Politics & Power Quote by Peter Camejo

Camejo’s line is a neat piece of democratic jujitsu: he defends a third party’s right to exist while calling out the soft authoritarian reflex that often passes for “pragmatism” in U.S. politics. The surface claim is simple - the Greens can run. The sharper move is in the contrast he sets up between persuasion and suppression. “Argue their point” is the civic ideal; “telling us to be silent” is the tell, the moment when party discipline stops sounding like strategy and starts sounding like control.

The intent reads as both protective and accusatory. Protective, because third parties in a two-party system are routinely treated as illegitimate spoilers rather than participants. Accusatory, because Camejo is naming a familiar ritual: when elections tighten, establishment voices don’t just debate policy; they police conversation. The subtext is that democracy is being redefined as a managed contest where only sanctioned choices count, and everyone else is expected to fall in line for the “greater good.”

Context matters: Camejo was a prominent figure in left politics, including Green and socialist campaigns, often running against the gravitational pull of Democrats insisting that dissent is a luxury. His framing flips that guilt trip. If your coalition can’t win without silencing allies, he implies, the problem isn’t the voters’ speech - it’s the coalition’s argument. The quote works because it exposes the contradiction: people praise democracy in the abstract, then treat actual pluralism as a threat.