I am sorry if this is the wrong comm, please LMK and I will delete the post. Anyway, I was going to put this in the families with weird politics thread because his politics are WEIRD. So, for some context, he gets his politics exclusively from youtube, and not even educational lefty youtube like hakim or second thought or yugopnik; I mean exclusively video essayists, reactors, and otherwise general breadtube personalities and REFUSES to read theory. Every time I suggest a book, "nah." So I tried getting him at least to watch second thought. "Nope, I'm good." Fuck. At this point i was just kinda done as we'd been arguing about this for a while so I just gave up. There's the context, so enjoy an extensive list of stories about our many """pleasant""" political conversations. (oh yeah, we live in america btw)

the first interaction starts with when I was a baby leftist, and at the dawn of his baby leftism. This took place when we were both teenagers. I'm just going to act out the conversation in line breaks. "12" is me and "B" is my brother. I probably won't do this for every story but this is just a long one so typing it out like a book would take forever

12: Yeah, when i move to [capital of our state] I'm going to join a communist party, i -

B: tankie.

now this was the most smug and annoying i have ever heard somebody say that. it looked like he revelled in saying it. he felt every ounce of that superiority.

12: what do you mean? what's a tankie

B: it's a word for commies. y'know, like tanks in tianenmen square.

12: and being a communist is a bad thing why? you're a leftist, right?

B: Dude, I'm a socialist, under socialism you own the factory. under communism, you're the factory worker making nikes in china.

12: Do you even know what communism is?

B: Yeah. It's when the government owns the means of production.

12: that's not true. at all. that's a form of collective ownership under socialism, government ownership. communism is the stage after socialism in which class has been eliminated.

B: No, it's not. Look, like Hasan said it's nice to be a socialist but communism is just too crazy and tyrannical. there's literally suicide nets bro. don't you even know bla bla bla

It went on like that for a while, back and forth. but just to set the scene, he called himself a democratic socialist from then on.

Anyway more recently (year or two ago) we were arguing with my dad (big lib) about socialism, and how capitalism is inherently flawed. He was being really over simplistic but i just assumed he'd come to his senses since he was a teen and was just dumbing it down for our dad. that's when a point came up about something to do with private property, when my brother said, "I don't want to abolish ALL private property, just the main important ones like power and sewage and the like. but that'd make a communist like blakeus12 puke." Ok, what the hell man. He said it with VENOM in is blood, like Kevin McCarthy himself was walking amongst us on this plane of existence. I was kinda stunned but laughed it off and continued arguing with our dad. Afterwards I asked him about it and he now knows what c*mmunism is, proper. Stateless, classless, moneyless society where all labor is socially necessary. I asked why he didn't want that, and he said human nature. I explained that that's what socialism is for, to help adjust people to a more collectivist system and break off the social conditioning that living in a capitalist society brings. and he actually agreed.

12: great, so you're a communist now?

B: no.

12: what, why?

B: communism is always tyrannical, like the soviet union.

12: USSR wasn't a fully communist society, they still had a state, class, and money, etc

B: what are you talking about? No, I'm looking it up.

He found a youtube video, "what is communism" or something to which the first line was "according to how communism works in marxist theory, real, actual communism has never existed." To which he said "this is bullshit" and turned it off.

So there's the meat and potatoes of our major scuffles about leftism, enjoy a lightning round with his surprisingly even more out there takes:

• “China is LITERALLY hyper capitalist”

• “You wanna know how brutal Stalin was? He said ‘one death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic.’ Thats how literally BRUTAL he was.” (He says this any time he gets an excuse to, whether who he’s talking to is in favor of Stalin or thinks Stalin == redfash tankee gorillion dead

• Anytime China is brought up even remotely positively, he just brings up s*icide nets.

• “If you can’t have sympathy for [the tianenmen square protestors], your just a champagne socialist. How can you be a socialist and not have sympathy for protestors.” (He said this because I said I wouldn’t burn somebody alive and hang their naked corpse to a bus. “If you had the oppurtunity to do that to kyle rittenhouse at the blm protests, wouldn’t you???” - my brother)

• “Yeah sure mao was cool i guess. He was kind of a totalitarian though. If only he let people think for themselves”

• “Internet historian isn’t a nazi for having 1488 and stuff in his videos. Maybe he just made a really bad nazi joke.” when i said hiding 1488 jokes in your videos isnt just a bad nazi joke, it’s cleary a dogwhistle, he said “you’re too internet leftist for me, man.” Ironic, coming from the person who gets all of his politics from youtube

• Tried to join the air force to get his pilot liscense for free (he can afford it very comfortably, so this was nowhere near necessary)

• “[owner of local restaurant] is not bourgeois. He isn’t a billionaire.” He didn’t budge on this one despite me pointing out he owns a small part of the means of production and employs wage workers.

• Does not follow BDS even remotely. When we were out on the town and I checked a business on the BDS list (it was on there, i didnt buy from it), he said “oh brother. Here we go again. You should have left your phone at home.”

• “Yeah, the dems do nothing for the people, joe biden is a genocidal freak and just as right wing as trump.” next day “you better vote for biden this year.”

• Joined the DSA (yikes) yet has only ever attended one event. It’s not like he’s busy or anything, he just never did.

• After we got home from picketing with some striking workers, he declared that “we are the most progressive people in [our area].” I don’t even need to explain why that’s incorrect and self centered.

So, that was a bit of a ride. I can’t think of anything else right now, but off the top of my head that’s what i could remember. Thanks everyone for reading and have a great day, comrades. Sorry for bringing this upon you and possibly ruining your day.