Also, being inside a white-supremacist group gives you some opportunities to pull people out. Two of the tricks I use over on 4chan:
Give correct explanations of left-wing/feminist views while sneering at said views. Make the views look good, but yourself on the chuds' side, and yourself look awful. (Correct explanation of the kyriarchy and how it keeps people down, which is a good thing, because fuck equality, I want to be on top)
Look for newbie-nazis looking for advice on how to pull themselves slightly further in (inferior culture -> inferior people -> we need to look out for our race -> races need to keep to themselves -> we need to deport other races -> that's too hard lets just kill them), and instead give them the most direct and awful version possible (skip to the genocide). This scares the newbies off, and they have a chance of landing in a leftwing pipeline instead.
On 4chan you can do both because it's anonymous. You'd probably need separate accounts for this to work in spaces with names. I'd lean towards just using the first one, but I'm not an expert on facebook nazis.
Look for newbie-nazis looking for advice on how to pull themselves slightly further in (inferior culture -> inferior people -> we need to look out for our race -> races need to keep to themselves -> we need to deport other races -> that’s too hard lets just kill them), and instead give them the most direct and awful version possible (skip to the genocide).
Speaking of newbie-Nazis, /r/Libertarian is a great place to scare them away from going full-on fascist. The libertarian-to-fascist pipeline is real, the community is large enough to get some bang for your posting buck, it's easy and fun to dunk on a joke ideology, and there's a fairly established subgroup of posters there who are either on the left or at least sympathetic to it. Plus, they don't ban you even if you quote Marx, so you don't have to bother too much with sneaking around. You can just openly describe how hellish a libertarian utopia would be (your "skip to the genocide" strategy).
The legitimate ideological openness of that sub also facilitates your first point, but even more directly: you can just give a leftist alternative and describe how it's good; you don't even need to wrap it in a chud veneer. Sometimes an easy, clearly-better alternative is the most convincing argument against something.
I've had a lot of luck directly recruiting libertarians, they're actually the group I've had the most success with. You can usually get them to entertain the difference between private property and personal property, and if you spend a couple months paying attention to that then suddenly you're a socialist. And explaining the difference between modern unions and historic radical unions (casting all anti-union propaganda as the fault of modern unions being small) works super well on libertarian tech-bros.
Yeah, definitely. And a lot of them are just contrarian, which I think is part of why the "well acktshually it's modern unions that suck" shtick works so well on them.
I've just stopped talking about private property at all except when someone specifically uses it. I usually just say "private ownership of the shit we need to make shit". I guess it probably depends who you're talking about.
Oh yeah, don't bother trying to actually call it "private property" unless the person you're talking to is already to the left of Bernie Sanders. Definitely need workarounds for terminology.
I’ve had a lot of luck directly recruiting libertarians, they’re actually the group I’ve had the most success with.
They're on the upper end of the pipeline to fascism, which makes them among the easiest to turn away.
You can usually get them to entertain the difference between private property and personal property, and if you spend a couple months paying attention to that then suddenly you’re a socialist.
This is a good entry point. Two other ones I've had luck with are:
The sub is focused on capitalism far more run-of-the-mill conservative subs (and certainly more than white nationalist groups), so critiquing the places where capitalism fails most egregiously fits in pretty naturally. You don't have to be the "but the real problem, of course, is capitalism" guy all the time because they're discussing it so fucking much already.
They spend a lot of time re-litigating whether we need public schools or public courts (lol) and there are just overwhelmingly good arguments for all of that stuff and more. You get lots of space to put those arguments out there, so anyone dipping their toes in and thinking "my public school wasn't great; maybe we should just privatize all of this" can get connected with why that's a horrible idea.
Besides derailing fascist pipelines, there's also the benefit of sharpening your own critiques of capitalism (and your own alternative solutions).
Plus Libertarians have already somewhat revolted against the neoliberal world order (even if they basically agree with all of the basic principles), so they're more open to structural critiques than liberals are.
This... I think this is what got me. Even in the Communist Manifesto, which is not good at teaching theory, it seemed obvious what Marx was getting at. I had a "why hadn't anybody told me this yet!?" moment.
I suppose I don't see liberals as being on any sort of pipeline to fascism in the first place. The liberals I know are largely in agreement with leftists on the danger of America's proto-fascist elements (e.g., militarized police and mass incarceration); they just want shitty, half-assed reformist solutions and are reflexively (but not militantly) pro-capitalist. If they object to a policy like Medicare for All, it's for some complex macroeconomic budgeting reason they don't really understand, not because they genuinely despise people at the bottom rungs of society. I don't see them as a few nudges away from supporting an ethnostate.
