I have a friend who is by all accounts very socialist but was absolutely horrified when I claimed that the USSR was not “bad” and that many of the deaths it is blamed for have a much more complicated reason. They also called me a tankie, much to my despair as it really displayed to me how many brainworms they have. They also were fairly close to calling me a genocide denier 💀
This person is a freshman in college and I’d like to try and help them unlearn these ideas. They are queer and Canadian,and they also thought Vaush was great if that’s helpful at all. Does anyone have any accessible resources to help them unlearn what they’ve been taught about the USSR?
As another person pointed out, it might be a lost cause. Maybe you could try to ask them how their views on "tankies" are meaningfully different to the image the Red Scare conjured up? If you get them to see they're falling victim to a new generation of the red scare their grandparents were subjected to, you might have a slim chance to get them to see the light. Just understand that for your voice of reason, there's also a hundred psychos saying the exact opposite, so as soon as you think you've made any progress they will go back and be bent back into shape.