(Requiem music) - Children, if I have to
crawl off the goddamn floor on the morning of November 4th, brush aside the empty wine bottles and pick up my phone to
discover that Caligula Jackson is President for life, I am going to chew my way
through the bathroom tile and I will not stop until
I reach the gates of hell. (champagne cork pops) You know what, America,
things have not gone well. We're having a hard time, we are, between the plague, the quarantine,
the oppressive policing, the unrest in the streets,
the rising tide of fascism, the criminal negligence of a President who's refused to admit
the danger of a disease that killed 200,000 people and counting... Of course, there's gonna be
some Trumpet in comments saying, "It's not that big a deal, calm down. "People die all the time." Funny that's not what you said about... Benghazi! We kind of need a hero to
lead us out of the darkness, and unfortunately Uncle Joe is really not the man for the job. I was a Bernie supporter, and I regret not being more vocal about it when I had the chance. So this time I'm gonna say something. Because even though Biden is not my boy, I still think that dethroning Trump by electing Biden is the
single most important thing any American can do right now. So allow me to make my case gorg. By now leftist Twitter has
seen the title of this video and I'm sure they're firing
off hot takes as we speak. - [Tabby] Typical t-thot
normie radlib endorses the electoral farce. Is this your leftist Queen of YouTube? Looks more like a rich
Karen who'd rather complain about cancel culture than revolt against the neoliberal status quo. - Tabby-chan, Tabby-chan! You know what Tabitha? For once, I'm actually
gonna take the bait. So this will be a conversation with the communist Twitter catgirl that lives in my brain, nya. I'm making this video because my timeline is full of leftist 22-year-olds who are so disillusioned with the System that they intend not to
vote in this election. And yeah, some of them
are probably Russian bots, but that's fine, maybe I can
win over the Russian bot vote. So I really do understand the perspective that Biden is not worth voting for because that was also my first
reflex when he was nominated. But on reflection, I think
to throw away this vote would be a terrible mistake. Don't make me eat my
bathroom tile, children. There's probably asbestos in that tile. Because America's so great even
the floor is made of poison. Okay Tabby-chan, give me your worst. - [Tabby] I want free healthcare,
student debt canceled, and worker ownership of
the means of production. Biden won't give us any of that and I don't wanna vote for someone who won't actually change things. - Well, listen Tabby-chan,
no one of us want to vote for Joe Biden. I don't wanna vote for Joe Biden any more than I wanna retile my bathroom, but sometimes a situation gets
so toxic and so dangerous, well, you have no choice
but to get your hands dirty. And in this election, I
consider a vote for Biden primarily a vote against Trump. Voting for a politician is not necessarily the same as supporting the politician. I don't think anyone
should stan Joe Biden. I am not asking you to
like, comment, and subscribe to Joe Biden's OnlyFans,
fascinating though I'm sure it is. - The president has a big stick. - To me, voting is more of
a utilitarian calculation based on the likely consequences
of each candidate winning. It's not hero worship,
it's not choosing a person to have a beer with, it's strategy. - [Tabby] Bad strategy. Biden
is no better than Trump. The Dems are just Republicans with a ceremonial facade of
meaningless liberal civility. - Well, I agree that the
Democrats are sucky libs, but it is simply not true
that there's no difference between them and the Republicans. I remember leftists saying in 2016 that there was no real difference
between Trump and Hillary. But there's a lot of things
Trump did that Hillary would not have done. Things like, filling the supreme court with anti-abortion fanatics, withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, appointing climate change
deniers to head climate research, attempting to remove medical
non-discrimination protections for trans people, constantly maligning the integrity of elections
with no evidence, declaring the press the
enemy of the people, calling white nationalist
militias very fine people and telling them to stand by, aspiring to be an autocratic dictator and disdaining democracy itself, trivializing a deadly pandemic in the name of delusional macho posturing. So sure, the Democrats
suck and they're libs, but it makes a real difference
if they're in control instead of Republicans,
especially if you're a woman, or LGBTQ, or a human who
lives on the planet Earth. - [Tabby] So Biden will
give us rainbow capitalism and streets named after
Black Lives Matter, but he'll do nothing to
bring about systemic change. - Well Tabby-chan, I'm sorry to say I agree
with you about that. I fully expect to vote for Biden and then protest the
administration that I voted for. - [Tabby] So you sit here vote-shaming me and in the next breath
admitting it won't do anything. You're a counter-revolutionary lib with no plan except just vote. - Tabby-chan, Tabby-chan. Look, I promise I'm not as dumb as I apparently look, comrade. Why is it that when you tell
people on the left to vote, they think you're saying quit your job, abandon your family, retreat from society and fall into a deep slumber from which you emerge
once every four years to vote for a shitty lib, before fleeing into the forest and re-entering a ritual
slumber on a stone slab in an eldritch temple awaiting
