I met some long time friends for pizza and beer tonight and i thought it was a fun night but right before we parted ways the two of them held an intervention with me. They said i was bringing up "socialist stuff" too much and it was making them depressed. They said to keep the conversation exclusively to things like games and anime. That if i didnt stop they didnt want to be friends anymore. Have you guys/gals/nonbinary pals experienced something like this before?
Yeah. A couple army friends that became cops do not talk to me anymore. Friend from high school became one too and said I was “on the wrong side of history” for being anti cop and a communist. Family too have told me I “think too much” and have “gone off the deep end” because I apply a dialectical/historical materialism analysis on everything now.
At this point I don’t care or mind anymore. The work I do trying to organize and party build is more important than relationships based on being born in a certain area, the imperialist military, and some stemming from blood.
Friend from high school became one too and said I was “on the wrong side of history” for being anti cop and a communist
lmao essentially my experience
“Go on a ride along with me and you’ll see what I deal with every night.” I asked if I could bring my gun for protection for other people against him and he shut that down real fast.
And he is mixed Hispanic and a decent chunk Native American. So it just even more so is like wtf? No understanding of history or materialism at all
I've run into fascist army types who are black and indigenous, they joined the army hoping to police the border with machine guns. People often think imperialism, white supremacy, etc are one sided, but it's more like a ladder. Conservatives love hierarchy.
Paulo Freire for those curious (and the alligator cat, of course)
The work I do trying to organize and party build is more important than relationships based on being born in a certain area, the imperialist military, and some stemming from blood.
It's certainly important, but try to not lose your family. You've only got one, and whatever political disagreements you've had with them, there will quite certainly always remain a certain love for you inside of them.
I'd be careful with this feel good logic, there is quite a difference between cutting relations with a distant reactionary cousin and versus your boomer parents for example. Everyone has their own circumstances but don't put too much faith that fragile family relationships are worth your trouble, if anything I'd say that is just a path to holding yourself hostage to them and their views.
as someone with plenty of dysfunction in the family, I've gotten a lot out of the subverted trope:
"The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb." (the family we forge in life is worth more than the one we are born into).
there is quite a difference between cutting relations with a distant reactionary cousin and versus your boomer parents for example.
Sure, that's true. I assumed he was talking abouthis close relatives.
I do think that the idea that we can easily cut people from our lives (like is propagated in r/relationship_advise, for example, but which is spread much broader), is a sign of something unhealthy. We're social animals, it's not normal behaviour for us to just cut people away like it's nothing. It's a sign of a form of stress and alienation of our natural behaviour, imposed on us by the harsh conditions of capitalist relations of production.
I think I'm eventually going to get canned in my band because I'm not a shitlib who thinks Kamala is a girl-boss.
by some blessing my repeatedly calling her "Copmala" took off with my friends during the primary and they still do it so I can shit on her without the lib patrol giving me a stop-and-moralize.
A friend of mine survived a stroke and got super religious. Later he started messaging all his friends to inquire if they believed in god. Anyone who said no was unfriended. When Q rolled around he went all in. I consider being unfriended a blessing.
Haven’t lost any close friend for specifically being “too political” yet but the capitalist ones have hinted that they think I sound like a broken record. They can talk about cool billionaires all day every day but you talk about exploitation a few times and it’s all you talk about.
Regurgitating the dominant narrative is unpolitical to the popular consciousness, may as well be invisible. Briefly voicing a counter narrative is extremely political and tasteless, do you even have other interests?
Sometimes people just wanna hang out and not talk about the fact that civilization is gonna collapse on our lifetimes. If I want to keep being friends with them, I tend to respect their wishes.
