What can we do to change this? I don't think chapo.chat will ever be huge, but it would be nice for it to be consistently active.
What can we do to change this? I don't think chapo.chat will ever be huge, but it would be nice for it to be consistently active.
I’m curious! Are we going to be ashamed of Lenin? I think we treat him fairly.
Which parts do you think are off-putting for your friends? Maybe you’re underestimating them? Give us the reality check
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we have the idea that there’s great idealist distance in time and space for political belief: but people already agree with leftism, they just don’t know it. Anyone is capable of changing their minds to any other position at any point in time. There is no real distance.
We should generally try to position ourselves relative to the truth, not lies, and not waste effort imagining that the same socdem pipeline exists in the same way now that we’re off Reddit.
People will use Chapo.chat if it’s fun and distinct from Reddit, which is miserable and dying, so I think what we should be doing is trying to cultivate a socialist experience to draw out this contradiction. We can be smart/fun proles without the dogmatic elitism of “leftist politics” or any of the angry internet fascist vibes that makes everyone pissed off and guarded.
We can pull people straight from neoliberal and idealist mindsets much faster as the community grows if we give them the materialist truth, which they all want, and which is exclusively ours.
also Chapo.chat seems active to me, but maybe Hot by default would look better to users coming from Reddit?
I don't think this matches reality, and it certainly runs counter to any sort of empirical research on the subject. One example of this is the consistency principle, which has been extensively researched, and shows that people strongly desire to match their beliefs with what they've done or thought in the past. Anecdotally, I'm sure we've all had those conversations where someone agrees with you on every step of the way up to a logical conclusion, but then rejects that conclusion anyway. Shit, this is so common there are at least two memes about it (from Friends and SpongeBob).
We have to put in real effort to change people's minds, and that includes careful consideration of the best ways to pull them leftwards. Too much too fast is a real thing. If you say "Stalin committed literally zero crimes" here you can have a rational discussion about the merits and shortcomings of the USSR; if you say it to anyone who's not an extremely-online leftist they're just going to tune you out.
Okay, fair point, but what if you can completely validate what they’ve done or thought in the past with therapeutic and relativistic psychoanalysis, provide systemic explanations for faults, re-education, pharmacology, changes in material conditions, new social media environments... yes, real effort. Always struggle. Ideas can change quickly.
You can absolutely persuade people -- it just takes time, though, and effort. And throwing them in the deep end (e.g., "Stalin committed literally zero crimes") is a risky strategy at best, and a losing one for most people in most environments.
I absolutely agree.
My favourite part of The Tempest is when the dark sorcerer Prospero drowns all of his magic books.
That’s why we say we treat Stalin and Lenin and Mao fairly. They were all complete fucking assholes. Stalin a lot, Mao probably less so, Lenin barely at all - truly the Gonzalo archetype.
i think a lot of people have stopped coming here, check the megathread comment numbers
People shit on SocDems and DemSocs... but I used to be very reactionary... and the MLs never appealed to me back then, in fact I used to laugh at them and "destroy" them at debates... but the SocDems and the DemSocs got me to change my mind.
The SocDem pipeline is an important part of building the left, or any community... CTH included.
I come here and there are a few shit posts, but it seems like some of the more factionalist members are just too aggressive towards people who may not be as far along as they are.
It serves to drive people away, rather than making them change their minds.
Lenin is a spooky Soviet dictator cartoon villain that most people have never thought of outside of that context.
Real-world Lenin was pretty cool. Which means treating him fairly means saying he was pretty cool.
Saying this guy is pretty cool is jarring to people who've never thought about him outside of a vague cartoony version from old propaganda they consumed when they were kids.
When you link someone a random internet community, the way they consume it is not sitting down and critically analyzing everything they're presented. They skim through things and get a rough impression - what're they talking about, what's the general tone, are they funny, do they roughly agree with me? If the first thing they see is a bunch of things way outside of their weirdness filter / radicalism filter / overton window / whatever you want to call it, then they'll just close the tab and move on with their life (and lower their opinion of the linker a bit).
That’s all in your head, though!
This is the internet. People watch ISIS recruitment videos and you still think being open about support for Lenin is too far for them to go, because they’re so delicate. You don’t actually need a really high IQ or the gentle brain massage of a deceptive multi-year leftist psyop to understand why peasant uprisings are cool.
What kind of argument is that? Yeah somebody watches ISIS recruitment videos. If I link a random person I know to one of those, they're going to call the cops. The fact that people who are comfortable with that content exist doesn't mean they're common.
so I mean obviously the core issue here is that you have some fear people will phone the cops on you for Communism. Fair.
we’re not posting ISIS recruitment videos here and you should be more confident in your fight against liberalism
Communists are not common
What.
your plan to sell Communism by hiding Lenin from the masses is silly.
No I mean... you're just putting random thoughts in my head and not reading what I'm saying.
how else would I be putting thoughts in your head if I didn’t read what you’re saying?
You’re saying Lenin is too scary. For them of course, not you. Can we all tone down the Lenin to make everyone comfortable?
Holy shit work on your reading comprehension.
Accusing me of being uncomfortable with Lenin in the thread where I said he was cool. What the hell.
Maoism is really big on combatting liberalism and psychoanalysis.
When a person walks by and says Lenin is too scary for everyone, he’s telling the truth.
I’m sure you’re comfortable with Lenin, you’re just not listening to him. You have to be open with your views, and militantly so.
The largest communist-leaning internet community that has ever existed was created by making a pipeline that was comfortable to socdems.
Any strategy that revolves around ignoring this fact and doing something else is anti-materialist.
If you start listening to Lenin maybe other people will listen to you about materialism
Socialists have much higher standards for invoking the “materialist argument” - insisting that you can solve a new problem without modifying the old solution isn’t a consistent position and isn’t socialist
No one is saying tone down Lenin. We're saying file the serial numbers off. There's a hostile superstructure and yes openly confronting it is important. But in terms of recruitment we need to get people on board with material substance without associating that substance immediatelt with uncritical support of someone who's been demonised by 100 years of propaganda.
It's not Communism. It's "economic democracy"
It's not revolutionary politics. It's "direct action"
Once they're on board with the basics, you make them look at Cuba and Vietnam, and then slide them into how the USSR was good.
Like, there's a reason it's easier to radicalise with Bread Book than State and Revolution, even if I think the latter is more useful overall.
Yes, perfect!
But let’s be honest: those people are much more mad at Comrade Stalin, revolutionary tyrant, than they are Comrade Lenin, revolutionary founder.
That’s why I was surprised at “Lenin”. Yes. Absolutely re-aestheticize socialism. The USSR is not appealing thanks to propaganda, there’s too much history to explain, and we don’t have the time. It’s not suitable imagery for mass work just yet