In this year’s U.S. presidential election, there was no option to vote against genocide and settler colonialism, to vote against fascism, to vote against the accelerating deterioration of the planet.
By Juliana George
DEC 21, 2024
Every day, there is more horror: Palestinians desperately awaiting aid trucks meet fiery deaths by Israeli airstrikes; children’s malnourished bodies are buried under rubble; school shelters housing dozens of families are targeted and destroyed. The images are nauseating, incomprehensible, accusatory; they implicate us all in their monstrosity. If you look for it, the carnage never ends.
These abominations are not happening because Donald Trump was named the next president of the United States Nov. 6. They have been ongoing for over a year, endorsed wholeheartedly by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Even after unambiguously losing both the electoral vote and the popular vote, the first Democratic campaign to do so in 20 years, this administration is unshakeable in their commitment to perpetrating a genocide. Even with nothing at all to lose, and after explicitly warning the Israeli government to cease impediments to humanitarian aid within 30 days or risk an arms embargo over a month ago, the Biden administration will not stop arming Israel.
Harris’ brief 107-day campaign felt like a parody of itself, a case study in shallow identity politics and neoliberal hypocrisy. The campaign inexplicably moved further right than Biden’s, with the vice president vowing to appoint a Republican to her cabinet, pledging to up border security and raise the bar for asylum claims, steadfastly backing domestic oil drilling, and making practically no mention of the working class. All the while, the internet flooded with Kamala “Brat” edits, mania surrounding Maya Rudolph’s SNL impression, and meaningless celebrity endorsements ranging from Taylor Swift to Dick Cheney.
Rather than changing course on a ceasefire deal or arms embargo that would have likely won her a larger share of the youth vote and Arab American vote, Harris opted to cut off pro-Palestinian protestors at a Michigan rally with her much-memeified signature girlboss quote “I’m speaking.” When asked whether she was concerned about her standing with Arab American voters because of her administration’s support for Israel, she said that despite the “many tragic stories coming from Gaza… the first and most tragic story is October 7.” She later lost Michigan to Trump during the election, particularly underperforming in cities with large Arab and Muslim American populations that had previously gone blue.
Rather than countering Trump’s extreme stance on immigration, she practically adopted his hard-line border policies as her own. Even on abortion, an issue 1 in 4 voters said was the “single most important factor” deciding their vote, Harris’ campaign promise amounted to little more than an insistence that a Trump presidency would result in the erosion of even more reproductive rights. After all, both Biden and Harris’ stated commitment to restoring abortion rights full-stop was predicated on a Democratic majority in Congress or a change to the Supreme Court, which as it stands is impossible.
Despite her campaign’s glaring rightward shift and its role in co-signing heinous genocide, the “vote blue no matter who” coalition was in full force, vilifying third-party voters and scapegoating any marginalized demographic that refused to get on board. Democrats are already deliberately misinterpreting this loss as encouragement to reposition even further right, such as Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, who blamed the loss on popular Democratic support for transgender rights.
Truthfully, another four years of a Trump presidency is absolutely a frightening prospect. But more frightening is the knowledge that there was no option to vote against genocide and settler colonialism, to vote against fascism, to vote against the accelerating deterioration of the planet. The election felt like an inconceivable choice between two parties that both have blood on their hands.
It’s not a new revelation that the American democracy has little power to protect the interests of anyone beyond the ruling class, but bearing witness to our nation’s active contributions to the real-time mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza this past year has laid bare the farce of representational politics and the allegiance of all our political leaders to the American imperial project. Hope can be fleeting in a time like this, but we in the imperial core cannot give in to apathy and despair when even the people of Palestine, who have had their lives and their families unjustly and violently stolen from them, still hold on to resistance.
“I don’t rely on the American elections to make any difference,” said Bisan Owda, a Palestinian journalist who has been documenting the war on Gaza from the ground for over a year. “I rely on the free people of the world and the Palestinian people to make this change and to stop this genocide.”
Juliana George is the managing editor of Illume Magazine.
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