Despite the name, I really like Trae Crowder, the LIBERAL Redneck. He talks about the south and how it isn't all that bad, and quite frankly I agree with him.
- The south is the most diverse region in the US
- 35% of the LGBT community in the US lives in the south
- Texas, for example, is actually a pretty blue red state, and Georgia flipped as of recently. Sure, Georgia will flip right back, but it shows that these places are not lost causes.
- Virginia has pretty consistently flipped, and it was once a confederate state
- Voter suppression is the enemy here.
Don't get me wrong, I know electoralism will not save us, but it is at least a sign of changing attitudes. So what has been the best way to get people to come around?
not really red state but in a red county
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be a cute white het couple
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have the man be muscular and confident
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everyone now agrees with you. its important to have the girl nod and point and add in little interjections, thats my job!
legit we dont even fluff our shit up we are just like 'yep we're commies and youll love us, god bless guns, agriculture, and redistribution of wealth from billionaire to poor'. convinced plenty of libertarians that commies arent bad. weirdly, theyre the easiest to do this with. might not change them into being leftists but it does get them thinking / not showing up to protests against you
edit: or in the case of my bf, he got his manager to scab on his boss and aid a unionization effort after we invited him to dinner :lenin-shining:
im the sneaky trans communist tradwife those conservatives warned you about. i am absolutely dropping cleveland steamers in baptist church womens bathrooms
we got this :left-unity-3:
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Poor rural people have way more in common with PoC than they do with middle class white people in their own communities. You can even see this in the social dynamics of urban factories where a significant number of their workers come from rural counties and the "inner city". It's literally just politics and a lack of social awareness that creates the rift.
I live in a horrifyingly red state. My family is a complete lost cause. Partly because they live so far out in the woods they're insulated from actually interacting with society, and party because they're white reactionaries with heads full of facebook qanon memes and they own stupid small businesses. I'm never winning them over and at best I can just make them confused or angry.
My coworkers are another story. I've had to win them over during unionization efforts. I've never been fully successful, but I've really tried and have won over some more conservative coworkers for impromptu collective bargaining. We've still won over things like PTO and raises, even if we've never been able to get a petition to the NLRB.
Most successful strategy has been keeping them focused enough to forget about their conservative hang-ups. Most conservatives in the US get their ideology primarily from TV news and Facebook memes and thus have very short attention spans. When something practical happens, like a coworker asks them to unionize, it doesn't fit precisely into their reactionary culture war gibberish. So keeping them focused on the practical matters at hands seems to make their stupid meme culture war shit evaporate so long as they're kept focused. Basically, conservatives sometimes forget they're even conservatives as long as their in-group words or issues aren't spoken and their immediate material concerns are the focus.
Part two, if they do start to bring up culture war gibberish, the only technique I've found to work is shame them into shutting up. Get your organizing group to express disappointment with them, or get everyone to tell them their culture war stuff is a waste of time. We've got organizing to do, petitions to sign, we don't have time to talk about how Trump actually won in 2020 or how your kid is brainwashed at school. We're here at work now doing organizing, so get with the picture.
Like that. That works really well if you have at least 5 people all saying the same thing and you bring it up over and over. Eventually they get the message. They don't stop being conservative reactionary fuck-heads, but they eventually learn to shut up. Which is good enough if you're doing something like union organizing.
Part three, this is the less reliable method and depends entirely on circumstances. If the conservative in question knows and respects a person who is LGBTQ, or is a leftist, or an immigrant, or someone else they otherwise hate, they will temper aspects of that particular bigotry. Like if they have a gay relative, or an immigrant spouse, or whatever. They will often have a slightly less bigoted stance, or just keep their bigoted shit inside their own head and not out their mouths. Some of my coworkers respect me enough, and I'm openly non-binary, so during our unionization efforts I could mention stuff I knew would needle them, like how we needed to put in LGBTQ protections into a union contract, and they would nod along. Because they knew they didn't want to piss me off, I was respected enough in their view.
So yeah, that's been my experiences. Probably won't apply to everyone, but hope it helps.
:zizek-ok: Interacting with the real world to lift the veil of ideology. Excellent.
this would work up to the point of defining what corruption is
like my idiot family believes corruption is when the government isn't 100% Republicans and a Christian theocracy
you could always try to outflank them on the religion front. make a strong, jesus-backed case for [good thing] and you might see some of them shift a bit. it helps to know the bible better than they do (which is usually trivial)
I've gotten some headway occasionally with folk outside my family by appealing to their religious sentiments. There's a lot there concerning basic human dignity, respect, morality. It can be a starting point with a lot of people and I'd encourage everyone here to not simply dismiss a person's religious faith when talking to them. Basic respect of people should include their religious sentiments, although without budging on LGBTQ rights.
My family however believes in the prosperity gospel and they listen to Joel Osteen. They effectively worship Mammon. The actual word of Jesus is less important to them than the perceived word of Jesus as filtered through whatever they personally feel is true. Their heads are full of demons.
Protestant work ethic and all that.
