A new comrade with a lot of energy and creativity has joined my organization. It is a joy to work with them and they add a lot to our work. However, they have years of critical theory academy time in them and it makes it difficult to discuss politics...because I do not understand anything they say. I am seeking advice on how to handle this constructively. If I am alienated speaking to them, certainly the community we work in will be too and I want to avoid that situation. An emblematic example is below:
For instance, we were having a good conversation about disability activism and suddenly a switch flipped and they entered jargon mode. When I told them I did not understand they got very apologetic and seemed hurt. I do not know how to proceed.
There have been a few similar instants and now I am starting to dread when they raise their hand. Clearly some of the issue is in my reaction, too, and I am trying to work on that. Any advice is appreciated!
Maybe they got passionate about it, and filter flew off? Ask to speak slower/with more analogies maybe (and explain your reasoning!). academic people aren’t trained to speak normally (unless they have friends from other walks of life and/or learn to speak to public), and have to retranslate their thoughts into usual language (kinda like swearing in native language for bilinguals)
Have some one on one conversations where you lead with empathetic statements and then say, "but sometimes it's hard to follow due to some of the academic language you use". Come armed with examples but use them constructively, like use the exact example you're thinking of and say that you're really curious about what they had to say and think it's really cool that they know all this stuff, and you'd really appreciate it if they took some time to explain it to you. Thank them for their time and explanations and for bringing a valuable perspective to the group.
Rinse and repeat until they figure out how to talk the same way to people that aren't just you. Make it a positive experience that's about understanding what they're saying as much as possible - no need to emphasize the "too much jargon" part every single time. You can just ask if they can explain it to you and help you understand when a term isn't clear.
Also this is generally just good advice for getting people to be your allies imo. It's also very close to how you should generally organize among comrades / potential union members as well, only in those cases you want to have certain other questions ready to go.
Can you think of a time where this person got too jargon-y and lost everybody, then was able to go back and explain the idea in a more understandable way? If so, then a good approach might be to remind them of that time and tell them that you appreciate their contributions to your group and that you appreciate their effort to be more understandable to people who aren't from such a hyper-academic background. Be sure that you're making it clear that you value them as a member of your group, while encouraging them to continue to work on grounding their conversation more in terms that everyone can understand.
Remind them that intense jargon is often used to avoid facing material conditions (the Orwell politics in the English language argument).
They should always be able to distill jargon to simple language as well. Think of Marxist jargon like base/superstructure. It's a shorthand to basically talk about the economic conditions (material conditions on the ground) vs the ideological and structural extensions of the mode of production(economic model). It's not that you can't explain the terms ( and indeed at times the terms are up for debate). They're a shortcut. Asking "what do you mean by X" can also be a good intervention
It seems you've already mentioned that what they do is not great in the moment, good.
Do you best to keep the :pain: off your face and out of your voice when they start into jargon-ese.
Never stop politely reminding them to pause and explain what the jargon means every time they use it (and either stop using the jargon or use it less because they'll find it disruptive to their train of thought). Be as upbeat and chipper as you can when doing this.
