This is because some chuds are working class and just hate liberals but don’t know that socialists exist.

Liberals tend to be wealthier, so they have more invested in the system.

Old-fashioned conservatives also tend to be loaded, which likewise means that few would ever convert.

Thoughts? I wasted my day arguing with a bunch of libs on reddit. The only chud I talked with just told me he’s going to check out Revolutionary Left Radio. He started the conversation by almost threatening to kill me but changed his tone very quickly when I busted out my socialist clichés. The libs, meanwhile, just kept twisting their brains into pretzels.

  • GrouchoMarxist [comrade/them,use name]
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    4 years ago

    Socialism is a an answer to a failed system. If someone doesn't accept the system has failed/isn't looking for answers they'll reject socialism from the start (eg, most libs). There are a lot of chuds who are full blown boot lickers so any attempts to sway them away is a dead end ("the free market is good, government bad" crowd)

    There are people who hate the current system/think it has failed them, and they accurately see Democrats as eager supporters of this failed system. So they wind up siding with Republicans because Republicans at least provide lip service for how the systems hanging over our heads harm everyday people. I like to refer to these people as "not Democrats", as in, they are hoodwinked by our overton window and don't see any options to left of Dems, don't want to side with Dems ever, and either go right or go 'apolitical'

    Those "not Democrats" are very easy to convert and easy to spot but I don't think they make up a majority of the right. Most every day right wingers honestly would be willing to push us through a wood chipper before ever letting our policy positions take hold, but you can occasionally find people like you mentioned amongst the crowd. I don't think it's at a drastically different rate than liberals, however. Sorry for rambling

    • Steely_Gaige [none/use name]
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      4 years ago

      This is well said, comrade. Important tip: increase our numbers while avoiding being pushed into wood chippers.

    • duderium [he/him]
      hexagon
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      4 years ago

      I didn’t think you were rambling at all.

      • cracksmoke2020 [none/use name]
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        4 years ago

        Anyone can be swayed, politics in america is cultural not material. Labor union clubhouses as a replacement for the church as a third place, later on being replaced with more cultural third places, are the defining feature of how people vote.

        People joining DSA to meet people in a new city is a good thing and should be encouraged. Creating entertainment that funnels people into a left wing cultural sphere would do far more than any amount of phonebanking could.

    • cracksmoke2020 [none/use name]
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      4 years ago

      Except Republicans don't do the thing you're saying, only Trump does that. There's no fucking chance in hell that's what Ron Johnson in Wisconsin or Pat Toomey in PA are about.

      The vast majority of Republicans are voting that way based on either party propaganda or deeply held beliefs around the issue of abortion. Most cultural chuds that associate with like proudboys and what not don't give a shit about abortion, but there is a 25% of the electorate that is voting on that issue alone. If the church suddenly told them to vote for Bernie they'd vote for Bernie.

      The only way to reach these people is to bring them out of that bubble through the creation of more third places like what labor unions used to represent. When the church is you're primary third place, no way in hell you vote for a democrat.

    • discontinuuity [he/him]
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      4 years ago

      So many Americans have a weird grab-bag of political beliefs and only engage in partisan politics as a spectator sport. We can win over some of them if we offer them real undeniable benefits and help them realized that both parties are dead ends for real change. You're probably not going to convince my chud uncle who thinks that Nancy Pelosi is a demonic socialist and that socialism is when the government does stuff

  • Moosegender [he/him]
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    4 years ago

    Plenty of chuds are wealthy wtf. This post feels like it’s from r/stupidpol.

    And calling republicans “average/regular” people when they are in the margins of almost every issue in American society is some smooth brained shit.

    • CuminAndSalt [he/him]
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      4 years ago

      Cth looooves romanticizing conservatives as a group of misguided hillbilly communists. It was one of the things that bothered me the most about the sub, and I'm a little disappointed to see it start up again here. Liberals absolutely do not tend to be wealthier lmao interact with literally anybody other than globe emoji psychopaths on twitter.

    • opposide [none/use name]
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      4 years ago

      I think they’re referring to republican voters, many of which don’t share all of the social and economic views of the people they vote for

    • Barack_Obama [he/him,he/him]
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      4 years ago

      Yeah a ton of chuds are supr wealthy, but a ton of them are making ~50k while working blue collar jobs.

          • Moosegender [he/him]
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            4 years ago

            The Republican base is non-college educated wealthy white primarily males. Dumb dumb.

            • opposide [none/use name]
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              4 years ago

              And you think they earn more money than their college educated democrat counterparts who largely live in the most expensive parts of the country?

              • Moosegender [he/him]
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                4 years ago

                They have more money in the bank. They grew up in the 50’s and 60’s.

  • sexywheat [none/use name]
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    4 years ago

    Around the time of the primaries I remember on one of the chapo episodes where they were talking about canvassing for Bernie. Hands down republican voters were WAY easier to talk to because they’re just normal people who want health care and an education for their kids.

