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I am literally surrounded by these people (working people who are instinctively conservative but alienated and atomized by neoliberalism), I talk to them in explicitly Marxist rhetoric all the time, they are instinctively receptive to it. It directly appeals to their lived experience - that's literally the power of Marxism. They certainly don't instantly convert to the world view, but that's because they continue to be immersed in neoliberal and reactionary cultural stimuli, and I'm only one man.
But they're receptive to it. And noticeably more so than liberals. It's why you often get weird alliances where CHUDs agree with your Marxist criticisms of the Democrats. The reason they have such racist and reactionary responses is because they are fucking immersed in a massive, all-encompassing propaganda apparatus that is effective. You have to expose these people to views they have never experienced before. That's the whole point of agitating!
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Real talk? Yeah, this sounds familiar, at least in the wing of these people who are explicitly Republican/Libertarian and not just apathetic. The only real answer is to keep trying. To actually engage them in explicitly political and also social activity. Boil it down, this effectively means "get them to hang out with you and like-minded people as a group with an explicit political purpose". IE, book clubs (yeah), shooting clubs, etc.
And yes, this is extremely hard in the modern neoliberal conditions of our society. For example, I live miles and miles away from each and every one of my co-workers. And my friends too. We literally have to coordinate every single social event well in advance, and that's not even things that are necessarily political. All because several or all f us will have to drive several dozen fucking miles just to fucking hang out.
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Frankly I've only recently (after the September debate) hit the point where my brain is so broken/self-confident that I'm completely unafraid to shoot my mouth off all the time. Hell it was only the day before the election that I explicitly came out to them and said I was a Marxist and a communist. It's like I finally read enough to level up and be able to fluidly come up with extremely complicated yet persuasive and confident argument literally on the fly.
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I mean this is mostly from my experiences talking to my crew at work in the last few weeks, but I've long been recognized as someone authoritative on a lot of subjects (I literally read during every single lunchbreak) and as a result they respect my thoughts, especially when it comes to politics where I very obviously pay attention to way more shit than the average person.
But it is indeed extremely difficult to convince these people to actually read, despite explicitly talking about how the impetus for change has to begin within ourselves and our drive for self-improvement. We live in an era where instant gratification in the form of social media is far more appealing, especially in an environment as oppressive as work.
Personally I play on the instinctive hostility toward the boss. Which really helps in situations like right now considering most the crew have a fucking lot of pent-up grievances against the foreman. Frankly I need to find the strength to take the next step and become the open spokesman of these grievances.
And another prominent tip I think is useful to make yourselves obviously authoritative as an opinion, but ensure you aren't coming off as an intellectual snob. It gives your word a lot of weight.
the people they want to beat are the stereotypical urban liberals.