I fucking hate living here. The culture is poison. The economy is a fucking disaster. The education is designed to leave a huge portion of the country illiterate. Every single atom of it is white supremacist. The land is all stolen. The capitalists are completely above the law. Fuck cars. Fuck America,
The most insidious aspect of America (to me at least) is that whenever I voice these same exact concerns, most people treat me like an escaped lunatic. Hating cars might as well be like saying you hate oxygen. Saying I hate America outright just gives me snarky looks or a chud telling me to leave. Voicing any amount of concern for the homeless makes people wide eyed or dismissive. Saying I hate cops makes everyone go into panic mode and start dialing 911.
This whole country is like a psychology experiment designed to produce as much paranoia and alienation as possible. The vast majority of people I interact with either have no clue what I'm talking about when I voice my concerns or they're instantly hostile. I'm so frustrated.
Thankfully I’ve managed to get myself into a really left wing bubble. The furthest right wing acceptable opinion in neuroscience academia seems to be “Elizabeth Warren types,” with my being an out and proud communist never prompting more than “Interesting! I’d love to hear more about that!” My white upper class professor was like “don’t call the cops unless you really have to, fuck cops.”
When I say shit like “cars bad” “America bad” “cops bad” “just fucking house the homeless jfc” and even “China handled covid way way better than we did” everyone mostly agrees. It’s pretty cool.
That's why you don't start the conversation with nukes like badmouthing usa or pigs. The trick is replacing the socially unacceptable phrases with the ones that won't get you in trouble. Instead of badmouthing usa, talk about specifically the swamp or the elites.
The most tragic part about all this is how close the qanon is to being right about pretty much everything. I'd say an average qanon has a better grasp of reality than your average lib. Call out shoehorn theory all you want, but at least qanoners understand that the world is fucked up and the rich and the powerful are to blame, they don't think america is already great. It's not their fault hollywood poisoned everyone's brains with fifth grade level propaganda about superheroes and supervillains. Sure, the people in charge are not literally demons and vampires, but are q really wrong about the swamp? Of course not.
Learn how to speak like a normie.
This is a risky move because you can easily end up confirming and supporting the audience's fascist beliefs. Always, always, always work in a lefty spin on why those actors are destructive and how things should be fixed.
My big thing is to focus on working class internationalism, most chuds I've met will either be receptive or suddenly be on the defensive and insecure trying to explain why an international movement against the ruling class is bad and only "real Americans" can save the world from the elite they vaguely recognize as the enemy. At that point it's easy to push them to reveal their mask off fascism and they will get embarrassed and stop talking.
That's pretty awesome, I've never tried that tactic. What do you usually lead with?
Start by quickly emphasizing the existence of a global elite/ruling class, which most will agree with, and then explain why a global elite requires a global response that will involve every worker. You can even call them the liberal elite and say we'll need everyone, from every country, to organize and take down the liberal elite. At this point I'll explain that the source of the elite's power is their control of multinational corporations and make the case for democracy in the workplace (can even be framed in Jeffersonian "consent of the governed" language) and bring it back to why it needs to be an international movement or else we're just making American citizens the new global elite to lord over the rest of the world. If they are ok with that outcome, they're a fascist.
That's the only move you have if you want any chance to actually get to people.
If your goal is to make people agree with you, then step one is finding common ground and agreeing with them on something. You can't start with confrontation and debate people into doing something they don't want to do, that's not how real world works.
Obviously some of their opinions are shit, I'm not telling you to agree on everything. I'm just saying focus on the things you already agree on. I'm sure you can find plenty of things to disagree about even between the left, name more iconic duo than leftism and infighting. That's why it's important to talk about the things you agree on.
That can only work for a long-term engagement, though. Confirming a budding fascist's biases and then not seeing them again is only a 100% bad thing. It would be infinitely better to state a socialist position clearly and plainly, though that doesn't mean announcing death to America lol. Can just talk about how bosses don't actually work 10X harder than workers and workers should have more say over how the business runs, for example.
If it's a co-worker you're going to talk to for months, maybe you could lead with talking about "the swamp", but you're gonna have to find a way to turn the corner from Trump to socialism.
the swamp was just an example to use instead of usa, I didn't mean to always open with specifically the swamp
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I'd still not be surprised if Q wasn't some sort of CIA psyop to channel revolutionary energy into chasing after satanists in the bushes. But yeah, they come closer than your average lib who's totally clueless.
I'm not talking about the leaders of the movement, I'm talking about the normies. They can't all be cia.
Oh yeah, the normies are just fools along for the ride.
Yeah I know how to talk to normies but it's such a daily grind. I'm not even attempting to sway them to my side at this point, I just want to know someone at the very least understands what I mean. It's wearing away at my soul to know people for a little bit just waiting for them to be transphobic, or some other weird reactionary shit to come out of their mouths. Maybe it's at an ignorable level wherever you are, but I live in Texas and the chud, right wing rah rah America shit never stops, 99% of people seem to buy into it, and I'm just tired and need out. I hate keeping up this act and I hate how alone it makes me feel
The grind is so physically exhausting...
know you meant horseshoe but this is bringing to mind some fun meme ideas
How would you deal with someone that's an irl stupidpol/ patsoc type? Agree with them when they use a slur to describe LGBT+ comrades since they are "economic leftists"? The moment you agree with their beliefs just to get them on board you are just allowing the hate to propagate in their mind.
In this scenario you're talking to someone who already has an established political opinion. Talking to these people is basically useless, there's no way to make people replace their political opinions with some other, new alternatives. They can only do it themselves. The focus should always be on the normies who don't care about politics and mostly repeat the things they've picked up through the osmosis without actually caring about what they say. If their heart is in it and there's an argument, there's no point. Now sometimes it's hard to draw a hard line between a normie who might be open to new ideas and a fossilized chud... Well, sorry, but being a leftist is hard work, get used to it.
Not doing anything is always easier than doing something. And doing something without making a mistake isn't easy, either. It all depends on what you're trying to do. If you're just having a broad conversation about nothing, then it doesn't matter if you agree or not, because there are no consequences, really. And if you're talking to a stupidpol person about something specific, then agreeing/ignoring their opinions will depend on what exactly are you doing. How often are you in a situation when a stupidpol person would be willing to do something lefty but only as long as you denounce minorities? It sounds like a weird hypothetical scenario, it that really something that happens often?
For example, if you meet a stupidpol in a homeless shelter and their stupid opinion comes up, what's the context here? Are they going to refuse giving someone food because they have a rainbow flag pin or something? That sounds really strawman-y, I doubt a stupidpol person would go full cartoon supervillain mode and deny them food or something like this. In this hypothetical scenario, it's more likely they'll might just say something stupid but keep doing their job. So just say something back at them and continue doing whatever it is you were both doing, because what you two are doing is probably infinitely more important than an argument about pronouns.
And if the arguments start flying before any actual work even starts, well, we all know how it's going to go. Things will just fall apart and everyone will walk away feeling smug about themselves no matter what either you or I write in this thread.
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We need ways of breaking through the dynamic of how if you say all-American things are bad, you get seen as the bogeyman.
Failed, bankrupt, corrupted, deceptive, shallow.... There are lots of things we can say without outright saying "America bad".