cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4033644
The vast majority of liberals who ever comment posts on lemmygrad and hexbear are of the insufferable variety while the ones who are willing to have actual conversations are a very silent faction that we see verry rarely. I think we should find a way to encourage the latter to engage more with us while keeping out the smuglords.
Of course, keeping out smuglords all the while making sure that as much good faith peoples see us could prove difficult and would demand to have a strict management to make it possible given the current conditions off the lemmyverse but I think it would be worth it.
One way I think we could go about it could be to make a pined megathread every week/month depending on what is the most convenient that would be meant specifically for curious liberals to come talk to us. It should have strict healthy debate rules to keep smuglords out and curb excesses from those of us who tend to be too harsh toward even good faith lib, the subjects doesn't need to be strictly political, in fact I believe that more casual conversation and memes should be encouraged to break with the more serious talk from time to time, we should also encourage varying conversation topics with more economics and political theory as our conversation with liberals tend to center around history and actuality and barely touch on other topics, which I think is kind of a shame.
Of course that's just an idea I'm throwing out there and I would like everyone to give opinions and ideas below.
Edit: By "good faith peoples" I was mostly thinking of the apolitical peoples, the ones who aren't really invested in politics, I worded that a bit badly.
I think if you have the motivation for this kind of work then it is a worthwhile project. A lot of us at one time were well meaning, compassionate liberals we just didn't understand that capitalism was more than "just an economic system" or we associated lofty liberal ideals with private property, or we couldn't think dialectically and therefore weren't able to unite disparate social phenomena into a unified historical condition, or we were idealist or any number of obstacles that were placed in our way by decades of schooling and bourgeois news/propaganda. But in our hearts we knew there was something bad about capitalism, we were opposed to war and mass depravation for the enrichment of the powerful few.
The first time I tried engaging in a socialist space (on
yuck) I was immediately banned for being a liberal. Like instantly and forever banned. I wasn't being racist I was just being like not a Marxist, and that was it. If someone had directed me to some resources or good faith explained something to me I might be like years ahead of where I am in my consciousness. But as a result I remained a liberal for a few more years until I got curious again. The next time, I was upset about the idea of a revolution and after being told to fuck off like 10 times, someone was like, "we don't want people to die we want things to change," which isn't a great answer but it gets at the truth in a way that stuck with me and gave me something to chew on.
I am anti sectarian to an extreme, definitely an antithetical reaction to perceived sectarianism in left spaces. I know the history and the betrayals throughout history, and am aware of the contradictions this introduces into our movement. I think if the historical conditions progress to a point to where we have to circle the wagons and push away revisionist, bourgeois adjacent socialist movements to seize power for the working class, like the Bolsheviks had to do in October, then we can make those determinations at that point. Until then we need to be drawing people in and engaging in good faith in order to grow a genuine movement rooted in the conditions and contradictions of the present, not the mistakes and tragedies of the past. This is why we study history and theory, so we can nimbly navigate the constantly shifting realities of revolutionary movement, not set up camp in the left-most position and alienate everyone else from our shared revolutionary vocation as members of the proletariat.