It's important to be specific about this stuff because even if your sentiment is exactly right -- as is the case with @SorosFootSoldier's comment -- libs will take whatever opportunity they can to derail a substantive conversation into quibbling over semantics or harmless misstatements.
Honestly this is the reason why I don't even like posting anymore. People will always look for the smallest details in my statement then blow it up and use it to browbeat me into submission for their victory. It's so tiring and nothing gets done.
It's all good! But it's very annoying how, especially on reddit, libs will attack you over semantics because they know they don't have a leg to stand on. It's like if I said "Jeff Bezos sucks because he's a trillionaire" some dweeb bootlicker in the comments would be like "umm ACTUALLY he's a billionaire, you're wrong, ipso facto you're a terrorist sympathizer and a member of ISIS." Cannot stand it. Normal people don't act like this, terminally online weirdos do, and I should know because I am one lol.
Shout out to the reddit blog post with fun facts about which cities were the most "reddit addicted" and Eglin Air Force base was at the top of the list.
But they'll accuse you of arguing semantics when you point out r*nd's theories don't line up with what they are saying(charity wouldn't exist in that world), or that they are fundamentally using words wrong.
I think that everyone should treat this like a duty and do their part to counter the hysteria but I can see your point. From what you're saying it seems that even if we gather the numbers to be a force on the big politics subs, one mistake can derail the whole effort. We need to be perfect because we don't have institutional backing, while our opponents do.
Yeah, it's ridiculous, especially when (as this post shows) you can just make shit up wholesale and people will pile on so long as it supports something they already believe. Changing people's minds is usually going to be an uphill battle, but it can be done.
This is probably the biggest question facing the left, and the biggest barrier to growing the left to where it can hold real power at a national level. A few thoughts that are by no means comprehensive:
It's going to take time, at least for most people.
Some people are far easier to bring around than others. We should focus most of our attention on people most likely to come around the soonest, but it's good to have at least some outreach to everyone.
The most likely (sizeable) group to become leftists is probably left-leaning libs. The second most likely group is currently apolitical folks who would directly benefit from leftist policies, but the Bernie campaign showed that overreliance on this group is risky -- it's likely that a lot of apolitical people are going to remain apolitical.
We need a highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow approach, because different people will respond to different approaches.
It's going to be easier to build a socialist coalition around domestic policies (e.g., Medicare for All) and then turn them into anti-imperialists than it would be to lead with anti-imperialism. Most people care first about their immediate material conditions, not the conditions of someone they've never met on the other side of the planet, but if you get them started down the socialist path with domestic policies it's not hard to turn that thinking international.
De-stigmatizing just the word "socialism" is crucial, and is far more important than insisting that people use a theoretically-precise definition of "socialism" (to the extent one even exists).
It's far more useful to have 10,000,000 quasi-leftists who support something like Medicare for All than it is to have 10,000 "True Leftists." Only one of these has the immediate potential to become a mass movement that actually gets anything done. It's counterproductive to be too critical of groups that are at least trying to have mass appeal on the grounds that they aren't True Leftists.
It's similarly counterproductive to write off any leftist who gains an ounce of notoriety or success as a grifter. Attacking people who are at least trying to move others left should be done selectively.
While it's obviously better to talk to people in real life, social media is modern propaganda and most people get at least some of their political opinions from what they read online. Posting may not be praxis, but it can be persuasive.
Being an asshole online has limited potential to persuade anyone, no matter how right you are. It has its place, but we shouldn't ratchet it up to 11 for anyone but chuds. Anyone remotely persuadable should lighter bullying, and less of it.
You're absolutely right that this should be a major focus of the left, at least until we get a lot bigger.
I'm not referring to achieving socialism in the US though. I was talking more about how to bring people out of this anti-China mindset. I'm not sure about appealing to material conditions first. I'm skeptical that a movement like that wouldn't just stop at european social democracy. They'll be happy to exploit the rest of the world as long as they have healthcare which to me sounds like an intensification of imperialism.
Libs can be turned into socialists, and socialists can be turned into anti-imperialist socialists. It's much harder to get people to go straight to anti-imperialism because that rarely speaks to their personal material conditions (and Americans aren't particularly interested in other countries to begin with).
The problem is that if you talk to some non-socialist about China they don't actually care either way. It's just not a factor in their day-to-day life. So even if you make great points and they nod along in agreement, none of that really takes root, and all of it can be easily undone by a few CHYNABAD news cycles. It's purely theoretical to them, and on stuff that exists only in a theoretical vacuum you can't compete with the vast media apparatus that unabashedly supports the State Department. You see this all the time with libertarians -- you have good conversations with them about the evils of U.S. interventions, but then they'll lap up so much "scary foreign country is now the devil" propaganda (especially regarding socialist states) that they'll wind up supporting all sorts of imperialist policies.
But if you turn them into socialists first? Then there's a wealth of anti-imperialist literature that comes with the socialist canon. Then the hardline anti-communism that permeates American culture softens or disappears entirely, which prevents backsliding as soon as there's a big media push to demonize some socialist country. Then they become comfortable with giving a shit about people they'll never meet.
Well, no. About the only people calling out anti-China propaganda in the U.S. are socialists. Not all socialists are calling it out, but the only ones calling it out are socialists.
Jeffrey Sachs isn't a socialist and he was calling it out. There was a thread on r/worldnews about the US being the greatest threat to democracy the other day. I checked some of the profiles of people calling it out and many of them didn't seem socialist.
Okay, setting aside absolutes: you're far more likely to find socialists calling this out than non-socialists. And as I outlined above, I'm a lot more confident that socialists aren't going to backslide as soon as the next breathless report comes out.
What I fear is that in creating this "10 million mass", you end up not creating anti-imperialists, but more fervent ideological enemies to China. You turn an apolitical lib into a "socialist" but in so doing create an ideological cold warrior that's far more useful to imperialists. If I had to choose if some lib were to remain apolitical or turn into a breadtube type, I'd rather they remain passive and apolitical.
Apolitical folks are often at least supportive of imperialism, though -- they're not political, but they'll participate in all sorts of patriotic stuff precisely because they believe that transcends ordinary politics. They'll cheer on the flag at the 4th of July and support the troops and casually demonize The Bad Countries if only because "America, fuck yeah" is such an easy, uncontroversial position that doesn't even require any conventional politics to hold.
We're not going to get to anti-imperialism through political ignorance and apathy. And I don't see how making someone a socialist focused on domestic issues will automatically make them an ideological cold warrior on foreign issues. That just doesn't add up. There's all sorts of anti-imperialist material they'll at least run into when reading up on socialism, and there are all sorts of anti-imperialist socialists they'll start to hear more frequently.
It's important to be specific about this stuff because even if your sentiment is exactly right -- as is the case with @SorosFootSoldier's comment -- libs will take whatever opportunity they can to derail a substantive conversation into quibbling over semantics or harmless misstatements.
Honestly this is the reason why I don't even like posting anymore. People will always look for the smallest details in my statement then blow it up and use it to browbeat me into submission for their victory. It's so tiring and nothing gets done.
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It's all good! But it's very annoying how, especially on reddit, libs will attack you over semantics because they know they don't have a leg to stand on. It's like if I said "Jeff Bezos sucks because he's a trillionaire" some dweeb bootlicker in the comments would be like "umm ACTUALLY he's a billionaire, you're wrong, ipso facto you're a terrorist sympathizer and a member of ISIS." Cannot stand it. Normal people don't act like this, terminally online weirdos do, and I should know because I am one lol.
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Wow, never thought I'd see masks off anti-semantism on Chapo.
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Why won't Corbyn do anything about the Anti-Semants in Labour?!
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Shout out to the reddit blog post with fun facts about which cities were the most "reddit addicted" and Eglin Air Force base was at the top of the list.
But they'll accuse you of arguing semantics when you point out r*nd's theories don't line up with what they are saying(charity wouldn't exist in that world), or that they are fundamentally using words wrong.
My least favorite type are the ones who fixate on grammar/spelling.
I'm glad to not see it here, but god help you if you use the wrong form of 'there.' when you explain why nazis are bad.
