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cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4493698
As for people who are politically backward, Communists should not slight or despise them, but should befriend them,unite with them, convince them and encourage them to go forward. -Mao Zedong
That works fine for Chinese peasants and industrial workers in occupied Shanghai, but western suburbanites are an entirely different story, and I'm 100% confident Mao would agree if he saw the level of imperial psychosis we're up against
There's a distinction between those who aren't as educated and those who are actively antagonistic/reactionary (which Mao was definitely not a fan of).
In Fediverse terms, it's the difference between a lib walking in and asking "Why is voting for Biden bad if Trump would be worse?" And a lib walking in and stating "If you don't vote for Biden you're a republican".
The misinformed and the outright reactionaries may sound similar at times, it is the nuance that we must address.
While I love dunking
, I'd say in principle you're right. Leftism is entirely isolated since the fall of the USSR, it's hard enough educating people when you're up against the propaganda machine that exists. Whatever little bit counts.
One thing that really gets people going "wow" is when I bring up housing in China compared to here in the West™, which exists just for speculation.
Got an infodump of those 'wow' statistics by any chance?
So .001% of Libs vs 99.99% of Libs?
I can't stay specifically in terms of numbers, but I'm sure we all know a comrade that was a clueless lib, or even outright reactionary before radicalisation.
Edit: this is not to say we shouldn't dunk on libs and fash, though, sometimes you'll find people can be bullied out of their ways.
People say this but when I've grilled every actual leftist I know for deets usually they reveal their "pre-woke period" was like 6 months to 2 years max when they first moved out of their parents place, and it was mostly Reddit and 4 chan posting. Then they started down the leftist path pretty quickly after that.
I don't really hold out a ton of faith for people who are still turbo Libs or Jordan Peterson fans well into their 20s.
In the current times, it has become harder and harder.
However, it's one of those things that unfortunately you can only dig into on an individual level. It takes actually knowing a person, asking them questions that can't be spun, or they trust you not to spin, using typical rotten discourse terminology.
Things like "Isn't it terrible to see the images from Gaza recently?"
If they answer that with anything other "yes" then you probably gotta give up. But most people will say "yes, BUT..." and then spit out media bullshit they keep hearing. "What else could Israel do?" type bullshit.
I could go on and on but the point here is it does take individual engagement (which, yes, often sucks) to remove people from this insane false reality that they willingly create with the media helping them. They gotta be put back into a correct mindset using morals they already possess but are repressing because the media/society told them it was "logical!" and "civilized!" to repress revulsion at the sight of screaming parents of dead children. People have been turned into, partly by choice, partly by necessity (to avoid insanity), emotionally dead beings which lack empathy and can justify any atrocities, no matter the scale, in an instant.
It takes a fundamental belief in humanity in the end. A belief that most people are good or believe themselves to be good and will act in moral ways when shown that they are currently immoral. There's been decades of internalizing immoral thinking, it can't all be undone in a conversation or maybe ever in some cases. A seed of doubt has to be planted though and if it's watered a few times, perhaps that person will go on and seek more information. Or hey, not everyone has to be well-read. Perhaps controversial, but I don't mind if a certain amount of people are willing to just say "I don't want to see dead kids on tv! I want good shit to happen and these people say that starts with ending doing and funding endless wars, so I support that! No, I don't need to hear CNN man justify bombing kids again!" I think most people are already there, except the last part. They don't like it, but they still can justify it. That's the part that they need to be made to confront. That there is no justification. They were lied to and lied to themselves. The only way out is to recognize and accept you fell for fear-propaganda used to manipulate you into supporting atrocities and then become incredibly angry and focused on destroying those who lied to you. Which is, of course, the capitalist class and their tools of propaganda.
All any of us can do is give pushback and offer an unspoken narrative to people we can see and we know can be good and moral. Even the most hog of hogs can be a good person, I think. They already probably tell themselves they are a good person and it pisses them off when "the left" indirectly or directly says they aren't. I'd be pissed too if some group was telling me I'm a baby murderer, etc. But if you can lead them to the conclusion that, no, you are indeed supporting policies or at least justifying policies that objectively kill kids... most people, if they really grasp that truth, can't keep supporting it. I have to tell myself this because to think otherwise is basically surrender to barbarism. I have to believe most people are good, they just don't know how to be to good... if that makes sense.
One might argue that a person consuming Peterson content still is doing so because they do feel that nagging feeling deep down that their beliefs do not align with their morality. He tells them this is true, but it's ok. They are doing the right thing. So in a way, these people, if pushed or guided in the right direction, may very well end up becoming incredibly radicalized against people like Peterson. Once they realize how he preys on those disillusioned with the evils of capitalism and doesn't offer them solutions but rather justifications for the evil... being preyed upon, gaslit, manipulated by someone tends to really piss people off once they realize what happened. Peterson's fans may be the ones who eat his ass in the end (not in a good way). Hopefully, anyway.
I believe most people are inherently bad. They are selfish, greedy, envious, and uncaring towards anyone outside their immediate friends & family.
It is this observation from dealing with people all across the political spectrum that leads me to being a ML compared to, say, an Anarchist. I don't believe people can get along without control structures in place. Most will live in harmony but there are always people who will take advantage of others.
We need a strong state to structure society and give people the ability to shift away from their individualistic ways into accepting communal forms of living. Unfortunately not everyone is going to accept democracy in their workplace, true democracy in government, and we need to have a strong state to weed those elements out in order to protect the rest of us from the tyranny of the individual.
I don't think people are inherently anything. We are capable of incredible good and evil. Evil is getting the last laugh right now, though, and at pretty much all levels of social strata, which makes it difficult for me to take the basically good helpless lemming rhetoric seriously.
I hear you. FWIW I don't subscribe to the "helpless lemming" idea either. To me the "evil" I see in the average burgerlander (I'm from the US) is an apathetic one. Not ignorant, just uncaring. I talked about this in an a post I made about messaging: