I love cornel west and consider him one of the greatest thinkers around, but this has to be said: his "lesser evilism" position, which he adhered to in 2004, 2008, 2012 and again now in 2020, *but explicitly did not in 2016 when he endorsed jill stein*, makes no fucking sense 
if you're going to claim you're basing your position on a principle, you have to be actually principled. you can't just say "yeah ok I had a personal hatred of hillary so it didn't apply there but for everyone else you definitely have to vote for the lesser evil!" that's bullshit
it's even more egregious bc hillary clinton was actually to the left of biden, however marginally. one of the reasons west cited for not backing hillary was bill clinton's crime bill. *biden authored the bill*. his foreign police is as hawkish if not more. there's no excuse
the thing with lesser evilism is that it only works, rhetorically and logically, when it's applied as a principle. this is why I despise its invocation by liberal hacks like neera tanden who called corbyn hitler 2.0 and handed the election to the far right conservatives with glee
if the only ones who actually principally adhere to it are chomsky and leftists while liberals take out their knives and plunge it into the mildest social democrats w/ glee, the entire thing is a ruse, a cheap electoral gimmick masquerading as principle by invoking chomsky's name
and that is in fact what its primary function is: for liberals to cosplay as principled lesser evilists when they're lying, deceitful scumfuck pieces of shit who would gladly have voted for bloomberg's third party run if bernie were the nom, like they voted lib dem in the UK
anyway, cornel west is not a liberal, and his unprincipled adherence to lesser evilism went against the establishment dem candidate in 2016, a vey rare thing indeed. but the same applies there: his invoking of lesser evilism is purely performative, not principled. it's larping
so when I see him browbeat brie by invoking it as he did in that recent podcast, it has zero rhetorical and logical force. it's the same as if neera tanden tried to do it. you don't even believe in it yourself, so why are you trying to pretend that it's a Universal Principle now?
you can't say the same re chomsky. he's been consistent throughout. he said to vote corbyn, hillary, kerry. he takes it seriously as a principle. I respect that position, though I don't agree with it for reasons already hinted at and discussed here: curiouscat.qa/zei_squirrel/p…
just to be clear I am not saying west is larping in his opposition to trump now, I mean specifically his invocation of lesser evilism as a principle is disingenous given his 2016 exception, which undermines the entire point of it
https://twitter.com/zei_squirrel/status/1320061011160858627
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