people who actually get shit on neoliberal policies are the kinds of people we should be reaching out, not some shithead named Dave Bavelhoff who owns a jetski repair shop.
We shouldn't fetishize reaching out to them at the cost of reaching other working-class and lumpen people. It's quite obvious that we can and should pick up people in extra-marginalized and specially-oppressed subgroups, and will in all likelihood pick up more of them naturally anyway since the lived experience of identity-based oppressions tends to accelerate their radicalization.
Instead we should let the regretful and remorseful ex-chuds come crawling to us, the ones demonstrating willingness to put in the effort to change. My post from this morning included the qualifier that the least-committed chud-adjacent people who could have easily swung succdem if circumstances were different are the most likely to apologize and supplicate to the left. We shouldn't be under the illusion that someone still deep in the rabbit hole is gonna join the left if they don't crawl out of it most of the way themselves first.
Wake me up when we get so close to the halls of power that we can make the other half of the working class that we miraculously didn't need to get us there grovel on their hands and knees back to us.
Easily less than a third of the working class are Trump supporters, and among those maybe half are committed reactionaries. The core class interest of fascism is a petty-bourgeoisie (and to a lesser extent some lumpenproles) in crisis in the absence of effective socialist leadership. Among the Trump supporters we'll much more easily peel off many of the West Virginia coal miners and small Midwestern farmers/farm workers towards socialism before we win over the used car dealers, small business tyrants, and "beautiful boaters" most likely to have the disposable income to travel to DC.
To build the basis for a workers' party and to eventually reach a dual power situation we'll need the participation and cooperation of a lot more of the former, whose class interests can readily align with Marxism if they can chuck out the racist culture war bullshit, than the latter who are more likely to stubbornly support a fascist program even as socialist politics are ascendant. We won't start off by winning over most of the Republican-voting workers since socialism tends to grow most readily in environments where workers are closely gathered in large numbers (i.e. usually in large cities, which Dems by and large control locally even in a lot of GOP-controlled states).
But as the profile of socialism grows stronger its reach can extend into suburban and later exurban territory, and the red scare propaganda becomes less effective in the face of real material successes resulting from class struggle in the cities, the GOP-voting lesser-evilists will waver from that position and more confidently make demands for the shit they actually need and which socialist programs can or want to deliver, demands like medicare for all, increasing the minimum wage to a living wage and keeping it growing as the cost of living increases, and massive changes to the agriculture and energy sectors to make an ecosocialist green new deal possible.
Instead we should let the regretful and remorseful ex-chuds come crawling to us, the ones demonstrating willingness to put in the effort to change.
No one comes crawling to fringe groups. As I said before people overemphasize how common it is for people to go from chud to leftist and it's dumb to focus on these people. But you don't have to make someone your comrade immediately, there is lots of things in between. When someone who is shit happens to support something that is good, you encourage that.
The chud-to-leftist thing seems overhyped anyway. Could've sworn we had a survey here not long ago where we asked what our political leanings were before we became leftists, and it was like 75% lib and the chud % was surprisingly low.
It's probably just the demographic of this sub, we (understandably) chase out bad opinion havers. I was a chud before I became a lefty.
It’s probably just the demographic of this sub,
It's not, it's very rare and everyone who has been part of organising irl knows this. But it happens.
Couldn't that be a demographic bias too? (like living in a lib city?)
No, it's not a common thing anywhere in the world. The people who turn to the left are usually people whose beliefs weren't completely diametrically opposed to begin with, most of the people who care about things are progressive libs already before they become leftists. Like I said, it's not like it doesn't happen but it really isn't that common. However it is somewhat common for these people to support some left wing causes every now and then and that's when it is most important to try and get them on board.
Because everyone online is obviously similar to me and people in my circles, I assume we were all middle-class white millenials who identified as either left/liberal or socially-liberal-fiscally-conservative until either random curiosity or a growing awareness of the gulf between the world society promised and the world observed prompted a first real attempt to engage with politics in a meaningful way.
My family is mostly white, middle class anti-semites. My little sister is possibly redeemable, but my grandparents are liberals, their kids are both Fox news chuds, my cousins are mostly apolitical/libertarian, one is an outright nazi, another is a single issue anti-abortion bro because he can't get laid and his first girlfriend was an evangelical (he was kinda raised that way too, his brother is the nazi). My brother's a "South park has the best ideology" moron. Been trying for 6 years to get him to see the light, but he always just reverts to "nothing really matters and it was probably the Jews" but pretends like he's joking.
So we exist! Definitely the exception though.
I was raised chud, then went libertarian, briefly lib, and finally leftist in about a decade. I've seen tons of people similar to me, though possibly biased in noticing that.
Places like r/stupidpol are rightfully looked down on here, but that doesn't change the fact that they're a useful on-ramp to leftism. That wasn't my particular path but I see it posted often there.
