America may have just killed their own democracy. Why did young people decide that it wasn’t worth saving?

Chappell Roan for President.

A month after he stepped down as a candidate in the US Presidential election, outgoing President Joe Biden urged voters to elect his Vice President Kamala Harris and “preserve democracy”.

“With a grateful heart, I stand before you now on this August night to report that democracy has prevailed. Democracy has delivered, and now democracy must be preserved.”

This rhetoric echoed across the Democratic Party, with politicians, libertarian activists and celebrities alike all saying that Kamala Harris was the only hope to protect women’s rights, queer rights, immigrant rights, and the fabric of American identity as a whole from a far-right authoritarian dictatorship.

The message couldn’t be clearer. The Republicans want to destroy freedom, democracy, and plunge America into a neo-Nazi dictatorship. The only way to stop that from happening is vote for Kamala Harris. The vote is the weapon. Simple.

Except, the message failed. Donald Trump is set to return to the Presidency, and the Republicans have potentially gained not just the presidency, but also control of the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Supreme Court. To say that the Democrats were in shock would be an understatement. How could there be a greater incentive to vote than the threat of neo-Nazism? Immediately, Democratic election analysts went into a panicked frenzy to understand who had failed to deliver them their messianic victory. Who had refused to do their duty in preventing a fascist takeover of the United States?

In their desire to answer this question, the same analysts unknowingly demonstrated the exact reason why they lost their base. If the Democrats escape their ivory tower sense of entitlement for a moment, the question might be less about why voters are complacent about a far-right future, and more, why should young voters believe in a party that doubles down on a system that has cost them most of their rights already?

Liberal democracies have failed to cope with the growth of the far-right. It would help if politicians were less shit.

Disillusionment in democratic institutions has been spiking in North America, Western Europe and even here in Australia, particularly amongst young people, and anti-establishment rhetoric is an increasingly embedded topic in the mainstream political ecosystem.

While mainstream small “l” liberal parties such as the Democratic Party in America and Renaissance in France have been struggling to understand this building resentment, far-right political figures such as Marine Le Pen have been taking advantage of this appetite for anti-establishment views to build a movement based on nationalism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and nostalgia for traditional societal roles.

Libertarian politicians have pushed back against this surge by decrying these movements, and its supporters, as bigoted and unfit for leadership. Hillary Clinton, in 2016, famously decried her presidential challenger Donald Trump and his supporters through the phrase “basket of deplorables”, citing his movement as “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic”. These words, however, would very much come back to haunt her when she lost the presidency to Trump and his deplorables two months later.

Clinton faced a lot of scrutiny for her bold unflattering description of her political opponents, but not because she was wrong. On the contrary, openly embracing prejudice has been a core aspect of Trump’s appeal, and both his supporters and his opponents are aware of his contempt for marginalised groups. The reason why Clinton’s assessment rang so hollow is because of its lack of self-awareness. As much as she might deride Trump for his unabashed hate speech, her own track record isn’t exactly golden either, particularly given her own support for violent American imperialism, border patrol, and inequality fuelled by neo-liberalism.

The impact of neo-liberalism on wealth inequality, which manifests in the cost of living crisis, housing crisis, and the many other burgeoning crises upon crises upon crises, has been cited as the core reason why trust in mainstream politicians is so low.

Despite centrist parties repeatedly appealing to the emotions of hopelessness and desperation by those affected by the cost of living crisis, it all feels insulting as they also refuse to enact legislation that would address inequality, such as raising welfare, and the long history of parliamentary entitlement scandals. This breeds an atmosphere where, no matter what the far-right might say about queer people, immigrants, or women, at least they’ll stick it to these losers and show everyone that we’re sick of their bullshit.

It’s deeply cruel that marginalised people get caught up in the firing line with people wanting to showcase their anger and resentment towards mainstream neo-liberalism. Marginalised people are taught at a young age to hold in our anger in lest we be met with violence from a cishet white dude who can be angry as he likes.

As a trans woman who is all too accustomed to smiling when I want to scream, I’m very happy to have this platform and vent about how angry I am with the political establishment for getting us into this mess. They’ve been utterly complacent with our failing living standards and the resultant festering of a extremist alternative. This is their mess to clean up, not ours, and we should learn to all be angry together.