    Buttigeg etc voters were impossible to talk to, they were on a totally different planet and couldn’t stop going off about how their candidate made them feel and what a great speaker they were and how they reminded them on Obama etc etc and couldn’t possibly give two shits or a fuck about the well being of working class people.

    • cracksmoke2020 [none/use name]
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      4 years ago

      Politics of material condition vs politics of self actualization. In both political parties, 60% of their voters are in the later camp with the people who would otherwise vote for material conditions in the general just not voting in primaries.

  • Volcel_Cheka [none/use name]
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    edit-2
    4 years ago

    No.

    Your average chud is a racist homophone who thinks socialism is literally the devil. Talk to a lib, however, and it's likely they will hold the following opinions:

    • Racism Bad
    • Homophobia Bad -Global Warming Is Bad

    Some might even be able to point out some of the more obvious flaws in capitalism.

    Now, libs do uphold the system that perpetuates these things, but at least they recognize that they are actual problems, unlike chuds. Also, when chuds do move "left", they usually gravitate to Stupidpol or some shit. I'm getting weary of the outright hatred of liberals in leftist spaces recently. Like it or not, they're our main source of new "recruits", at the risk of sounding dogmatic. Hell, I've even seen "Better fash than libs" rhetoric which is the big yikes.

    Most of the time, i've had better luck with libs.

    • duderium [he/him]
      hexagon
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      4 years ago

      I’m surrounded by libs so that partially explains my frustration. Gun to my head, I’ll take them over chuds any day.

  • opposide [none/use name]
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    4 years ago

    For sure. I was a dumb fuck super conservative chud who thought I was the smartest fucker in the world.

    I count my blessings every day that some random dude on the Internet literally told me to read Marx because I looked stupid arguing and my dipshit high school self couldn’t stand looking stupid.

    Then as I read I was like “oh shit ok some of this makes sense” as I kind of transformed into an “economically conservative” neolib and voted Obama 2012 (lol). Then I continued to see Marx be proven right while I was in college, and before I even graduated I was full on reading theory and radicalized. It helped to have spent most of my life being raised deep in Appalachia.

  • cracksmoke2020 [none/use name]
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    edit-2
    4 years ago

    Chuds are more likely to be blue collar rather than white collar, but that doesn't mean they aren't wealthier than your typical democratic voter.

    We're much better off trying to convert older black voters than anything else.

    • SerLava [he/him]
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      edit-2
      4 years ago

      Yeah high-school educated pool supply tyrants are Trump's actual base.

    • duderium [he/him]
      hexagon
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      4 years ago

      I talked with some older black folks in SC while phonebanking for Bernie. To me they seemed extremely uninterested in even discussing politics. My guess would be that the church has done an incredible amount of damage in that regard; that they would be Republicans if the Republicans didn’t want to fucking kill all of them.

      • cracksmoke2020 [none/use name]
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        4 years ago

        Yes, I have had a similar experience and I still think we have a better chance at reaching them than chuds.

  • bottech [he/him]
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    4 years ago

    Then maybe we should test that theory rather than bring up anecdotal evidence, we can make a survey here asking who people were before radicalization and then form our theory

  • SunshinePharmer [he/him]
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    4 years ago

    I actually agree. In a lot of cases, chuds are single issue voters. If that issue is guns, we got guns. If that issue is privacy, we got privacy. If that issue is immigration or abortion, you will have a harder time. Most are just "I wanna grill, dammit" types, and if you can somehow make an appeal to emotion about environment and how it effects their job or something, it might work. I also agree with trying to come at it from a working class angle.

    I can't ever get a lib to criticize their own side, but I got a chud to agree that (by their estimation) trump fits 8 out of 10 of the hallmarks of fascism that I laid out for them.

      • duderium [he/him]
        hexagon
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        4 years ago

        The approach I’ve been trying involves talking about how the fed can just generate money out of thin air to pay for whatever we want. I haven’t gone this far with anyone, but I would say that to combat climate change we’re actually going to have to move everyone into cities and allow people to leave inhospitable environments. I don’t think chuds would give a fuck about that until after their conversion however. An anarchist I know who’s all about living in nature also had trouble with that, but cities use far less carbon than rural areas, so it seems like something pretty massive that we’re going to have to do. I believe China has also spent an incredible amount of time and money moving its population into cities.

      • SunshinePharmer [he/him]
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        4 years ago

        Yeah, it's the ol'

        A banker, an immigrant and a conservative voter are sitting at a table. There are ten cookies on the table. The banker takes nine, and turns to the conservative and says "watch out, that immigrant is coming for your cookie"

      • Chapo_Trap_Horse [none/use name]
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        4 years ago

        So many libs' only experience with immigrants is interacting with their nannies, gardeners, waitstaff, etc. And they act uncomfortably woke all the time talking shit about Trump and trying to act like they are just all homies in the same boat. Then the lib goes back inside and gets on a zoom call trying to figure out what their company actually does while they make $180k while the immigrant outside perfectly manicures their local flora sustainable garden in sweltering heat for a few dollars.