

In the essay you are about to read, Nemo Jones is speaking specifically about voting in state elections. I don’t think that I disagree with any part of his critique other than his conflation of different types of voting.

If you haven’t heard of Nemo Jones, by the way, I would highly recommend his excellent essay On The Psychology Of The Conspiracy Denier, which Nevermore published back in March 2021.

Mr. Jones also interviewed me for his radio show at one point. I think it was a pretty awesome conversation, so please check it out!

So what do you think? Is voting evil? Is democracy a good thing or a bad thing? What is your definition of democracy? How should people make decisions in groups? When using consensus processes, how do you prevent wingnuts, partisans, and undercover cops from derailing things?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Love & Solidarity,

Crow Qu’appelle

VOTING IS EVIL

by Nemo Jones

“You’ve got to vote, vote, vote, vote. That’s it; that's the way we move forward.” ~Michelle Obama
“We can all agree on the importance of voting.” ~Jenna Bush
“Voting is the expression of our commitment to ourselves, one another, this country, and this world.” ~Sharon Salzberg
“You cannot complain if you didn’t vote.” ~Barack Obama
“The right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless.” ~Lyndon B Johnson
“Voting is not just a right, it's a responsibility.” ~Don Santo
“Voting is a civic sacrament.” ~Theodore Hesburgh

Election day. Inhale deep of the blessed and rarified air. Your moment has come. Your time to shine. Today - at long last - your voice matters. Your voice will be heard. Your dream of a just and sane world is damn near palpable.

The diligent and painstaking attention you've paid to the rational, informed and balanced debates of the day, the carefully honed and nuanced arguments you've formulated all come to bear - today of all days. Your choice will resonate onwards, shaping our future world. Proudly aligned in thought, feeling and action - a responsible, informed representative of humanity - you step out, relishing the unique significance of the moment.

As you approach the sacred polling station, the drudgery of mundane existence recedes, the endless grinding trauma of life's grotesque inequity is momently adjourned and a better world beckons, as the magical portal of possibility opens. The liminal dream space of infinite potential unfurls, as you… stroll past, shaking your head in wonder at the brainwashed humanoid automatons filing inside to righteously scrawl a cross into a box.

Democracy: a dismal charade. A transparent scam devised by the same elitist con artists that sold humanity the ‘divine right’ of kings, emperors, sultans and caesars to steal, rape, enslave, starve, torture, subjugate, deceive and massacre: the ‘divine’ wrong. In the modern age, such inhuman parasites hide their power-and-bloodlust behind ‘the will of the people’, who dutifully fall for it, election cycle after cycle. It’s maddening, heart-wrenching and world destroying.

Voting is not a ‘right’, but a profound wrong, bestowing the same fake and calamitous ‘legitimacy’ on unscrupulous parasites as the so-called ‘divine right’ of kings. Voting violates Natural Law and everything humane. It is an act of evil.

Election rejection is not the sole remedy to the world’s ills (for that, see here), but it’s a start; a simple, satisfying and eminently attainable goal on our journey toward an enlightened age.

Government is the current manifestation of humanity’s greatest failing: the feigned abdication of individual response ability; the pathetic claim of victim status as immutable identity. Government convinces Sovereign beings that they possess no inherent self-authority, or authorship of their own reality: a lethal pretence. One always remains completely ‘response able’. A lifetime spent in denial of this fact is simply an abject failure to respond appropriately to circumstances - a failure with devastating consequences.

The election pantomime is indeed the civic sacrament; the humiliation ritual that formalises and sanctifies the tragic wasted opportunity of a Sovereign being’s submission to false external authority. It's heavy stuff. Willingly giving up our natural-born freedom to charlatans - to anyone - is the ultimate self-debasement and insult to nature - or God, if you prefer.

It’s clearer than ever that the political class is self-serving, vain, deceitful and beyond corrupt. But to blame morally bankrupt husks for their ruinous treachery is to miss the point: they play their role perfectly: corrupt cogs of a corrupt machine. And all the while, you remain ‘response able’, whether or not you like or admit it.

The purpose of a system is what it does. What does government do? Serve hidden interests. Destroy beauty and everything else that supports well-being. Normalise the violation of Natural Law to the point of banality. Devour priceless time and energy. Distract and demoralise while its cogs moralise, posture and pontificate. Endlessly steal, lie, bully and cheat. Reward evil and punish conscientiousness. Promise justice while delivering industrial-scale injustice and horrors without end. Serve demented elitist agendas perversely clothed and paraded as the greater good.

Government mocks you relentlessly. It's long past time to stop embracing the narcissist.

Government was never intended to serve you and it cannot. Government has not become corrupted. It is the very pinnacle of corruption. A finely crafted tool of mind control, distraction, manipulation and subjugation; a weapon of mass destruction; a hideous, bent game in which we lose everything of value.

Government is a deadly, yet ridiculous, weapon. If it didn’t exist, it would be laughable. No one would believe it. And no one should. It’s a crazed despot’s sadistic fantasy; people excitedly lining up to select their torturer of choice, then sitting ‘round the goggle box revelling in the agony and ecstasy of the spectacle, as the knife is twisted right, then left, then right again.

A vote is a signal to the universe that you are a willing slave. One who truly understands what government is will never engage. Why attempt the impossible feat of making government serve you when we can so easily make it disappear instead? All it takes is ‘right inaction’ - the simple reclamation of your attention and natural born authority. Enough of this horror. Enough of this monster.

You have no right to dominate or impose your will on others. You have no right to concoct arbitrary rules that do not accord with Natural Law and enforce them upon others. Yet a vote is a (fruitless) attempt to appoint someone to conduct these immoral acts on your behalf: to steal from, threaten, coerce and wield force against others to impose your will - in direct, flagrant and absolute violation of Natural Law. A vote is both an attempted abnegation of natural born self-Sovereignty and an attempt to violate the natural born self-Sovereign rights of others. The consequences of these violations for our shared reality are evident. One can only speculate on the personal consequences.

A spoiled vote is still participation in the sacrament. Why attempt to ‘send a message’ to those with no interest in us? An inhuman system deserves only contempt and disavowal, not engagement or endorsement of any kind. There may be humane but misguided beings caught up in this enslavement system who, it could be argued, ‘deserve’ your vote - the system does not.

‘But if I don’t vote, [insert terrifying outcome]’. The monster will lumber on to its inevitable demise whether we feed it or not. The question that should concern us - and deeply - is what ultimately replaces it. True freedom or overt subjugation? A humane or inhuman future? Giving one’s power away as if it were worthless is a clear declaration of one’s valuelessness and a direct cause leading inexorably toward the latter. The monster feeds on fear. True freedom can only result from right, principled, courageous action.

Votes are an accurate measure of one thing: how well the con of democracy is working. The ideal result is zero votes. This may seem an unlikely outcome - but that is no justification for compromise. Compromise with evil is evil. Every vote cast is a vote for an evil system with no right to exist.

Voting is evil because:

It is a denial of immutable Sovereign self response ability.
It is an endorsement of a system which inherently violates Natural Law.
It is an attempt to impose your will on others, in violation of Natural Law.

Please don’t miss out on a golden opportunity to take right inaction.

Our beautiful and humane future begins in the hearts, minds and actions (or conscientious inactions) of the bold.

For the avoidance of doubt, the above does indeed approach its limited subject from an anarchistic - a morally and rationally consistent - perspective. I heartily en-courage you to delve ever deeper into Natural Law (of which I will continue to write). I am convinced that our doing so is the sole and certain path out of the madness, badness and sadness of our deluded age and toward an enlightened one.

I welcome your comments and questions below.