I don't like the way people on the internet define radical and how they think about converting people to leftism.
A person who is really into 4chan content listens to a podcast and they consider that de-radicalizing. Changing from pepe memes to gritty memes isn't a political shift. It's just changing something you think because all your thoughts come from (social) media consumption.
If you have two people, who go to the same job, behave the same way, but on the way to work one listens to Jordan Peterson while the other listens to Citations Needed, that is not some grand political difference. If the Citations Needed person convinces the other to start listening to Citations Needed, the other isn't a communist who's been de-radicalized from Nazism. They took their big open brain and dumped better content into it. They'll be more informed/educated and have better opinions, but the political part isn't there.
Of course it's preferable to have a society of people with better opinions, but that doesn't equate to political action.
Now if the Christchurch shooter becomes a devout BLM activist because they listened to a podcast, you got me. But that doesn't happen because a person like that is taking political action and it goes way beyond just their media preferences.
What radicalizes you is what drives you to political action. It doesn't matter if everyone listens to the right podcast if they don't do anything. And I know people will argue that we should at least start with media consumption if nothing else, and that's better than nothing. But that's not my point. My point isn't that we should either kill all billionaires or do nothing. My point is to change how you conceptualize political action and what it means to radicalize.
I think if people are really honest with themselves and are very attentive to who they are, then they'll realize that they didn't become a communist because someone on a podcast told them to. It's that they happened to start consuming left wing media while they were already being radicalized by other things.
In a country where most people don't do political action outside of voting, I can see where the misconception happens. Because the forces that radicalize people act on them but they still don't do anything. So radicalization, to them, has to be about how you feel while doing nothing. Otherwise nobody is radical and that's a bummer.
I... have a hard time imagining American alphabet soups abandoning the nearly unlimited power and wealth offered to them by the status quo, but who knows what would happen when shit actually hits the fan?
I don't like the way people on the internet define radical and how they think about converting people to leftism.
A person who is really into 4chan content listens to a podcast and they consider that de-radicalizing. Changing from pepe memes to gritty memes isn't a political shift. It's just changing something you think because all your thoughts come from (social) media consumption.
If you have two people, who go to the same job, behave the same way, but on the way to work one listens to Jordan Peterson while the other listens to Citations Needed, that is not some grand political difference. If the Citations Needed person convinces the other to start listening to Citations Needed, the other isn't a communist who's been de-radicalized from Nazism. They took their big open brain and dumped better content into it. They'll be more informed/educated and have better opinions, but the political part isn't there.
Of course it's preferable to have a society of people with better opinions, but that doesn't equate to political action.
Now if the Christchurch shooter becomes a devout BLM activist because they listened to a podcast, you got me. But that doesn't happen because a person like that is taking political action and it goes way beyond just their media preferences.
What radicalizes you is what drives you to political action. It doesn't matter if everyone listens to the right podcast if they don't do anything. And I know people will argue that we should at least start with media consumption if nothing else, and that's better than nothing. But that's not my point. My point isn't that we should either kill all billionaires or do nothing. My point is to change how you conceptualize political action and what it means to radicalize.
I think if people are really honest with themselves and are very attentive to who they are, then they'll realize that they didn't become a communist because someone on a podcast told them to. It's that they happened to start consuming left wing media while they were already being radicalized by other things.
In a country where most people don't do political action outside of voting, I can see where the misconception happens. Because the forces that radicalize people act on them but they still don't do anything. So radicalization, to them, has to be about how you feel while doing nothing. Otherwise nobody is radical and that's a bummer.
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Oh, THAT'S why trying to explain this shit to wealthy old retired people is useless.
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I... have a hard time imagining American alphabet soups abandoning the nearly unlimited power and wealth offered to them by the status quo, but who knows what would happen when shit actually hits the fan?