the return of Beelzebub. (cymbals cling) Voting doesn't take that long. At most it takes one day. You can vote and do other things also. I guess you're probably still
mad about that white woman with the "we'd be at brunch" sign. And I feel you, though to be honest, I would eat a Louis XVI style armchair with a pair of chopsticks if it meant I got to
go to brunch right now. - [Tabby] Could you be any bougier? - Don't call me bougie. I'm beyond bougie. When my carriage passes
by the bourgeoisie, I scoff at them openly. I've have enough of this
radlib merchant class trying to abolish my fiefdom. - [Tabby] You're a famous
YouTuber whose class interests do not align with mine. Why should I listen to what you say? - Oh, you shouldn't. I don't know why anyone
listens to me, honestly. But also I'm degenerate class traitor and, in my opinion, influencers should be the first against the wall. Honestly, I just wish you'd
just guillotine me quickly and get it over with. You at least have to
admire that about us libs. We have a remarkable willingness to have polite conversations with people who are trying to kill us. Speaking of which, we've been
talking a lot about my plan but what is your plan Tabitha? - [Tabitha] Uh, protest,
unionize, mutual aid, strikes... - So I totally agree, those
are all good things to do. I've gone to protests
myself this year myself, I've supported a mutual aid group. You're right, voting
won't fix all our problems and it's great to get involved
in local things like that. But it still matters
who's on the supreme court and who's leading the national
response to the coronavirus. So in addition to whatever
else you're doing, vote. - [Tabby] Why participate in the charade of a farcical election? America is not democratic. It's a rigged two-party corporatocracy." - (sighs) Well, I mean, (sighs) yeah. There's a lot wrong with our elections, big money financing campaigns,
the electoral college, gerrymandering, voter suppression,
DC being disenfranchised. All of this should
obviously should be changed. But I don't think that in this moment, leftists boycotting the election is an effective form of protest. - [Tabby] Okay, but voting
is for liberal normies who use Facebook and Reddit, ew. - Okay, it's true that voting is not cool. It's boring, it's incrementalist, it doesn't make you feel
like you're owning the libs or being edgier than your parents. But you could always vote in secret and maintain your radical
image around your friends. Isn't being involved in
politics inherently not cool? Because politics is for people who care, people who believe in things, people who place their hope
in fallible human beings. All of which is very not cool. I feel like so much Internet politics, whether it's radical or
centrist, is just posturing. It's showcasing that
you're funnier and smarter than the normies, that you
see through all the bullshit, the corrupt system, the electoral farce. But all you're doing about it
is sitting here shitposting and demeaning the people who are actually trying to accomplish what little can be accomplished. And in effect, edgy leftists who complain about both sides and do nothing are no different from edgy centrists who complain about both
sides and do nothing. - [Tabby] Okay, but
you, yourself said Trump is an aspiring autocrat who
doesn't believe in democracy. Why bother voting against someone who won't leave office even if he loses? This ends in violence either
way so we may as well smash. - Well, you're right, I don't
expect Trump to go quietly. But if there's a decisive Biden victory and it's not some kind of
vote-recount nightmare scenario, then I think the military
will force Trump to leave. Don't get me wrong
Tabby-chan, times are tough. The president is a fascist. I think this country is closer to some kind of violent uprising than it's ever been in my life. But if it comes to smashing,
you're gonna want allies. And for a lot of people, Trump rejecting a decisive Biden victory, and therefore, rejecting democracy itself, that would legitimize smashing. So you should still want
every Biden vote you can get. - [Tabby] But capitalism
is the root of the problems with our world. The whole system is broken
and voting won't change that. We don't need a Democrat,
we need to end capitalism. - Tabitha, capitalism is an
epochal world economic order. When you say end capitalism, you're talking about a tectonic
shift in global politics that is so much bigger than all of us that I don't really understand
what course of action you're recommending. Like before capitalism
there was feudalism. And feudalism ended over hundreds of years of complex shifts in
population and production, not because people just decided it was time to end feudalism. So won't capitalism end just whenever a new economic system overtakes it? I don't think that's the kind of thing that can be accomplished by
a small group of activists. And I say small group because,
I'm sorry to break it to you, but the vast majority of
Americans are not communists. I think a lot of Internet leftists have a vastly overinflated sense of how big and important they are. I fall prey to this myself,
like I was so sure that Bernie was gonna win the primary,
in part because when I looked at my timeline, I was seeing
this unanimous ocean of support for Bernie and contempt
for the mainstream Dems. But what I was seeing, and what we're all seeing on our feeds, is a finely curated and
very unrepresentative sample of the population. You have to remember that only 22% of Americans use Twitter at all. Most users rarely tweet, and 80% of tweets come from 10% of users. So 80% of tweets come