Kamala Harris claimed she could save us all? Good luck, babe!

The 2020 election proved many things for the Democratic Party. Firstly, Trump had such an iron grip on the Republican Party and its supporters that they would ride or die with him. Secondly, Trump was beatable, even if he didn’t want to admit it himself. And thirdly and most importantly, the election would be concentrated on a group of swing states that depended on voter turnout.

The Democrats thought they had a winning strategy to ensure that voters would turn out. As I said before, they thought the threat of fascism would assuredly scare voters, particularly the diverse populations of Atlanta, Georgia and Detroit, Michigan, into voting Harris just to prevent a Trump victory. The Democrats acted like they barely need to win over those groups, and thus concentrated their attention on not scaring off moderate swing voters by bringing out celebrities such as Beyonce and Bruce Springsteen to show that they understood real working class struggles, and reaffirming their support for Israel, increased border patrol and “middle class capitalism”. Wait, what???

As always, the award for smartest voice in the room went to Chappell Roan. The singer, who is known for her appeal with young progressive queer women, was attacked online during the campaign for her refusal to endorse Kamala Harris. She declared that she while she would be voting Democrat, she would be only doing so begrudgingly due to the Democratic Party’s weak record on transgender rights and their support for Israel. This caused a backlash amongst staunch Democrats, with some taking to social media to declare they would boycott the artist. However, time has proved that Chappell Roan struck a chord. The perceived entitlement over the votes of young progressive women, and thus their refusal to address their concerns, meant they lost a key support base.

Greta Thunberg, a Gen Z climate activist known for her anti-capitalist and anti-colonial activism, also refused to give a firm endorsement. In a statement, she said that while Trump is a much more dangerous candidate than Harris, either one would still be supporting policies that would devastate future generations, especially from marginalised groups and Indigenous cultures. She said that an election was a small part of a broader movement to put as much as pressure as possible on people in power to address the threats of the climate crisis, hyper-capitalism and imperialism. Chappell and Greta are both prominent Gen Z progressive women, both showcasing a feeling that the Democrats horribly underestimated. It isn’t just working class white men who feel forgotten by politicians, young progressive women are also angry, also feel taken for granted, and also want to make sure their anger is felt.

The truth is, when people have been living in poverty with very little hope for their future anyway, threatening them with neo-Nazism isn’t going to cut it. It isn’t enough to say that the opposition might strip away democratic rights when the most basic human rights under capitalism, like food and housing, are already dependent on our class position. It’s nice to see the likes of Democratic trans women Zooey Zephyr and Sarah McBride commit to protecting the legality of transgender healthcare, until you realise that they are only doing so in a surface-level way without addressing the deep economic inequality that makes healthcare inaccessible even if it is legal. If they truly, as they say, cared about the welfare of all transgender Americans, then they need to step up their rhetoric beyond the floor of the legislature and talk to transgender women in the poorest parts of their constituencies.

This isn’t even mentioning the fact that elections in America take place on a work day, meaning working class voters may have to take time off work to stand in line and vote, sometimes for hours. For marginalised people living in politically contentious swing states, this is a very dangerous level of increased visibility at a time when voting centres have been faced with violent threats, leading to a heightened police presence. This isn’t a safe atmosphere for Muslims, transgender people, black people, or all the other demographics that the Democrats relied on to turn out.

This isn’t a solely American phenomenon. As much as the Australian Labor Party likes to scare voters with the prospect of an even more conservative, even more cutthroat Coalition government should they lose the next election, it’s only resulted in higher voter resentment and reduced faith in democracy as a system. A government needs to offer positive solutions to garner acceptance and enthusiasm from voters, not threaten voters that it will all but abandon us to neo-Nazi megalomaniacs should we refuse to reward it with our time and donations.

The “threat to democracy” has won. So does that mean we give up on elections?

This is the million dollar question, and I’ve been confused about this myself. It seems easy to believe that a party that helped incite an attempt coup four years ago could be as bold to try to cancel future elections, but in truth it’s hard to say what the next four years might bring, and I don’t really want to get into Trump’s head. My main interest comes from the fact that, while many in the Democratic Party, including outgoing President Joe Biden, claimed that this timeline would spawn the end of democracy, did any of them actually believe that?