I do see many libertarians as a few nudges away from supporting an ethnostate; that's why I view them on a pipeline to fascism. Many of them do genuinely despise anyone at the bottom rungs of society, and at best they're oblivious to all the racial coding that's built into that. If left in a seamless container of like-minded thinkers, they're the type who would easily conclude that anyone who's poor should just be left to die, and from there it's only a short hop to "and if they get in my way at all I have the right to kill them."
As shitty as liberals are they generally have a level of fundamental human decency that libertarians either don't have (these folks are unreachable) or need to be reminded of.
I have the exact opposite experience of talking to libertarians unfortunately. It gives me some hope that you’ve had some success with them though.
The libertarians I deal with are those weird ones that overly criticize “liberals” and leftists at the drop of a dime but shrivel up and piss themselves when I deconstruct IDW bullshit or mildly push back reactionary rhetoric. These two people revolve their anti-govt attitude around George Orwell (one is obsessed with 1984 and nothing else), Ayn Rand and Thomas Sowell. Throw in the typical IDW guy videos and they become this impenetrable wall of libertarian horseshit that is almost impossible to deconstruct.
I’m not really even trying to “recruit” or convert any of them. I just get caught up in being an online guy (I mean we’re posting here ffs lol) and sometimes can’t help but fight back against the bullshit.
I probably need a new approach but god damn it is tiring
I guess my advice would be to try to agree with them about things being Orwellian, then immediately pivot into complaining about corporations and how the government is too beholden to them to do anything about it. Credit scores, Google/Facebook having eyes everywhere, every website runs on AWS, that sort of thing. If you really get them going then try to talk about how your boss has his job because of nepotism and you and your coworkers don't have a say in getting rid of him, but that's pretty advanced.
Yea.. honestly, in most people's day-to-day lives, assuming they aren't actively out protesting or organizing in leftist spaces, private corporations are way more Orwellian than the government. Both of the main mobile OS's are designed to funnel shit loads of info about you to private entities with no accountability, and there is virtually 0 competition to those two.
I’ve tried appealing to the Orwellian nature of his obsession and I end up scratching my head wondering if he has even read 1984 at all.
He unironically linked a Tommy Robinson Parler post cheering on the feds “stickin’ it to those antifas” in his Discord channel “2-minutes-of-hate”. I simply made the comment that the feds sweeping up protestors seems a bit authoritarian and Big Brother would be pleased. It actually shocked me that he wanted to debate the definition of authoritarianism and asked to what degree is this authoritarian to illicit my comment.
I kept the topic of the federal govt doing heinous as much as I could but it eventually got derailed cuz he would wouldn’t stop whining about how he was the fool and I know everything.
Like how do you deal with this level of brainworms lmao.
I used to be a white supremacist I’m all too familiar with the bullshit they pull especially when it comes to the libertarians. I wouldn’t even waste my time with him if I didn’t see anything worth fighting for. I only care enough to even talk and vent about it here because of that fact.
My short term goal with this fella is to break down the IDW shit. I just haven’t found something that clicked.
they're further along the pipeline than the newbies being described. they've already started swallowing the first few layers of propaganda. the shock doctrine approach above of just like calling for genocide way before they're ready to hear it or making them sit with the discomfort of illiberal feelings (always from a source that's "just like them") will land better.
I suppose this is where I came from. Though, I never thought ill of women, POC, or LGBT+ so maybe I was just always a socialist and didn't have the right 'language' for it.
Thinking ill of women, POC, and LGBT+ people isn't really in the "pitch" of libertarianism. But...
They're the first groups that suffer under a libertarian ideal, so a certain degree of callousness towards them is required to stay libertarian if you're not completely head-in-the-sand about it
Libertarianism is often used as a cover for stealth chuddery
I agree on /r/Libertarian. The mods are mostly chuds, but there are a lot of debate nerds on there who have just legitimately never heard leftist ideas explained and think the left's entire philosophy is just taking guns or SJW's, rather than workers issues.
I've actually had a lot of success even in main subs straight up quoting Marx and Lenin verbatim and just changing words like "bourgeoisie" to "financial class" and just leaving the name off until somebody asks.
Nope! I don't screenshot and these things naturally disappear after a while. I've been meaning to sponsor a community raid at some point, so I'll make sure to get examples when doing that.
I've actually seen a lot less opportunity for #2 on /pol/ for the last several months; there's a lot fewer newbie-nazis.
