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?
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.