Transgender journalist, fiancee of Zooey Zephyr, and vocal Democrat herself, Erin Reed was one who made such claims. Just prior to the election, she urged her followers to vote for Kamala Harris, refusing to mince her words in stating that a Trump administration would be fascist, bring about an authoritarian dictatorship, and jeopardise the lives of all transgender Americans. Now that Trump has won, and this existential threat has come true, does this mean that the likes of Erin Reed are going to prepare for an authoritarian future? Or are they regardless going to start preparing for the next election?

Well, it’s too early to say for sure, but based on recent posts on Twitter, and Erin’s post-election article on her blog, it doesn’t seem likely that the Democrats were ever going to stop clinging to their ballot boxes. She implored her followers that setbacks had to be expected, but that as with the fight for gay marriage, the fight for trans rights would be a generational struggle that would be rewarded with time. Call me a grumpy cynic, but it all feels anti-climatic and repulsively saccharine after the months of warnings about the devastation of a Republican victory.

Even worse, it suggests a horrifying lack of preparedness for the prospect of fascism and a blindness to failures of the political system she relies on. It’s the same vibe as telling queer people they should just leave a dangerous conservative area without actually offering them the material support or community to help with such a massive life change. This kind of doomerist sentiment is feckless, especially when pushed on such a large scale, and can even be extremely dangerous when not joined with positive actionable solutions.

Biden is one thing, but I refuse to believe that Erin Reed would intentionally overstate the prospect of impending fascism to compel her readers into voting. That’s an extremely fucked-up level of emotional manipulation, and I can’t believe she would be that thoughtless. However, as a fellow journalist, I know that actions speak louder than words, and that the future generations of trans women deserve a movement that fights like crazy, like lives are at stake.

I also need to pull apart the comparisons between the gay marriage campaigns to the fight for trans rights now. This is a comparison prominent liberal campaigners make often, and it’s grossly reductive. For one, trans people are far more visible and vulnerable than cis gay people, more dependent on health services, and much more affected by wealth inequality and state oppression. On top of that, the world has grown much more hostile in the last twenty years, due to the impacts of neo-liberalism, nationalism, and the climate crisis. It might be true that rights for queer people have increased in the last twenty years, perhaps, for white and middle class queer people. For poor, isolated, queer people of colour, however, things have gone consistently worse and our supposed champions in the political arena have been asleep at the wheel. Healthcare is more inaccessible, welfare is well below poverty levels, the housing crisis has pushed us to the neglected and dangerous fringes of the cities. These realities of our lives have potentially fatal consequences and they also play out in our health surveys.

It shows a direct lack of community understanding that a prominent queer activist would fail to acknowledge these basic facts about the realities of queer lives in the Western world, and this isn’t an isolated case. Zooey Zephyr has been a member of the Montana House of Representatives for nearly two years. In that time, while she certainly made headlines for her fiery speeches, it’s difficult to find anything substantial she actually did to improve the lives of impoverished transgender people directly. Seeing her do cool shit on Instagram doesn’t get anyone hormones, or a safe house away from neo-Nazis, or food on our table. Only direct community work will do that. It doesn’t happen at the ballot box, Zooey. The ballot box is dead, remember?

There isn’t any concrete data on queer voter turnout specifically, only that queer voters were a core part of Harris’ base, and her turnout, particularly amongst young women, failed to support her. Trans people are traditionally much more politically active and aware than cis people, but have also been taken for granted by politicians as a voter base due to our comparatively small population and tendency to move away from swing states for our own safety. Trump’s rhetoric is terrifying for trans people, but our community spirit and our resilience in the face of adversity is legendary. My greatest hope has been that seeing core voters abandon the Democrats so heavily might help bring about a wake-up call for the middle class progressives who plainly aspire to be our saviours.

These progressives went all in on the rhetoric that a Trump victory would open the floodgates of fascism. It backfired horribly, and millions of Americans are panicking at the bleakness of their future, but with no faith left in that mainstream politics will care. It’s no use acting shocked-pikachu-face at the desire of voters to spite the mainstream elite. They’ve been disrespected by politics for too long. It’s time they got the respect they deserve through radical action.

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Natalie Feliks is a writer and activist originally from Adelaide, now living in Melbourne. She's written for the likes of Junkee, Crikey, and Overland, and spends her time listening to pop music and eating chocolate.

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