For me it has been the amazing fluidity of people's working definitions of terms like socialism. They can change halfway through an argument without people even noticing. It's extremely frustrating to be arguing samantics when you're trying to make an actual point.
Yeah in the Western sphere to most people it means social democracy and that's not a good thing
And it gets worse when it changes to meaning gulag all political dissidents before you have formulated your answer
Yeah this is the big one for me.
The absolute worst though is when you carefully avoid mentioning socialism, explain a bunch of things people agree with and actually want, then they decide they might want to call the thing you're describing socialism, then suddenly all the things you just said are inextricably linked with secret police, famine, and gulags.
I really feel this one. It's an "arguing with your relatives at thanksgiving" classic.
The propaganda against the left is strong, so it's hard to explain leftist theory without using scary words that people have an immune response to.
Yeah, it really is propaganda. A lot of time I get people that say "I just don't like identity politics" but cant explain any deeper than that, they don't know what identity politics are they just have a fear response when it comes to leftism.
"That's impossible it's against the law! He must have fired you for an entirely valid reason the day after you started presenting as your gender"
Our weird obsession with iconography and academic political language. Most folks are never going to respond to the hammer and sickle or portraits of Lenin. People don't want to listen to someone talking about "dialectical materialism" or "praxis." We need to find a new branding and new language to reach disillusioned populations.
I got hit with the "it's human nature to be greedy" quite a few times and was not able to respond to that well.
Just say that ignores thousands of years of the anthropological record. Humanity's relative success is nothing without cooperation.
I cured my brother of that shit by demanding something from him every time he asks me for help. "Can you take my dog for a walk?" Buy me a pack of smokes. "Can you help me put my bike in the truck?" Only if you lend me your Switch. Took about a month of that before he finally gave up with that bullshit.
Debt the First Five-Thousand Year Chapter 5 kind of wrecks the greed is normal argument.
“There’s always going to be greed.” Yeah and the point is to band together as a community to defeat it. Not idly let it happen, but stop it before it kills off the human race. But that’s a hard sell when most people in the U.S. feel they too are the beneficiaries of greed.
And that's like saying "There's always going to be rape," and then not being anti-rape or even being pro- rape.
But then they'll turn around and say 'but greed isn't always bad," which I mean lol
To me it's the idea that there's still hope in the Democrats, and therefore the system. Even if someone hates what police do, they say just support Democrats and they'll fix it. Even if someone hates racism, sexism, transphobia, it's support the Dems because they're not racist/sexist/transphobic. It's that the Dems are what got us The New Deal, Civil Rights, gay marriage, and legal weed in some states. So we need to support them and they can do all that stuff federally.
If you can just break that hope, show that the Democrats are trash, that will get a lot more people to radicalize. It won't get everyone. But it'll get more, I think, than saying electoralism is dead. They see that as you taking votes away from and attacking the good guys. So you have to convince them that Dems aren't the good guys. Even if you try to go with economics, people think Dems are good on labor/welfare.
We must break this idea. The problem is that a lot of the canon about what Democrats have done is hearsay and false. It's framed from the position of white, wealthy saviors. Oh the Democrats did the New Deal which was perfect and good and saved everyone. Don't talk about how FDR did black people. Oh Civil Rights. Yes, Dems did that. Don't talk about how the white moderate scolded activists and told MLK to just wait. Gay marriage? Don't talk about how a small group of activists had to drag the government and Dem leadership kicking and screaming into supporting it. Don't talk about Obama's stance on gay marriage in 2008, 2009, etc. Don't talk about Hillary giving a speech in the Bush years talking about marriage being between a man and a woman.
Like even right now on r/politics there's constantly a back and forth over how much power Democrats had in Obama's first term. People literally think that Dems who had the majority of the government couldn't do anything because a minority of Republicans were stopping them. Those same people now believe a minority of Dems can't stop Trump. Their history of the Dems comes from old CNN/MSNBC talking points. The same way you have Fox News grandpas. It's maddening. It feels like you're being gaslit. And even when you prove them wrong with their own tools of objective facts, they still argue.
So we need some sort of major exposure/critique of Democrats. From the left. They've never heard that before. They've grown up thinking the only way Democrats are criticized is by Fox News.
I find, related to this, is the false dichotomy presented the two party system. Once I start to point out democrat problems, people assume I'm suggesting they support trump, and that frames their responses.
It becomes a well, lesser evil, and all that, or actually dems are good etc. When I'm trying to point out that the party policies have the same effect in the end and support the same ruling classes.
lol sorry I didn't mean to give such an American-centric answer. I forget what time I'm posting and assume most of us online are Americans.
Learned helplessness is a large part of it. People just resign to the narrative of a good party vs bad party. The good party can't win because of the bad party. Oh look the good party won an election. Well too bad because the bad party won't let the good party pass the good policy. Oh a good policy gets passed. It's actually a shit policy that helps the bad party but it must actually be good because the good guys did it and we defeated the bad party today. Then ride that victory for the next decade through another two cycles of helplessness.
As an autist I have to agree. Also I can barely talk to people as it is.
I think that one of the reason for left to reach out the mass is that, it's more or less degraded into a culture left post 60s. Essentially leftism talk are, talking to a pre selected small group of people. Lenin used to say something along the line that politics is about numbers in the millions, well I guess I remember it correct, so THIS problem should be the centre for American leftism at this stage. And it is in a way quite understandable why we get into the situation we are today, the Right (lib-right or conservative-right) are perpetually in power, that's why the left choose to hide itself in culture expressions. The left need to break this vicious circle of essentially talking to oneself.