fuck. right now I'm moping about the closest friend i ever had that i lost because she insisted that i go vote for joe biden. fuck man. shit hurts
The friendship broke because of a lot of reasons. Long story short, I basically adopted her as a mom friend and trusted her judgement in choosing what was best for my life. That ultimately broke down in 2020 when I started drifting really hard to the left and she kept shaming me that I didn't vote for Joe Biden. I could articulate this a LOT better if I weren't drunk as shit right now, but I trusted that she was right and I was absolutely shook when I saw her take the definitively wrong stance on something. (Saying Joe Biden stood for women's rights, in this case). I used to trust everything she said but after that I couldn't take anything she said seriously. We were both so angry at eachother and refused to admit any wrong so we just... drifted apart
And fuck man. that HURTS. i am 100% sure that leaving her behind was the best choice for me but it doesn't change the fact that it's just emotionally painful. it was a toxic relationship where I ultimately needed her approval on everything but fuck man, I was her best friend for like 3 years and I don't know what to do anymore
It probably doesn't help that I'm listening to verifiably sad music :tm: but fuck
That seems like it might be mendable to me at this point, might be worth sharing your perspective with some examples of egregious shit Biden has done as "the stuff you were concerned about"
Honestly it's not. I don't want spill my whole life story on leftist shitpost board but tl;dr it was for the best. Not being around her made me feel better about myself and there were a lot of problems with our relationship that ultimately stemmed from her. The only way it could work is if I demanded that she change several fundamental things about herself and that's not going to happen to someone I haven't spoke to in almost a year if I couldn't have done it when she was one of my closest friends. There were a lot of problems with us beyond her being a lib that probably aren't mendable and almost certainly aren't worth trying to mend. As much as it hurts, it was for the better, and I think that's part of why it hurts so bad.
I didn't lose anyone necessarily, but people were shocked that I didn't vote. So many people don't see all the things he's doing wrong too
I've lost a few friends that were well-off and preferred not to think about anything political too deeply, but I've also gained some good commie friends through organizing with them.
Wax on, wax off.
My closest friends and family are all left-liberals who are ready to admit that we are fucked in many ways. They aren’t ready to make that final leap into Marxism however. One of my high school friends is visiting now and got pretty upset when we talked about politics. Again, he admits that everything is fucked, but Stalin and Mao killed a bajillion people and North Korea is bad, so what are we supposed to do? He also claims to live with a bunch of commie housemates who are driving him crazy, but I’m not sure that they’re actually communists. Like I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they all voted for Warren or something, in which case they would probably be making me insane too.
This might be because I barely talk to anyone in the first place, but only one person ever has picked up on my political stances without me overtly telling them. Everyone else tells me some mixture of "you think too much" or "haha you're joking about China, right?"
Almost no one around where I live has anything close to a recognition of leftist jargon, nor does anyone here recognize that socialist = advocacy for the working class. Political jargon here is caught up primarily on things mentioned a lot in media, so being on one side or another of BLM, liking Trump himself as a person, or if you like guns. That's about it.
Talking about common socialist points, like anti-imperialism, having more power at one's job, having access to more public services, those don't track as political issues for most people I interact with. The jargon and language simply isn't recognized. The anti-imperialist stuff sounds like absolutely nothing at all. Advocating for working class control confuses most people on the basis it's assumed you can simply change your job or start or your business if you don't like working for someone. Advocating for more public services is similarly confusing because it's assumed we already have a glut of too many public services to be viable.
I'll fully admit this might just be because most people I talk to on a daily basis are my coworkers and they might not be an accurate sample of the whole population.
Saved, thanks for writing this out so well. Its exactly how I'm misunderstood by most of the people I know.
- Fortunatly it's just two people in the group, so whatever they might decide, don't give up on the rest of them.
- It's easy to become depressed if you think about the climate, war etc. but if you're actively engaged in one way or another in campaigns, it's much harder to get lost in those feelings yourself and you can more easily counter those feelings in others with a concrete ask to be part of that campaign.
I don't know what the context was, or the tone in which those people responded to you, but if they lament certain results of capitalist society, they might even be prime targets for recruitment in such campaigns.
Semi-related: you'll probably never reach people with a "Support the DPRK!"-campaign, but you will with the ones that are closer to their direct experience, like the M4M4A-marches which were just happening. I found this short text to be very helpfull in deciding priorities in my activism.
Semi-related: you’ll probably never reach people with a “Support the DPRK!”-campaign
I dunno, I usually find it pretty easy to convince people that we're the aggressors. Not so much that they're a model to follow, but that our sanctions are hurting them and that their nuclear weapons program is obviously a deterrent.
I would take your friend's advice and don't take it personally. Hang out with them again and feel free to defend your politics if someone else brings it up. Just don't be the one to bring it up first.
Yah my friends try to remain nonpolitical by reddit standards in that they’ll blame the CPC for something but they don’t attempt to explore their ideology. They’re good people tho, and I reign in my politics in order to keep the convo from being too serious. I’ve made some edgy comments about :melon-musk: and they try to steer away from the subject. I can’t be rambling about the CIA or Xi or whatever all day, that’s pathological. We’ve drifted apart for work reasons rather than for political reasons
ALL. THE. FUCKING. TIME.