Here's a post I did just now that I'm pretty happy with though (this is more of a #3 - stating leftist views in a way palatable to chuds). Unfortunately I didn't manage to get first response, so it's pretty unlikely to draw serious attention. (The OP is confused because racism doesn't explain animosity between Greece and Turkey, which of course it doesn't, because racism is just something people made up 400 years ago, and most prejudice historically was very local. But I can't just say that without them deciding I'm an SJW and ignoring me.)
Excellent idea!
Also, being inside a white-supremacist group gives you some opportunities to pull people out. Two of the tricks I use over on 4chan:
Give correct explanations of left-wing/feminist views while sneering at said views. Make the views look good, but yourself on the chuds' side, and yourself look awful. (Correct explanation of the kyriarchy and how it keeps people down, which is a good thing, because fuck equality, I want to be on top)
Look for newbie-nazis looking for advice on how to pull themselves slightly further in (inferior culture -> inferior people -> we need to look out for our race -> races need to keep to themselves -> we need to deport other races -> that's too hard lets just kill them), and instead give them the most direct and awful version possible (skip to the genocide). This scares the newbies off, and they have a chance of landing in a leftwing pipeline instead.
On 4chan you can do both because it's anonymous. You'd probably need separate accounts for this to work in spaces with names. I'd lean towards just using the first one, but I'm not an expert on facebook nazis.
Speaking of newbie-Nazis, /r/Libertarian is a great place to scare them away from going full-on fascist. The libertarian-to-fascist pipeline is real, the community is large enough to get some bang for your posting buck, it's easy and fun to dunk on a joke ideology, and there's a fairly established subgroup of posters there who are either on the left or at least sympathetic to it. Plus, they don't ban you even if you quote Marx, so you don't have to bother too much with sneaking around. You can just openly describe how hellish a libertarian utopia would be (your "skip to the genocide" strategy).
The legitimate ideological openness of that sub also facilitates your first point, but even more directly: you can just give a leftist alternative and describe how it's good; you don't even need to wrap it in a chud veneer. Sometimes an easy, clearly-better alternative is the most convincing argument against something.
I've had a lot of luck directly recruiting libertarians, they're actually the group I've had the most success with. You can usually get them to entertain the difference between private property and personal property, and if you spend a couple months paying attention to that then suddenly you're a socialist. And explaining the difference between modern unions and historic radical unions (casting all anti-union propaganda as the fault of modern unions being small) works super well on libertarian tech-bros.
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Yeah, definitely. And a lot of them are just contrarian, which I think is part of why the "well acktshually it's modern unions that suck" shtick works so well on them.
I've just stopped talking about private property at all except when someone specifically uses it. I usually just say "private ownership of the shit we need to make shit". I guess it probably depends who you're talking about.
Oh yeah, don't bother trying to actually call it "private property" unless the person you're talking to is already to the left of Bernie Sanders. Definitely need workarounds for terminology.
They're on the upper end of the pipeline to fascism, which makes them among the easiest to turn away.
This is a good entry point. Two other ones I've had luck with are:
Besides derailing fascist pipelines, there's also the benefit of sharpening your own critiques of capitalism (and your own alternative solutions).
Plus Libertarians have already somewhat revolted against the neoliberal world order (even if they basically agree with all of the basic principles), so they're more open to structural critiques than liberals are.
This... I think this is what got me. Even in the Communist Manifesto, which is not good at teaching theory, it seemed obvious what Marx was getting at. I had a "why hadn't anybody told me this yet!?" moment.
Disagree actually. I've had a lot more success with libertarians than I have had with liberals. (I've also had more luck with chuds than liberals.)
Though I've spent no time on /r/libertarian. Most of the libertarians I talk to are on Hacker News.
I suppose I don't see liberals as being on any sort of pipeline to fascism in the first place. The liberals I know are largely in agreement with leftists on the danger of America's proto-fascist elements (e.g., militarized police and mass incarceration); they just want shitty, half-assed reformist solutions and are reflexively (but not militantly) pro-capitalist. If they object to a policy like Medicare for All, it's for some complex macroeconomic budgeting reason they don't really understand, not because they genuinely despise people at the bottom rungs of society. I don't see them as a few nudges away from supporting an ethnostate.
I do see many libertarians as a few nudges away from supporting an ethnostate; that's why I view them on a pipeline to fascism. Many of them do genuinely despise anyone at the bottom rungs of society, and at best they're oblivious to all the racial coding that's built into that. If left in a seamless container of like-minded thinkers, they're the type who would easily conclude that anyone who's poor should just be left to die, and from there it's only a short hop to "and if they get in my way at all I have the right to kill them."
As shitty as liberals are they generally have a level of fundamental human decency that libertarians either don't have (these folks are unreachable) or need to be reminded of.