from 2% of Americans. And it's not a representative 2%. According to Pew Research, Twitter users differ from
the general population in that they're, on average, younger, more likely to identify as Democrats, more educated and higher income. And far-left hammer-and-sickle
Twitter is an even smaller, even more unrepresentative
sample within a sample. We're talking about less
than 0.1% of Americans. And that less than 0.1% does
have an outsize influence because they're prolific Tweeters and their tweets get
seen by public figures who use the platform, which is
why there's so much discourse about cancel culture even though
cancel culture is produced by a relatively tiny group of people. So if you wanna understand why even Democratic politicians cater to this retrograde soft conservatism, you have to pull your head
out of the radical bubble. Back in 2012, I volunteered
to work on the Obama campaign and I enraged people's dogs
by knocking on their doors and ruined their dinners
with canvassing phone calls. And I really recommend that
leftists try doing this for at least one election, even though it is the
worst thing in the world and I hated it so much. You know, you have to listen to a lot of, "I don't want Barack Hussein Obummer "redistributing my wealth!" Okay Ronald, I'm pretty
sure Obama's not sending his death panels after
your landscaping business but whatever. Talking to voters teaches
you the hard realities of what your fellow Americans
actually care about. And when I was canvassing, I did talk to some left-wing people, I talked to union families, but I don't think I talked
to a single communist. Most people do not read theory. Most people are concerned primarily with themselves and their families. They want personal
security and prosperity. And if you look at the talking
points used by politicians, they reflect that. It's why the right hammers
on about ANTIFA so much, because it works. Most people are afraid for their personal property and safety. And this idea of ANTIFA looters and riots, it scares the shit out of people. Of course, in reality ANTIFA is not scary. Like I've met ANTIFA, and ANTIFA... ANTIFA is Ryan. It's Ryan and his transgender
furry anarchist friends. But look if what you want is socialism or even just social democracy, then you have a lot of work ahead of you in terms of outreach. You have to engage people,
educate, raise awareness. But you don't wanna do that because it requires you
to stop owning the libs and start actually
communicating with them. You have to build alliances
with Facebook moms who ask ignorant questions like, "What's indigenous peoples' day?" And who think Kamala
Harris making sassy faces is the height of praxis, and who probably watch
ContraPoints, how embarrassing! You can't let your radical
queer friends catch you associating with mainstream
normie libs, how very bourgeois. - [Tabby] But revolution.
Revolution to end capitalism. Okay, so you're saying that your plan is to do a communist revolution and overthrow the US government? That's very valid. That's super hecking valid. That's extremely valid. I mean I guess I admire the ambition. Uh, just a couple quick
follow up questions though, are you counting on the US military and police taking the
side of the communists or is your plan to overpower them? Because unless you know
something about the military that I don't, I don't think
that much of the military is gonna defect to join
a communist revolution. So there will have to be a war. Revolution doesn't happen overnight. After the Russian Revolution, there was the Civil War from 1917 to 1923, so you are gonna need to raise a Red Army. Well, you can't have
a communist revolution without a Red Army, right? So how's that going, Tabitha? How many weapons have you amassed? How many units have you trained? Why are we talking about this? Why am I even entertaining this notion? When the far-right talks about violence and overthrowing the government,
they actually mean it. And you know they mean it because they have literal militias, the Three Percenters, the Boogaloo boys, they're stockpiling weapons
and training to use them. They have ex-military men in their ranks and connections to white supremacists within the police and military. Whereas when leftists talk
about revolution on Twitter, it strikes me as ideation, not intent. Psychiatrists have this distinction between two kinds of suicidal thinking. So there's intent which
is when you have a plan for how you're gonna do it, and then they have to commit you 'cause you're a danger to yourself. And then there's ideation, which is you're not actually gonna do it but you just have that inner monologue that's constantly saying
"I just wanna die. "There's no joy for me left in this world. "I just can't stand it anymore. "I just wanna end it all." Then my psychiatrist says, "Well, we could try putting
you back on Lexapro." And I say, "Not again doctor. Not again." So right-wing extremist
discourse is violent intent while leftist radical
discourse often amounts to revolutionary ideation. It's a kind of fantasy escapism,
an alternative to politics. - [Tabby] Well you
can't plan a revolution. Revolution is the spontaneous reaction to intolerable injustice. - Yeah, so a riot is the
language of the unheard. But what kind of language is it? What is the point of
speaking through a riot, a protest or a strike? Is it just emotional expression,
like an angry diary entry? Or is the point not just
to speak but to be heard? Heard by whomst? Who are you trying to
persuade, the Globglogabgalab? No, you want be heard by people
