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?
I have to be honest, there is a reason your friend hates the USSR. They are not a socialist or really a leftist. They are a liberal.
If you are basing their leftism on the fact that they support "progressive" things like lgbtq and they think "the nordic countries are the ideal model." They are what Stalin considered the moderate wing of fascism. There is a lot more de-brainworming that needs done than you are suspecting.
Any person that uses the term "Tankie" as some kind of insult (I don't consider it one myself, I would wear it proudly) is not someone who has any sympathy to class consciousness or the leftist struggle. Which speaking of, if you want to start pointing them in the right direction, you need to start by building a sense of class consciousness within them.
How you do that will vary by person, but starting with intersectionality and the role that capital plays may be a good starting point for this person. Make sure they understand that the politicians they think are on their side :capitalist-woke: don't actually care about them and only virtue signal for their vote. From there, break it down on how many of the goals and ideals they want are something that existing political parties within a capitalist system will not tolerate. You need to really hammer home the idea that their goals are something they will never be allowed to vote for and explain why. Move forward from there... eventually introducing them to the communist manifesto if they are actually receptive to your talking points. Once you can get them broken out of the propaganda box their mind is in, they will be able to open their eyes to the absurdity of modern political discourse. It is all just swimming in the same right-wing pond.
Best of luck, but it sounds like you have an uphill battle. They may not realize things until they feel betrayal, or the squeeze of material conditions for them to realize the system is their enemy.
Yeah…I think I put too much faith in them :/ they’re a rad lib at best. But I might as well try right? I mean I’ll be a history teacher soon so im trying to think of it as a teachable moment.
It's always worth the effort as long as they are not hostile or going to give you stress.
I always remind myself that I used to be a total lib. While the reasoning may differ amongst people, what did it for me was the slow erosion the concept of a functioning society around me. I got into deeply believing that here in the US the Democrats were "the good guys" or something close to it. The key is paying attention, and not compromising on your goals. The 2020 primaries is what fully radicalized me when I saw just how insanely dirty the Democrats were willing to play to destroy Sanders. The most frustrating part of that timeline was how it seems most people didn't pay enough attention to what was happening because the Democrats showed their ass to me. I also found that friends who were on the left with me gave up on their ideals and goals just so they could feel like "winners".
I had reached a point where I saw that they were willing to lose to Republicans than side with leftists and from that point forward, the "propaganda box" I described started to crumble apart. I started to see both parties as two sides of the same coin, and when I decided to give the manifesto a look its what brought everything into focus. To me the Democrats are a fake opposition party, and liberalism is one of the most absurd ideologies in existence, that is willfully ignorant of the past and future in favor of maintaining the current evil that they see "as good as it could possibly get".
Today I feel surrounded by radlibs at work that consider themselves "radical". The hyper-individualism of identity politics is fueling liberalism into overdrive instead of funneling people into solidarity. Truthfully I don't know what will happen in the coming future but I am inclined to think that most Americans will not change or have a revelation because they are too comfortable and unwilling to fundamentally change things out of fear. They would rather slowly slide into oblivion, because at least that is a certainty, and changing course isn't.
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He actually got converted by Vaush away from leftism and got completely re-programed. He got into leftism as a fad for himself and turned into a cowardly liberal later. He unlearned communist thought which just tells me he was an opportunist.
Him and I are not friends anymore for other reasons but his politics was a big one.