:cringe: you have my deepest sympathies. i'm sorry you have to be exposed to that. yeah i certainly can't claim it's always or even usually effective, but it's worth trying (in my estimation ofc)
oh no for sure, i only meant that it's a viable vector of approach. it's always going to be a long shot to deprogram people like that, but if there's even a small chance and you don't have to sacrifice anything to take it, you may as well, you know? :vivian-shrug:
Talk about guns and that every American should be able to safely handle and use them.
This is a perspective from a 6'2 220 lbs fella so I'd take caution openly talking about this stuff unless you're in a group setting with comrades or can defend yourself. I'm not trying to paint southerners as bloodthirsty rednecks but it's still dangerous for anyone who isn't cishet and white.
The conditioning is a mix of "chip on the shoulder" and independent frustration so it ends up pretty fucking volatile.
I've had a lot of success with firearm talk and making sure everyone around me that is listening understands that I don't treat them like a toy. This lends a bit of credibility and respect. I promise you, anyone that gives a shit about firearms will be relieved that someone isn't fucking childish about firearms in the room.
"Dude, you're worth way more than that don't let anyone treat you like shit. Get paid more." has had moderate success. I remember when someone told me that I'm worth more than I believe I am and it meant the world to me. I've been making a habit of reminding people just how much they are worth even outside leftist talk. Even the most emotionally hardened men I've had a talk with can be susceptible to this and it creates a positive "vulnerability" (hope this doesn't sound sinister) that can open up. Mileage may vary here but I love it when it works. Makes for more genuine conversation.
The hardest part about the above statement is getting people to give a shit about other people enough to help one another, though. I can tell people they have so much worth as a human being but the dong-shaped state deep fryer brain worms are so damn impossible to break through sometimes. Seriously, I've made decent strides toward talking about leftist ideals but it all goes out the window when you suggest that we should extend ourselves to uplift others when able. I just wanna rage scream in private when it happens. I honestly don't know what to do here except try to find more angles and set a good example.
I've lived in the south for 75% of my childhood and adult life. Looking back at life with a different lens has made me realize that there CAN be a lot of good here but it'll be difficult as fuck.
From limited interactions I have had what works very well is that you appeal to their cynical side.
For example, I believe I at least got one right wing co-worker I knew to actually consider the concept of universal healthcare. I started by outlining it as a matter of simple economics, by explaining to them that when they need surgery, that is an inelastic demand. (A key thing you need to do is always relate something directly to them). So I offer him an example of him needing surgery for cancer. With private healthcare, what incentive do they have to make it cheap? He needs it regardless. His need is being leveraged against him. So I then explain that when the industry in completely public its only goal is to provide healthcare. With private healthcare its first goal is to make profit. A key thing I also said is that there is an endless number of ways to try to scrounge for profit, why should his sickness be one of them?
I also pointed out that he was basically a slave because he is dependent on his job, which I could tell actually cut deeper than I had anticipated because he kind of looked away in deep thought.
To his credit, he was more open an respectful to other ideas than you normally would expect from a right winger. That could have been because he respected me but who is to say, I left the job so I don't work with him anymore.
You need to sell them on matters of personal autonomy, freedom, and power. They always believe that these are being taken away from them, but the reality is they never had them in the first place (Assuming they are working class right wing).
A friend of mine frequently loves to talk to and argue with right leaning people he meets, and something he feels he has noticed is that working class conservatives actually are closer to class consciousness than liberals are. If you have a conservative that is actually going to listen what a communist has to say, they may find themselves in an identity crisis because they will have a hard time disagreeing with your points and seeing a political framework they have never seen before, it just needs to be pitched correctly by re-arranging their views instead of trying to outright refute them. But to get them to a point where they will listen to you, you need to lean into their already established feelings, and this can be as easy as saying you hate liberals. I think this usually gives them a pause of curiosity, because their exposure to politics has been nothing but binary, so suddenly you are not the enemy anymore and they want to know more.
Granted, this isn't going to always work as many right wing nut jobs are too far gone to even entertain new views unless their most recent fuhrer told them to.
"this can be as easy as saying you hate liberals. I think this usually gives them a pause of curiosity, because their exposure to politics has been nothing but binary, so suddenly you are not the enemy anymore and they want to know more."
this is too true
that's a big part of how I got switched. I despised the impotence of 'liberals' and all their fake pandering while they do nothing about an issue, but the only alternative to them that I knew was the right wing, so that's almost where I ended up.
I can't say about the US, but here in rural regions, for economics I talk about workplace democracy and community.
For social stuff, I appeal to their sense of fairness, for instance, for trans rights I appeal to their sense of not kicking a little guy when they're down.
Admittedly Australia is a bit more egalitarian in our cultural base, but not that much so. I can see framing stereotypical southern values of civility and hospitality, for instance, in a leftist framework.
Plugging Left Reckoning for marxist analysis of conservative/rural talking points.
My brother only started being skeptical about the usefulness of the free market after losing money in the stock market and getting denied a meaningful raise while his company kept "restructuring" during record profits.
