Yesterday had a long conversation with a labor aristrocratic family member, age millenial and working in tech.
He announced things like: -China is a horrible Orvellian surveillance state, you (talks to me) have no idea how horrible it is there. Haven't you seen the videos?
I try to cautiously reply that surveillance capitalism is pretty intense in the West as well and that we don't really get good or balanced information from China. He goes:
-So you sayig something like Zero Covid was the right choice?
I am hesitant to reply with a yes as this person is clearly already very fired up and confrontational. But I try to point out things about how nobody in 2020 knew how bad it might and how many will die, how people in the West are still dying, how the virus isn't in any way bening even now and how it's pretty dystopian too that here we are just sacrificing people for capitalism now and choose to ignore it.
I did say I think it was better to save people to which he said that I am a nihilist.
I also tried to explain the State outside the capitalist project and protecting multitudes not individuals, individualism and such, but he was not receiving it.
He then told me how bad the country is as he saw in the Grand Tour how they have built a highway over a rainforest that nobody uses.
I asked him where does he think all the roads and buildings in the West are built if not on top of nature. The argument as critizism of China made no sense to me whatsoever.
Later this same person said to me that we as a society have no hope and there is no point in protesting, no point in doing anything but riding out the rest of our time to climate disaster. I tried to point out to him that a socialist state can be born from capitalism, but only if we the people develop initiative for it and understand our current condition.
Same guy also did admit that voting no longer works, the EU was a mistake and it's grim how all our state systems have been privatized and are now in the hands of corpotations like Microsoft.
Now, I don't even know where to start with this one. He very much represents his part of the population here and the deep apathy and negative thought that they harbor.
He still understands and thinks that the regulated capitalism of the 70-80s here (keynesian) was the best part of our history, but when I told him that it still was always going to lead to fascism and monopolies (told him to read Marx) he ignored this. Very much the "it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism" mindset.
And my question is, how do we as communists reach these people? These people actually have power (capital), but the petty bourge status has made them like this. However climate chance does not discriminate so I feel this part of society is facing a new conflict from a historical standpoint where nature says no to exploitation. And this seems to lead to apathy.
You don't. They're the prime demographic for fascism, doubly so if they're a white male settler. They're mostly a lost cause. It's only worth trying to reach them if you're completely surrounded by them and have no other demographic of workers to radicalize, but be prepared to be very disappointed and see all your effort go to waste as they embrace ecofascism anyways.
I have already heard the ecofascism bubbling to the surface with this one for sure. He travelled and came back disgusted by the way the poors "treat their land". So we did a stuggle session on living conditions and exploitation and all that.
The settler part seems unlikely since OP seems to be somewhere in Northern Europe. I guess it's possible if they're northern Swedish, but chances are.
Yeah not settlers, but our country did dabbble with colonial complicity and oppression a lot.
Difference here is that it has fully never been reconciled with as we see ourselves as outsiders to the colonial project (we very much are not). This is why issues like racism are so hard to discuss here as people as a majority have a "I don't see colour" mindset, this makes incredible space for fascism to thrive in plain sight.