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 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.