I'm vegan and a tankie, so I'm destined to be alone forever.
Edit: sorry to be so direct, but I'm fucking drunk. People don't like to feel wrong about stuff. Cognitive dissonance is, sadly, a real fucking thing. Even just being a person with higher ideals threatens then greatly. I don't need to talk about communism or animal suffering. Just me being in the same room puts as libs makes them super uncomfortable.
no bro, preach. im dying for an IRL person to talk to about this shit with, but my partner is already vegan, getting him deeper into leftism is going to feel like yet another set of shackles on mental health.
I'd say, play the long game and don't expect him to be reading Mao tomorrow. His workplace is the best educator and will do the heavy lifting for you. As long as he's an actual worker and he's not doing anything PMC-ish, he's going to see first hand how he's being exploited. He's going to see how fucking shit management and owners are.
My partner was pretty centrist at first. I didn't push it or anything, just talked how terrible my boss is and how fucked up the rich are. Movies at home are more socialist, like Boon Joon-ho. Six years later, and she's wishing that Stalin was back.
Honestly veganism is harder, as there's no direct connection with our lives. So you got the tougher part down.
hahah yeah
it's wild how much being vegan is stigmatized. I've literally never asked my family to go vegan, just simply explained my reasons or fired back at misinformation when they bring them up first, and i stopped getting invited to family events. i guess it's easier to leave out a family member than find a vegan alternative and feel judged, i guess.
WTF, your family stopped inviting you. That's messed up. I think there's other things going on with them. I'm sorry for you.
They won't admit to anything going on, and won't even admit to it being about veganism despite this only happening after i became vegan and them still making defensive or snide comments about vegans sometimes lol. Fucking sucks because they're also decently left, so you'd think they could at least be chill, but nah they went straight into reactionary defensive territory and now posting memes about how avoiding plastic use isn't worth it because bezos generates more pollution or whatever. Which might be true but avoiding single use-plastics is still a good thing to do???
Also, all their grocery stores nearby (less than 3 min drive) have tofu for cheaper than animal products, and a few other fully vegan alt products including plant milks and of course, the classic beans and rice. They also know how to cook, have a fully stocked kitchen, and like to experiment with new recipes. I have observed them making several vegan recipes without realizing, such as stuff with beans or spaghetti & marinara, fried bread. So they could easily choose to prepare me (if not everyone) a vegan meal and invite me to any of these events again. They have not. I think they keep waiting me to stop being vegan someday but it's been 6 years at this point and i'm still healthier than ever and more committed to animal rights than ever so....
What hurts most of all isn't the being silently pushed out, it's that people i thought were cool suddenly acting like shitstains. I have a other non-vegan friends who don't act like this, we just kinda don't talk about it except making sure i have food to eat. Which honestly at this point i'm grateful for. But yeah I just didn't expect my family to be the ones who were acting shitty.
So the number one most anti vegan person in my life is my brother. When my mum told me that he tried to go vegan cold turkey in his teens but couldn't, everything came together. He couldn't deal with him not being able to go vegan. Honestly I couldn't care less, and I'd love to support him. But sibling rivalry is a thing.
People enjoy their food a lot, and it pains them to give it up. This isn't your fault.
Anyhow, your actual fucking family not inviting you over is nuts. Honestly I'd connect and tell them your feelings. It's seriously terrible what they're doing.
Anyhow, thanks for doing what you're doing for the animals :avoheart:
Aww thanks for being so nice. Yeah, i tried to talk to them and they denied it and then acted like i was a being a problem for bringing up not being invited. One of them actually said i was treating him like a "punching bag" for bringing it up. lol so yeah i basically cut off most contact after that because holy fuck, and my mental health improved dramatically.
That sounds super problematic. The gaslighting is huge here. People with low emotionally maturity get super defensive when you try to talk about stuff. Honestly, the fucked up thing is that he probably convinced himself that he is the victim here.
I don't know what your family dynamic is, but it's obviously unhealthy. Maybe you'll start to figure shit out as you progress through life. Honestly I don't talk to my family at all, I don't recommend it but it works well for my mental health.
setting boundaries has worked at least somewhat thankfully. Thanks for your kind words <3
yep they act all attacked and get defensive about their morality and it's just like bruh that's not me that's your inner guilt you haven't fully justified yet. Once a radlib tried to claim that it's imperialist to be vegan when I casually brought up I don't eat meat which was pretty rich coming from a proud Biden voter lmao.