Then again, that's how :reddit-logo: do anyway.
People have no sense of spiritual truths. Jeff Benzos is a trillionaire
Jeff Bezos sucks cause i hate balding men.
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I think that everyone should treat this like a duty and do their part to counter the hysteria but I can see your point. From what you're saying it seems that even if we gather the numbers to be a force on the big politics subs, one mistake can derail the whole effort. We need to be perfect because we don't have institutional backing, while our opponents do.
Yeah, it's ridiculous, especially when (as this post shows) you can just make shit up wholesale and people will pile on so long as it supports something they already believe. Changing people's minds is usually going to be an uphill battle, but it can be done.
How though? Should we be organizing brigades? We need strategy, desperately.
This is probably the biggest question facing the left, and the biggest barrier to growing the left to where it can hold real power at a national level. A few thoughts that are by no means comprehensive:
You're absolutely right that this should be a major focus of the left, at least until we get a lot bigger.
I'm not referring to achieving socialism in the US though. I was talking more about how to bring people out of this anti-China mindset. I'm not sure about appealing to material conditions first. I'm skeptical that a movement like that wouldn't just stop at european social democracy. They'll be happy to exploit the rest of the world as long as they have healthcare which to me sounds like an intensification of imperialism.
Libs can be turned into socialists, and socialists can be turned into anti-imperialist socialists. It's much harder to get people to go straight to anti-imperialism because that rarely speaks to their personal material conditions (and Americans aren't particularly interested in other countries to begin with).
The problem is that if you talk to some non-socialist about China they don't actually care either way. It's just not a factor in their day-to-day life. So even if you make great points and they nod along in agreement, none of that really takes root, and all of it can be easily undone by a few CHYNABAD news cycles. It's purely theoretical to them, and on stuff that exists only in a theoretical vacuum you can't compete with the vast media apparatus that unabashedly supports the State Department. You see this all the time with libertarians -- you have good conversations with them about the evils of U.S. interventions, but then they'll lap up so much "scary foreign country is now the devil" propaganda (especially regarding socialist states) that they'll wind up supporting all sorts of imperialist policies.
But if you turn them into socialists first? Then there's a wealth of anti-imperialist literature that comes with the socialist canon. Then the hardline anti-communism that permeates American culture softens or disappears entirely, which prevents backsliding as soon as there's a big media push to demonize some socialist country. Then they become comfortable with giving a shit about people they'll never meet.
I'm unconvinced. Even the so-called socialists today help demonize China. They end up becoming even more fervent demonizers if anything.
Well, no. About the only people calling out anti-China propaganda in the U.S. are socialists. Not all socialists are calling it out, but the only ones calling it out are socialists.
Jeffrey Sachs isn't a socialist and he was calling it out. There was a thread on r/worldnews about the US being the greatest threat to democracy the other day. I checked some of the profiles of people calling it out and many of them didn't seem socialist.
Okay, setting aside absolutes: you're far more likely to find socialists calling this out than non-socialists. And as I outlined above, I'm a lot more confident that socialists aren't going to backslide as soon as the next breathless report comes out.
What I fear is that in creating this "10 million mass", you end up not creating anti-imperialists, but more fervent ideological enemies to China. You turn an apolitical lib into a "socialist" but in so doing create an ideological cold warrior that's far more useful to imperialists. If I had to choose if some lib were to remain apolitical or turn into a breadtube type, I'd rather they remain passive and apolitical.
Apolitical folks are often at least supportive of imperialism, though -- they're not political, but they'll participate in all sorts of patriotic stuff precisely because they believe that transcends ordinary politics. They'll cheer on the flag at the 4th of July and support the troops and casually demonize The Bad Countries if only because "America, fuck yeah" is such an easy, uncontroversial position that doesn't even require any conventional politics to hold.
We're not going to get to anti-imperialism through political ignorance and apathy. And I don't see how making someone a socialist focused on domestic issues will automatically make them an ideological cold warrior on foreign issues. That just doesn't add up. There's all sorts of anti-imperialist material they'll at least run into when reading up on socialism, and there are all sorts of anti-imperialist socialists they'll start to hear more frequently.
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