Lefties who never interact with any right wingers are kinda useless in my books.
unless you got a good reason (sick or minority that generally gives you no ground with right wingers)
lol i editted just as u said the thing i needed to edit in
edit: but otherwise i stand by what i said.
Horrible take. You don’t need to be interacting with anyone you don’t want to and telling other people who they should and should not be interacting with is fucking weird.
i just dont want all my allies to be fucking rich watery white lefties
No this is good. Now I know theres x amount of people who share the view and that should concern us as a community.
Yeah, but this has also been a really mainstream view on chapo until very recently. I'd argue there's much more use in bullying these people and downvoting them into the ground to make them look irrelevant and unwelcome.
Edit: Besides, even with downvotes you can still see how many people upvoted it. You just gotta mouse over the bear next to the number.
So was shitting on tankies and dunking on Jimmy dore. Now china best ever and dore is good.
Oh I’m usually on mobile never knew that. I’m in the get rid of numbers camp and just bully them. Which is what’s happening here anyway.
I tend to think that the negative numbers enhance the effect of the bullying. Plays on monkey brain psychology shit that this forum is never going to grow past imo unless it loses 95% of it's members. So, may as well utilize the power of that monkey brain psychology shit for good.
That’s fair. I do find less people interact when you can just downvoted instead.
I don't think you can understand a chud if you don't actually fucking know any and what good are you in creating more leftists if you don't understand a big chunk of the population
let me remind you a good number of us HERE were former chud
I don’t think the primary source for newly minted leftists is going to be proto fascists, sorry. Imo as long as you’re doing something other than posting and want to leave the world a better place than you came into it, you aren’t ‘useless’ for the left.
I don’t understand why some people want to cater to chuds so badly
Agree and while yeah, many chuds are ski doo dealership owners or whatever, probably close to an equal number of them are people who differ on culture war grounds and actually share our class interests! it makes sense to find common ground with these people where possible.
Why do you think they most of the people hold these opinions? Because they're evil? Because they're stupid? You're not better than anyone because you're a leftist.
They learned them and were made to believe they serve their material conditions. I don’t really give a shit. Don’t need to surround myself with people who would prefer me dead
"all right wingers want to kill me :((((" my point fucking exactly
in America this is fax. If they had their way the nazis would’ve won. I guess Stalin should’ve just been friends with more nazis and tried to reason with them. Expand his friend group.
Lmao jesus fucking christ the hyperbole no one is telling you to fucking be best friends with a nazi or Qanon dipshit
In general stop telling me who I should and shouldn’t be friends with. It’s fucking weird.
Iunno arguing with your lib dad about biden and watching Hasan are what I imagine you do if you're the kind of lefty who never had to deal with any difficult situations
A bunch of other people agreed with me, surely there must be something to what I'm saying. I don't think it is right, that mostly white lefties, who come from middle class and rich backgrounds can just poopoo working class right wingers while simultaneously never actually interacting with them. How is that not classist?
My dad is a Reagan republican. This sounds like a scenario specific to you that you’re projecting onto us. Either way, I don’t think we should automatically write off anyone who has made mistakes and has right-wing tendencies, like coal miners in Appalachia or something. However a large portion of the current right in America and abroad is at the very least proto-fascist and the deeper you get there’s some outright Nazis. That is the current face of the right, and asking someone from a vulnerable or marginalized group to ‘suck it’s up and work with Jeb the Nazi because he wants universal healthcare too’ is IMO kind of cold hearted and very dismissive of the concerns of said groups.
If these people figure out that the problem isn’t brown people and trans people, they’ll come to us naturally. Forsaking vulnerable groups concerns in an effort to appeal to bigots is wrong imo and bad praxis
My parents are poor dumb trump diehards, my mom is on anti-psychotics and my father was abused all through his childhood by an adoptive father who didn't want him. The conservative propaganda got my dad first way before I was born, and they have had him for decades. My mom is ill and just goes along with my dad. You could probably help my mom still but not with my dad around. I can't fix him at this point, he's old.
However, that being said, there's plenty of people that you can reach before they get to that point. But if you don't do anything at all you have a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I just hate when lefties can't see my families suffering and why they became the way they are. I tend to think it's because they learned about the shit through a book rather than actually having any hard shit happen to them, known anyone who actually has... or instead just have cartoon caricatures of what they might think a Appalachian coal miner might be like.
FYI, I said earlier that I agree that you should just avoid right wingers if you have certain minority statuses. And no one is making arguments for people who are too far gone unless you think everybody is a nazi then you're a fucking idiot.
How do you think that your run of the mill right wing people will figure out that brown and trans people aren't the problem? How does one do that if they don't ever really interact with either? Who has to pick up that slack if people with certain minority statuses can't do it themselves? They can't just magically do it, that's not consistent with the idea of material conditions. Obviously your cracker lefties have to put in the work. Literally no one else can.
