Forgive me, but I'm reading through r/qanoncasualties, I've been watching the QAnon documentary on HBO, and I've listened to QAnon Anonymous for at least a year. I find the subject totally fascinating. QAnon is like this twisted mirror image of socialism.
Basically it looks like this creepy fucking boomer named Jim Watkins and his weird shitposter son Ron created QAnon to bring more traffic to 8chan, which they own but which has never made any money for them. (I'm far from an expert on QAnon but the documentary makes a compelling case, let's say.)
I've seen the first three episodes of the documentary, where people are starting to literally kill each other over QAnon, and the Watkins' boys just don't fucking care. This may even go beyond CIA-level psychopathy, or is at least at a similar level. Meanwhile, r/qanoncasualties has story after story of friends and relatives losing their fucking minds, their jobs, all their relationships, and often killing themselves because of QAnon. It's just absolutely insane.
I've also spent maybe about two years "studying" (listening to podcasts on) Zizek and started drifting toward Marxism at around the same time a lot of these people were turning to QAnon. I haven't lost any close friends or family because of this, but it's definitely strained some relationships. (All of my close friends and relatives are either liberals, Berners, social democrats, or even beyond.)
When normies or liberals talk to QAnon people, they clearly think that the QAnon people are insane (although to some extent the average American believes in at least some parts of QAnon—including me, if Jeffrey Epstein counts as being part of QAnon, although I can't recall ever hearing a QAnon person mention him).
When normies or liberals talk to Marxists, does the same reaction take place? Do they just deploy horseshoe theory on us? Would they prefer to talk to QAnon folks over Marxists? Do they think that Marxists, who point to systems as the main issue, are really the same as QAnon folks, who blame all the woes of the world on a shadowy cabal of Satanic pedophiles?
To sum up: how do your non-Marxist / non-anarchist friends and family treat you when you talk about politics?
I'm sure a lot of normies do consider us on the same level as Qanon in terms how they view left wingers as a whole, but the one thing that separates us from the q people in my experience is whether or not you can hold a conversation on anything other than politics. All the Q people I know and have seen online center everything in their life around Q shit. My family member who is into it cannot talk about anything else at all. Every convo has to have a reference to Hillary or Bill Clinton, to Joe Biden, to FEMA, Obama, autism vaccines, etc. And that's what seems to drive people away. I can pretend to be normal when politics isn't relevant and shit so most people just think I'm a weird anarchist or hippie rather than a wackjob.
Note to self: talk about something other than Marxism.
For real. This is why a lot of marxists like to (or are forced to since you have to be a well-versed theoretician to defend your ideological position in the face of the lazy "lol vuvuzuella gommunism no food" arguments that plague your daily life) read and study diverse shit since it helps make for nifty conversations beyond water-cooler small-talk.
Trust me it makes for hilarious conversations when you're well-versed on how the British royal family's genealogy is absolutely fucked up and can dunk on how Queen Lizzie lost not just a husband, but also a cousin.
:side-eye-1: :side-eye-2:
And if you're going to talk about politics, as tempting as it can be, don't just reduce everything down to problems with capitalism. Acknowledge problems that aren't just capitalism, and when you do mention it, mention it, don't go off on a rant about it (unless the person you're talking to is ready for that, which your boomer parents and your non-fuckup siblings probably aren't). Most people are going to move one step at a time.
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