Of course, that's only half of the problem, the other half is that, not talking about political poisoned people like libs or MAGA types, the general population is just shockingly apolitical, which in the case of US, the apolitical atmosphere tends to cut right wing. Or people are so stuck in the mirrors of spectacle or so heavily poisoned by propaganda that they could not see (leftism is speaking to their true interest). So we have a core base which tends to not speak out (unlike far right), and a crowd that not willing to listen.
(sorry for the rant, I could be wrong here no hate plz).
Personal responsibility seems to be the biggest obstacle for all sides They have wrapped themselves up in it like they do that stupid fucking flag. Even people who are actively being fucked by the system will tell you about how they need to work harder or started defending billionaires as being so innovative. And personal responsibility quickly starts tying in with celebrity worship and the American Dream. It starts to feel like talking to extreme religious people about the possibility that there’s no single entity watching over your every move. They have been indoctrinated since children, there’s no other way of viewing the world. But you are planting seeds and one day those seeds will grow and with the right combination they may blossom like they did with a lot us.
This answer. Every one, EVERY ONE of my friends except TWO are infested with this. Every one has to guilt trip me for eating shrooms, and I don’t want to live in a world where I have to feel guilty for shrooming
Seriously? For shrooms? What do they say? “Stop taking a drug that gives a lasting experience making you feel you are always connected with your environment.”
More subtle than that. If I DO do shrooms on the weekend, I should really do a LOT of housework Thursday and Friday so I “earn” the shrooms. Or alternatively LOTS of housework Monday and Tuesday. Otherwise there will be disrespect and subtle put downs, or they’ll full mask off, saying something like “drugs are worse than masturbation because masturbation teaches self love which is self care”. Or just little zingers like “lazy” or “not dedicated yet”
OR I need to have something I can show, like “my social anxiety is immediately and forever cured, see this WASNT a waste of time!”
But if I just literally have a fun weekend with my bro’s, that’s incredibly selfish and damning, and I owe everyone
That sounds terrible. I value you for your humanity, they should too. If they think drugs are getting in the way of your productivity there’s appropriate way to address that concern. Making you feel less than and unimportant is not the way to do that. I think one of my most memorable trips was realizing that shrooms give the mind a different perspective. Perspectives are important, but they don’t dramatically change your life the next day nor should one expect them to. What can change your life pretty quickly is you’re environment. Surround yourself with positive kind people who encourage growth.
If you’re having trouble cleaning your room, I have this book I’ve been reading... jkjk
For me anarchism to anarchism to parliamentary social democracy combined with autonomous individual anarchist antifa to hard communism to anarcho-communism.
I feel like introducing liberal feminists to Marxist feminism is also hugely important. Tbh when I was just a "normal liberal", I was already getting frustrated by liberal feminism, but I never considered turning to leftists for alternatives because it always seemed so class reductionist to me. Finding out about people like Alexandra Kollontai (even if idk if I agree with everything she thought) was a huge paradigm shift for me and made me wanna look into socialism more closely.
People have their entire world constructed on premises that are false - false history, false understanding of capitalism, false understanding of socialsim. So you have to spend a lot of, lot of time dismantling these, bringing light to new information, and overcoming all of the resistance people naturally have, especially as they get a bit older (read jsut grow up and become adults). Then there is also dismantling really culturally entrenched ideas and narratives formed by a lot of popular media. Especially among people who listen to Joe Rogan, think they're reasonable centrists and think the left is feminist sjws with colorful hair. Like you have to dismantle these again and again and again and again, expose them again and again to leftist media, surprise them a lot when you trash libs, or just point them towards something historical they had no idea about.
Recently I had a very long conversation with someone, who unironically and uncritically claimed that things like weekends, 8-hour working day and social programs exist because of capitalism, not despite it. Of course he was completely and utterly ignorant of worker rights history, and someone who's only experience with the left is what they get from the internet (read mostly righ-wing stuff) and from the memory of the totalitarian socialist regime from before 1989.
And a note on this last one - I had a very hard time overcoming my distaste of socialism. I myself went through a huge culture shock, when I moved to a new country, when there were posters for the 1st of May with obvious communist imagery, and the event had thousands upon thousands of people, red flags hammers and sickles everywhere. ...
Cutting through propaganda. In terms of policy, it's a super easy sell! Convincing them to vote for the party that represents that policy is another matter.
There was a stat posted the other day saying half of chuds were pro M4A if the Republicans promoted it (and basically zero if it was Democrats) and nearly all Democrats supported it (unless it was promoted by Republicans).
So ~75% of the electorate could get behind M4A so long as both parties offered it. Don't approach anything as one team vs another, it doesn't work... Policy works past some of the propaganda. But if both parties agree on fundementally right-wing issues people won't change their vote, and they will ignore issues so long as the issues are created by 'their' team.
Yeah, I feel that one. My theory is that it's because they value their identity as a voter for that party and the social and parasocial relationships built around that way more than the material effects on their lives they believe any of the policies would have.
Also: Who are you trying to get people to change their vote to?
Yeah spot on mate.
I'm not from the US so there is (still) a difference between the two major parties