with power to change things. So it matters whether
the people with power are likely to listen. This year the US has seen one of the biggest protest
movements in history. And what has that accomplished? Well, at the moment we
have a president promising to double down on law and order, on military police suppression, a president who told a room full of cops not to be too gentle
with people they arrest. - And when you see
these thugs being thrown to the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in, rough. I said, "Please don't be too nice." - And let's be clear,
both Biden and "Cop-mala" have an ugly record when it
comes to crime and policing. For most of his career, Biden
called for more policing, which is the opposite of
what we need right now. I'm right there with you Tabby-chan. But the 2020 protests
have shifted the discourse about policing and criminal justice. And Biden has responded by
beginning to shift his position. This years' Democratic
platform includes things like stricter use-of-force standards, banning chokeholds,
restricting qualified immunity, creating a registry of police misconduct, limiting no-knock warrants,
decriminalizing weed, investing in crime
prevention and social work. And is that good enough? No, it's not good enough. But it's a start, it's progress. It shows that the Democrats are, at least, willing to listen to protests. When John F. Kennedy
first took office in 1961, he didn't want to propose
a civil rights bill because that would've been super unpopular with the Southern Democrats. But then 1963 happened and there
were protests and uprisings all over the south and the
March on Washington that summer, and Kennedy listened. - The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that no city or state or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them. - He was moved by the protests, and he responded by introducing what became the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But what if Kennedy hadn't
been president in 1963? What if some fascist had been president? What if Trump had been president? We might not have gotten
a Civil Rights Act. So it does matter who's president. It actually matters a lot. And please Tabby-chan, do not let a fascist win to own the libs. Goddamn it. Alright fam, let's open a new tab. Go to vote.gov and enter your state. And yeah, I know this is boring but I'm trying to think
about the tantrum Trump is gonna throw when an
entire nation rejects him and I'm letting that motivate me. In some states you can still
register, so register now if you still haven't. If you're voting in person, go to vote.org and find your polling
place and make a plan for how you're gonna get there. Make sure your phone is charged and you might wanna bring some
snacks or even some friends. If you're like me, you
need to set an alarm so you don't forget. And then just try not
to get inconsolably high until after you've placed your vote. Because we're all living
through a year of hell. And I, for one, think that we all deserve to begin 2021 by collectively
purging from our lives this swindling, pestilent doofus. Vote him out! ("Lacrymosa, Mozart's Requiem" by Papalin)
You can join us here on discord to disciss the video!
https://discord.gg/contrapoints
At 1:31 there is a Grindr notification sound, to remind us gays of our internalized Pavlovian response.
I'm glad this just dropped without her teasing the video.
This one touches on some frustrations I’ve been having in lefty groups I’m in. There’s a lot of people that are more concerned with proving they’re not a lib than doing literally anything to make attempts at change.
I kinda love the simpler, more casual vibe of this video. Don't get me wrong, I love her 90 minute masterpieces as much as the next person, but I would love it if she'd drop these shorter simpler videos between the longer opuses once in a while to tide us over.
Also: she's right and you should vote please. <3
I'm embarrassed to admit to slowly become what she criticizes in this video. This felt like a strong spank in the ass after reflecting on my past behaviour and attitude.
But I also like it. I like what I had learned and to be able to admit I was wrong. So now the only thing to do is to do better.
Honestly, I don't understand the distaste the tankie/rad-left has for Contra. They don't even watch her.
Edit: Also, this isn't justice part 2, right?
"Edgy leftists who complain about both sides and do nothing are no different from edgy centrists who complain about both sides and do nothing" Pretty much sums up my issues with online leftists who advocate not voting for Biden
Yes, the twitter account is real xD https://twitter.com/ManxTabitha
Related: Noam Chomsky: "If you don't push the lever for the Democrats, you are assisting Trump"
I'm not willing to delve the game theory, but I will rest on the fact that the game theory exists, Noam Chomsky knows the game theory, and for POTUS elections the game theory says exactly what Chomsky says it says - which is that the GOP desperately wants you to vote for anyone except Biden and Harris. Anyone. "Please", thinks the GOP monkeywrenchers, "Write in Bernie Sanders. or Kanye. We know you'll never vote Trump; Just so long as you don't boost Biden past Trump."
Sanders, too, knows the game theory and how the POTUS elections work; By contrast he explicitly wants people to vote for Biden and Harris.
Please don't make me have to remove and lock bickering arguments predicated on an ignorance of the mechanics of the first-past-the-post POTUS election and a misplaced desire to vote a conscience.
Vote. Just ... please don't help Trump.