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Ooph, Hacker News, you're doing the Lords work there. It's neolib central with a dash of libertarian Randism.
I have the exact opposite experience of talking to libertarians unfortunately. It gives me some hope that you’ve had some success with them though.
The libertarians I deal with are those weird ones that overly criticize “liberals” and leftists at the drop of a dime but shrivel up and piss themselves when I deconstruct IDW bullshit or mildly push back reactionary rhetoric. These two people revolve their anti-govt attitude around George Orwell (one is obsessed with 1984 and nothing else), Ayn Rand and Thomas Sowell. Throw in the typical IDW guy videos and they become this impenetrable wall of libertarian horseshit that is almost impossible to deconstruct.
I’m not really even trying to “recruit” or convert any of them. I just get caught up in being an online guy (I mean we’re posting here ffs lol) and sometimes can’t help but fight back against the bullshit.
I probably need a new approach but god damn it is tiring
Sucks.
I guess my advice would be to try to agree with them about things being Orwellian, then immediately pivot into complaining about corporations and how the government is too beholden to them to do anything about it. Credit scores, Google/Facebook having eyes everywhere, every website runs on AWS, that sort of thing. If you really get them going then try to talk about how your boss has his job because of nepotism and you and your coworkers don't have a say in getting rid of him, but that's pretty advanced.
Yea.. honestly, in most people's day-to-day lives, assuming they aren't actively out protesting or organizing in leftist spaces, private corporations are way more Orwellian than the government. Both of the main mobile OS's are designed to funnel shit loads of info about you to private entities with no accountability, and there is virtually 0 competition to those two.
I’ve tried appealing to the Orwellian nature of his obsession and I end up scratching my head wondering if he has even read 1984 at all.
He unironically linked a Tommy Robinson Parler post cheering on the feds “stickin’ it to those antifas” in his Discord channel “2-minutes-of-hate”. I simply made the comment that the feds sweeping up protestors seems a bit authoritarian and Big Brother would be pleased. It actually shocked me that he wanted to debate the definition of authoritarianism and asked to what degree is this authoritarian to illicit my comment.
I kept the topic of the federal govt doing heinous as much as I could but it eventually got derailed cuz he would wouldn’t stop whining about how he was the fool and I know everything.
Like how do you deal with this level of brainworms lmao.
This person might actually be a chud trying to pose as a libertarian to pull them over.
Or yeah, worms.
I used to be a white supremacist I’m all too familiar with the bullshit they pull especially when it comes to the libertarians. I wouldn’t even waste my time with him if I didn’t see anything worth fighting for. I only care enough to even talk and vent about it here because of that fact.
My short term goal with this fella is to break down the IDW shit. I just haven’t found something that clicked.
they're further along the pipeline than the newbies being described. they've already started swallowing the first few layers of propaganda. the shock doctrine approach above of just like calling for genocide way before they're ready to hear it or making them sit with the discomfort of illiberal feelings (always from a source that's "just like them") will land better.
I suppose this is where I came from. Though, I never thought ill of women, POC, or LGBT+ so maybe I was just always a socialist and didn't have the right 'language' for it.
Thinking ill of women, POC, and LGBT+ people isn't really in the "pitch" of libertarianism. But...
They're the first groups that suffer under a libertarian ideal, so a certain degree of callousness towards them is required to stay libertarian if you're not completely head-in-the-sand about it
Libertarianism is often used as a cover for stealth chuddery
I agree on /r/Libertarian. The mods are mostly chuds, but there are a lot of debate nerds on there who have just legitimately never heard leftist ideas explained and think the left's entire philosophy is just taking guns or SJW's, rather than workers issues.
I've actually had a lot of success even in main subs straight up quoting Marx and Lenin verbatim and just changing words like "bourgeoisie" to "financial class" and just leaving the name off until somebody asks.
can you post some examples of this at work?
Nope! I don't screenshot and these things naturally disappear after a while. I've been meaning to sponsor a community raid at some point, so I'll make sure to get examples when doing that.
I've actually seen a lot less opportunity for #2 on /pol/ for the last several months; there's a lot fewer newbie-nazis.
Here's a post I did just now that I'm pretty happy with though (this is more of a #3 - stating leftist views in a way palatable to chuds). Unfortunately I didn't manage to get first response, so it's pretty unlikely to draw serious attention. (The OP is confused because racism doesn't explain animosity between Greece and Turkey, which of course it doesn't, because racism is just something people made up 400 years ago, and most prejudice historically was very local. But I can't just say that without them deciding I'm an SJW and ignoring me.)
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