If you’re undecided about your vote, a reliable rule of thumb is to always side against the candidate who is a convicted criminal, admires “good things” done by Adolf Hitler, and is labeled a “fascist” by four-star generals who worked in their administration.
However, just days before the chaotic 2024 US election, many American voters are still loath to vote for Kamala Harris due to the Biden administration’s complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. It’s hard to blame them. “How can we vote for genocidaires?” ask many Democratic voters radicalized and infuriated by Israel’s daily war crimes. Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu’s fanatical government, populated by a rogue galley of Jewish supremacists, openly declared their desire to ethnically cleanse Palestinians and illegally occupy more land. Their desire for ultra-violence and carnage does not spare journalists, UN workers, doctors or even US citizens. More than 42,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed.
And yet Democrats couldn’t be bothered to even invite one Palestinian as a speaker at the Democratic national convention. Instead, they were replaced by hollow talking points about the need for a ceasefire, return of hostages, and Palestinian self-determination even as the Israeli prime minister’s policies make such goals an impossibility. However, Netanyahu’s humiliation and repudiation of the US, Israel’s greatest ally, is still rewarded with billions of aid and unconditional support.
Despite these tragic, deflating, and heartbreaking circumstances, progressive voters must still support the vice-president in the 2024 election. The reality is that only one of two candidates will be the next president and the most powerful person on Earth. It will be either Donald Trump, a twice-impeached vulgarian who incited a violent insurrection, or Harris. Whenever I say this to undecided friends, they accuse me of supporting genocide or believe “both sides” are the same evil.
I respectfully disagree.
Donald Trump will be genocidal and a fascist. On Gaza, Trump promised he would let Israel “finish the job”. That means fulfilling his mega-donor Miriam Adelson’s wish of annexing the West Bank and standing pat as Israel moves to occupy northern Gaza on the graveyard of Palestinians. There’s a reason why Israel’s extremist national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, wants Trump to win and says he will be better for Israel. Trump might be better for Israel, but he won’t be better for Jewish people, whom he said he would blame if he loses the 2024 election. This is an addition to his promotion of antisemitic “dual loyalty” tropes and support of the antisemitic “great replacement theory”.
Trump loathes Palestinians even more. He said the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, who is Jewish, has “become like a Palestinian” and “a proud member of Hamas” for criticizing Israel’s war in Gaza. Trump has also promised to bar Palestinian refugees and implement an “ideological test” for Muslim immigrants if re-elected. At Trump’s Nazi cosplay rally at Madison Square Garden, Rudy Giuliani said Palestinians “are taught to kill us at two years old” and added: “They may have good people, I’m sorry, [but] I don’t take a risk with people that are taught to kill Americans at two.” Afterward, Trump appeared on stage and declared the GOP was “the party of inclusion”. Unless you’re Palestinian, an undocumented person, Haitian, Puerto Rican, a woman or a Jewish liberal.
Still, some jaded American voters don’t believe anything will be different when it comes to US policy in Gaza. I don’t blame them. But, if you remain unmoved on that issue, then I’d kindly ask you to turn to the domestic front where in the final month of his campaign Trump has promised to unleash the military and national guard on US citizens and invoke the Alien Sedition Act against migrants. This is the same man who said he’d be a “dictator for a day” and whose Project 2025 is like a helpful Bond villain blueprint that explicitly details the authoritarian ambitions for a white Christian nationalist utopia. The agenda includes replacing public servants with Maga brownshirts, weaponizing the justice department against his numerous enemies – which include Liz Cheney, for whom he wants televised public military tribunals – and eliminating the Department of Education.
“Well, we already survived the first Trump administration. The system will hold. This is just scare-mongering,” I am told in response. This statement is rooted in privilege and amnesia. I’d recommend people who believe this fiction to talk to the family members of nearly half a million Americans who died during the pandemic, a disaster made infinitely worse due to Trump’s incompetence and lies to the US public. I want people to talk to low-income and middle-class families who rely on Obamacare for survival, which Trump and the GOP have promised to eliminate and replace with a “concept of a plan”. I’d like people to read the story of Amber Nicole Thurman, a young Black woman who died in Georgia because she was denied access to a legal abortion thanks to Trump and his extremist, rightwing supreme court majority that overturned Roe v Wade.
There’s too much at stake and far too many communities, both in the United States and abroad, that will suffer if Trump is re-elected. The desire to “punish” Joe Biden and Harris for Gaza and vote instead for Trump or a third party, which just helps Trump in swing states, is like punching ourselves in the face. The entire country will end up with a bloody nose as Trump becomes a dictator and unleashes his Maga brownshirts.
With Harris and Democrats, there is an opening for Americans to organize, push, and pressure her administration to halt Israel’s genocide and pursue progressive healthcare and economic policies. Democratic allies include Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, labor organizations and communities of color who remain committed to social justice, equity and peace. With the Republicans and Trump, no such allies exist. There’s simply a fascist and a white Christian nationalist regime in waiting.
There’s no both sides. Please vote accordingly.
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Wajahat Ali is editor of The Left Hook substack, co-host of The Democracy-ish Podcast, and author of the book Go Back to Where You Came From and Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American
