I've successfully radicalized my friend group. The last hold out has now asked me to send them videos and let them borrow some books.
Everyday is Agitprop day! I've also now turned all the workers at my job Anti-Police, and now were talking union talk. This would not have been possible without reading the fucking theory. For every question I had an answer, for every skeptic statement I had a response that explained the same thing in a different way.
Read the theory, and if you don't have the time to read, at least familiarize yourself with the key points and most importantly, talk to your friends and co-workers.
Oh, and like our friend and/ or fed, Brace Belsen said, be fucking normal.
*Belden, just now noticed the typo, but ! am too late, the Dark Cowboy will descend upon my apartment in no time. This will be my fina
I've known two groups of people who got radicalized by exposure to me, it's been about a dozen people. The ones who read theory constantly would stay that way. Sometimes they'd outpace me and end up further to the left than I was.
The ones who didn't read theory, or would say it's pointless because they get the idea already, they all deradicalized and got bored after about 3 years. One guy is one of those tradcaths now, another is just a libertarian again but now knows some leftist terminology. Most just became standard libs and got really into Biden.
I don't know what's stronger though. Is it the theory itself that keeps people around? Or are the type of people open to theory more likely to stay socialists? Something something dialectical materialism
Being around communists I think is much better than just reading by yourself, keep the fire going, and be a person of and in the world, people get with it easily.
I really need to step up my reading game, laziness isn't an excuse lol
time to hit more of the books
Agreed. Nice job OP.
Also, one thing to point out is that there's no harm done coming from more :LIB: theory, Thomas Frank is a good start for many a pipeline. Even some fictional books with a socialist leaning are fair game. After all, Atlas Shrugged is a story instead of a novel about how ancapistan rules, actually.
Agreed. Early lib theory can be a great way to trace the development of some modern leftist ideas
Capital vol. 1 (read it a few times with accompanying podcasts, online video lectures, and reading groups)
Most of Marx and Engels, some of it was boring tbh, but important nonetheless.
All of Lenin (fun to read, our boy had bars)
Some Mao
Andreas Malm (HTBUAP, Fossil Capital, and White Skin, Black Fuel)
I'm glad you said that, believe it or not, I haven't read any Fanon, I still have Wretched of the Earth in my shopping cart on thriftboks. I will fix this.
Great read honestly, I have an affinity for Lenin and his works as well, very to the point and somehow still being funny and dunking on people. When talking to working people I try not to get into the weeds too much as to not bore them, many folks are pretty receptive though, and ask you more questions, which we should always try to answer. Don't act like a psycho and start quoting paragraphs to people and you get them to engage willingly and thoughtfully. Don't. Be. Weird. About. It.
In your opinion whats the most important thing you read for radicalizing liberals
There’s more, but hanging around other communists helps absorb the important parts.
Wonderful job large rodent comrade! :Chuck-e-Cheese:
I would like to think that I exert a leftward force on the people in my life, but so often I just get so "frustrated with the stubbornness and obtuseness of non-leftists when posed with leftist ideology, that it just turns into an argument where they're like "clearly neither of us is going to convince the other" :'0
It's so frustrating that "socialism?! Come on, be realistic" is still such a common response, if not totally predominant. Capitalism is so adept at turning off people's brains at keywords that oppose it.
And maybe my emotional response to people not agreeing with socialism is too strong such that it puts people off, idk how to deal with that. I just cut out non-socialists from my life lol, comrades are such easy friends to make
