EDITORS, THE BLACK AGENDA REPORT
“I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no “two evils” exist. ??There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say.”
It is the day after the 2024 US presidential elections and the people of the US lost. For what choice did they have? On one side was Kamala Harris, sitting Vice President of a regime in the middle of committing genocide and administering the massive repression of anti-genocide protestors, who was undemocratically chosen after a Democratic Party coup kept the sitting president from running. She offered to continue the path of genocide and war, with a promise to create world’s “most lethal” military. On the other side was Donald Trump who is as much a buffoon as he is dangerous. He matched the Democrat’s openly racist hatred of Palestinian people with his own racist hatred of Palestinians, Puerto Ricans, and Haitians. Significantly, Trump sounded less hawkish than Harris.
There were other options, of course. We were not supposed to know about the Green Party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, or the People’s Party. We were also not supposed to know that both of the major genocidal corporate parties have worked for decades to prevent the rise of any third party. The Democrats have been especially egregious – lying, cheating, suing to remove the Green Party from the presidential race.
Many people in the United States did not vote because they understood what W. E. B. Du Bois understood almost seventy years ago: that in the US, “no ‘two evils’ exist.” In an essay titled “Why I Won’t Vote,” published in The Nation in 1956, Du Bois wrote: “There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say.” Many people also saw, as DuBois did, that third parties have been given “no opportunity to take part in the campaign and explain its platform” or would be called “communist” (or “Russia-bots” in today’s parlance). For years, Du Bois had tried to vote for third parties, for socialist parties, for communist parties, for the “lesser evil” of the two racist parties – only to come to the exasperated conclusion that the US was too far gone and that voting in the United States was essentially pointless.
For Du Bois, the refusal to vote was not defeatist. It was, instead, a call to action, a call to hope. “If twenty-five million voters refrain from voting in 1956,” he wrote, “this might make the American people ask how much longer this dumb farce can proceed without even a whimper of protest.” This is the hope that we should all have – the hope that folks will understand that a vote for either of the twin evils is a vote for corporate control, white supremacist inequality, war and genocide; the hope that the idea of US “democracy” will be revealed as the dumb farce that it is.
We reprint W.E.B. Du Bois’s essay “Why I Won’t Vote” below.
Why I Won’t Vote
by W.E.B. DU BOIS
Since I was twenty-one in 1889, I have in theory followed the voting plan strongly advocated by Sidney Lens in The Nation of August 4, i.e., voting for a third party even when its chances were hopeless, if the main parties were unsatisfactory; or, in absence of a third choice, voting for the lesser of two evils. My action, however, had to be limited by the candidates’ attitude toward Negroes. Of my adult life, I have spent twenty-three years living and teaching in the South, where my voting choice was not asked. I was disfranchised by law or administration. In the North I lived in all thirty-two years, covering eight Presidential elections. In 1912 I wanted to support Theodore Roosevelt, but his Bull Moose convention dodged the Negro problem and I tried to help elect Wilson as a liberal Southerner. Under Wilson came the worst attempt at Jim Crow legislation and discrimination in civil service that we had experienced since the Civil War. In 1916 I took Hughes as the lesser of two evils. He promised Negroes nothing and kept his word. In 1920, I supported Harding because of his promise to liberate Haiti. In 1924, I voted for La Follette, although I knew he could not be elected. In 1928, Negroes faced absolute dilemma. Neither Hoover nor Smith wanted the Negro vote and both publicly insulted us. I voted for Norman Thomas and the Socialists, although the Socialists had attempted to Jim Crow Negro members in the South. In 1932 I voted for Franklin Roosevelt, since Hoover was unthinkable and Roosevelt’s attitude toward workers most realistic. I was again in the South from 1934 until 1944. Technically I could vote, but the election in which I could vote was a farce. The real election was the White Primary.
Retired “for age” in 1944, I returned to the North and found a party to my liking. In 1948, I voted the Progressive ticket for Henry Wallace and in 1952 for Vincent Hallinan.
In 1956, I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no “two evils” exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say. There is no third party. On the Presidential ballot in a few states (seventeen in 1952), a “Socialist” Party will appear. Few will hear its appeal because it will have almost no opportunity to take part in the campaign and explain its platform. If a voter organizes or advocates a real third-party movement, he may be accused of seeking to overthrow this government by “force and violence.” Anything he advocates by way of significant reform will be called “Communist” and will of necessity be Communist in the sense that it must advocate such things as government ownership of the means of production; government in business; the limitation of private profit; social medicine, government housing and federal aid to education; the total abolition of race bias; and the welfare state. These things are on every Communist program; these things are the aim of socialism. Any American who advocates them today, no matter how sincerely, stands in danger of losing his job, surrendering his social status and perhaps landing in jail. The witnesses against him may be liars or insane or criminals. These witnesses need give no proof for their charges and may not even be known or appear in person. They may be in the pay of the United States Government. A.D.A.’s and “Liberals” are not third parties; they seek to act as tails to kites. But since the kites are self-propelled and radar-controlled, tails are quite superfluous and rather silly.
The present Administration is carrying on the greatest preparation for war in the history of mankind. Stevenson promises to maintain or increase this effort. The weight of our taxation is unbearable and rests mainly and deliberately on the poor. This Administration is dominated and directed by wealth and for the accumulation of wealth. It runs smoothly like a well-organized industry and should do so because industry runs it for the benefit of industry. Corporate wealth profits as never before in history. We turn over the national resources to private profit and have few funds left for education, health or housing. Our crime, especially juvenile crime, is increasing. Its increase is perfectly logical; for a generation we have been teaching our youth to kill, destroy, steal and rape in war; what can we expect in peace? We let men take wealth which is not theirs; if the seizure is “legal” we call it high profits and the profiteers help decide what is legal. If the theft is “illegal” the thief can fight it out in court, with excellent chances to win if he receives the accolade of the right newspapers. Gambling in home, church and on the stock market is increasing and all prices are rising. It costs three times his salary to elect a Senator and many millions to elect a President. This money comes from the very corporations which today are the government. This in a real democracy would be enough to turn the party responsible out of power. Yet this we cannot do.
Black Agenda Report for more