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Empowerment Equalizer
SSaragian
Antony Sammeroff
Ann Sterzinger
Rodney
RJ
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cainusmaxus
Craig FitzGerald
David Heleniak
Caity & Dan Greene
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Keith Preston
Bill the Butcher
ljp711
MRDA
Jack Donovan
Rachel Haywire
comrade hermit
Michael
Vince
Regan
robertstark2014
Noonan
S E Pearson
Rachel Haywire
Nexus X HumectressIt’s election season again; a season I despise but am obsessed with nonetheless. Since I’m sure you’ve seen the title of this essay, you are probably confused, especially since this is being published on an anarchist website. But bear with me here as I explain.
When the Mises Caucus took over the Libertarian Party, I, like many people, left. Now I have never been particularly attached to electoral politics in the first place, seeing voting as primarily a tool to wield defensively; only able to keep away the worst fascists rather than provide a real avenue for change. I joined the LP not because I saw it as a valid means of achieving electoral change or even a viable defensive vote, but because I realized that electoralism could provide something else: a soapbox.
The LP wasn’t created to win elections, but to share libertarian and anarchist ideals to a mass audience whose main interaction to politics was electoralism, and show them that there are non-state alternatives that can be achieved by means other than voting. The LP ran candidates to soapbox ideas with no dillusions of actually winning, but on the off chance they did, they planned to dismantle as much as possible before leaving office. A worthy goal, but one that was sadly derailed as some pushed it to be a more serious vehicle for electoral politics.
I, however, joined to help those fighting to bring the party back to its roots. As such, I helped to cofound the Libertarian Socialist Caucus of the LP as a platform to soapbox libertarian socialist ideas to a largely libertarian capitalist audience, and became a bootlicker for Vermin Supreme’s 2020 presidential campaign as a means to soapbox libertarian socialist ideas to an even larger national and international audience. And both saw amazing success in those efforts, with the LSC quickly becoming one of the fastest growing caucuses in the LP and Team Supreme signing up more people to the LP than any other campaign in the race.