Instead of telling me stop arguing with my dad why don’t you put in more work with your parents and stop blaming other leftists for not doing that work for you?
You can't fix a stubborn broken 70 year old man and a woman on anti-psych meds. It is futile, I have tried, I have been trying, fuck you for suggesting I didn't.
You're a real heartless piece of illiterate shit. Go fuck yourself. What a horrible fucking thing to say to a comrade you shithead. Please go fuck yourself and fuck all the people like you.
You sound like you have a big problem feeling sorry for yourself and then you lash out and criticize others, good luck with that. I would never consider someone telling me who I must befriend a comrade. More a stupidpol user.
You're the one who is afraid of fucking right wingers to the point that you won't talk to them AND LIKELY HAS NEVER EVEN KNOWN ANY. You fucking cowardly little idiot, no one is telling you to be their fucking best friend.
More assuming from you. If this were to be a good faith discussion I would also share my family and friends dynamics, but since you just assume and go on rants because you feel sorry for yourself it ain’t worth it.
I'm not a stupidpol user, and I'd rather be banned then deal with a fucking asshole like you. You're not an ally to the working class, just the cartoon ones you invisioned in your head who have coal smeared faces in Appalachia.
More assuming and projection. Telling someone with mental health issues to kill themselves what an awesome comrade.
You deserved it, maybe you shouldn't be talking shit about people and their families if you're gonna feign back to mental health issues. Classist son of a bitch coward.
Fuck yourself, I don't fuck with stupidpol or cowardly assholes like you.
Give it a shot you’ll fit in better over there. They’ll teach you some new tactics to argue with your parents about trump.
How do you not want people to be chuds but encourage people to be chuds? Are you fucking stupid? What's wrong with you?
They're broken people and have shitty, idiotic, hateful politics- but with all the bullshit my parents have gone through and as far as they've come, they're strong, I don't mind being like them.
It was totally above the belt to tell someone that they're not trying hard enough to fix their broken, mentally ill chud family. Literally not my responsibility to make sure someone who has mental health issues doesn't say stupid shit like that.
well don't tell me im not trying hard enough to fix my broken ass family especially after i've given you the details. i wont say it again, but im not sorry dude can go fuck himself. ima log off
I think writing off some very real concerns and worries Minority groups have about working with proto-fascists as ‘culture war stuff’ is a bad take and class reductionist as shit.
I have dozens of chud relatives who are critical of capitalism and both parties but still voted for Trump twice.
They've never said anything racist or sexist in my presence and I think a lot of them are reachable.
There's a difference between backwards (but not completely brainwashed) relatives and people who march and brawl for fascism.
Yes, this is true.
I still don't write anybody off, but we shouldn't be targeting them (the second group you mentioned) specifically. I do think people can be pulled from the brink though and always try and engage if the opportunity presents itself.
but there's just something about the first group that I like more
I can't quite put my finger on it
What does reaching out to chuds involve that's different from reaching out to everyone else who's working class that doesn't involve throwing trans, LBGTQA, POC, or any other marginalized comrades under the bus? Or involves us embracing nationalism or the military?
(This is intended for folks who are all about reaching out to right-wingers)
Reaching out to some group doesn't mean not reaching out to other groups, or espousing their views. Also reaching out to right wingers is emphasised because it is assumed that you are already reaching out to the rest.
Although I do think that on this site it is often overemphasized and there's people who for some reason think conservatives are easier to get on board than libs or whatever which is just obviously and demonstrably untrue. Also expending a lot of time on some people is just a waste since they're simply lost causes. But ideally people should at least make an attempt to talk to everyone, regardless of how shit their beliefs are, ESPECIALLY when they share material interest in some circumstance. For instance, when trying to get people on board with a strike, you try to get everyone on board, even the gross asshole who hates your guts, because it's actually something that affects him. But there's no point wasting your energy trying to convince said gross asshole about the importance of fighting against the patriarchy or trying to turn him into a socialist or whatever. It's not gonna happen and it is just a waste. You're much better off telling him to fuck off every time he is being gross.
We should reach out to all working class individuals. I think we've all seen examples of how close chuds are to getting it. At least on blatant economic issues.
If I'm ever reaching out to a chud you bet that I already cummed in my palms as a last form of defiance to the system
-7DeadlyFetsishes
Absolutely true, except I don't give a fuck about changing anybodys' vote
I'll talk to chuds, but they aren't my main target. Still they'll need time before they could be changed, and be trustworthy. Of course, we do need to remember that small business owning chuds (most chuds) aren't going to change.
an obvious but important detail here is that 'de-alienating the working class' does not equal 'get the chuds to vote for you!!'
