This is the kind of posting I'm subjected to by my own family! I have already written a reply, but if y'all have any good points I would love to hear them.
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They are trying to say he is bad and unamerican because communism is bad and unamerican. He is bad, but he is probably the most USian person I can think of. Man is basically a walking US cliche.
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They are trying to imply he is a Russian asset and think Russia is still a communist country. It is unbelievable how many people make that mistake. McCarthy would be proud.
re 2, they're making a mistake but a different one.
they think communism is just another name for "russian authoritarianism", so of course russia is still communist. it's still tzarist too. it's all the same.
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I'm guessing it's just someone who thinks "Communist" is just another bad word to call someone. So he says communist because he thinks it is an insult. You've probably thought about this a lot more than they have.
I think the best "point" to make to them here is no point at all. That is to say, you don't approach it as ignorance to answer with knowledge, you use the socratic method on them, or to put it another way: you revert to being a small child and keep asking "why?"
I'm being a bit tongue in cheek on that last bit, but I am serious about the general idea. At this level of ignorance, you can waste a lot of time trying to "teach" before even knowing what it is exactly that the person believes. So it can be much more productive to ask, i.e. stuff like, "why do you think he's a communist?" or "what does communism mean to you?"
fictional example to illustrate: "what does communism mean to you?" "it's when the deep state controls everyone" "what is the deep state?" "the deep state is those people in the shadows who control everyone" "who are the people in the shadows?" "well I don't know, they're in the shadows" "so how do you know they're connected to Trump?" "because he says communistic, deep state stuff" "like what?"
and so on. Of course, it's possible the person loses patience with you or whatnot, but I think people are usually more open to explaining themselves than being explained to, unless they're in it to learn. And someone who believes such an absurdly disjointed political thing about Trump is probably not going in headfirst with an open mind. In general, the idea is not only to better understanding what it is the person believes, it's to effectively confront the person with their own beliefs and any contradictions within them. It's something I recommend to be used sparingly cause you can definitely be a very annoying person if you use this approach as a way to avoid ever presenting and defending your own positions, but it has its uses.
Folks, the bourgeois, they're no good everyone is saying it. All these workers, very handsome workers come up to me and say, Comrade Trump there is a specter haunting Europe, and you know what, they're right. These bourgeois are very nasty people very very rude and very unfair to the workers. They are stealing our surplus value and no one is doing anything about it. The proletariat comes up to me everyday and says, Comrade Trump will you lead the revolution? And I gotta turn to them and say, Look the instruments of capitalism will be used to bring about its destruction believe me you gotta trust me on this one. The means of production, obama never wanted to seize them. Well guess what? I'm seizing them. Landlords? They're done for folks. Everyone told me they said, Comrade Trump you won't be the vanguard of the revolution and they would laugh, the media laughed the democrats laughed, guess whose laughing now?
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Would be better if it was rewritten with words at a sixth-grade US education level. There's no chance Trump could pronounce or spell "bourgeois", he can barely pronounce/spell his own country, the "Unites States"
*He mispells it as burger, and calls surplus value "more worth"
communism is when the government does stuff. communist = authoritarian. aspiring strongman leader = communist
You don't... there is nothing changing the minds of such ppl... unless they try to argue a certain point WITH SOURCES, then I think it needs responding with
The reason I've seen people give for Trump being a communist is "Trump supports Putin and Russia, therefore he must be a communist spy wanting to usher in a communist dictatorship."
This is nonsensical, of course, but the Cold War propaganda brain worms runs deep.
Let them think he's a communist.
The term clearly has lost all meaning to this person, might as well let them be haunted by it everywhere they look
Ya part of what I said to him was "This falls into conspiracy theory, so debunking it with facts isn't going to work."
Trump would definitely pretend to be a communist if he thought it would get him some votes. Dude says what people want to hear.
Considering people used to put lead in gasoline I'm not surprised at this point.
