This is kinda tangential to your point but I judge people's political literacy on the basis of how capable they are of understanding and articulating the geopolitical implications of nuclear weapons and the UN Security Council.
If they think that nukes are a tool for aggression or they make claims like how the UNSC is useless and/or needs to have more permanent seats then they are ultimately idealists and it's extremely hard to have any discussion with them about politics or history because they're going to be an utter lib about everything and I find that there's more room for discussion with someone like a neocon than someone whose view is so clouded by idealism.
TL;DR: if you don't recognise that political power comes out the barrel of a gun then don't @ me because we won't be able to have a discussion.
Although you can be a good communist and play to the internal contradictions in their argument here and use it as a lead-in to discuss why police are bad (sure, people might do a little looting but a police officer resorting to violence to stop that makes them even worse than the looters) or anti-imperialism (yeah, Saddam Hussein was a bad guy but when the US invaded Iraq on both occasions they resorted to violence against him and that makes the US far worse than Saddam Hussein ever was.)
Obviously they're going to disagree with you because they'll make exceptions for state-sanctioned violence but it's up to you whether you use the opportunity to just agree with them and railroad your own talking points into an exchange which will make any onlooking radical centrist sit uneasily with their own convictions or you can draw out the excuses and either use it for your own entertainment or to use it as an intervention to identify the limits of their arguments and the inherent hypocrisy.
It depends on who's there to witness the exchange, what you want to get out of it, and how much hope you have for the person you're talking to tbh.
This is kinda tangential to your point but I judge people's political literacy on the basis of how capable they are of understanding and articulating the geopolitical implications of nuclear weapons and the UN Security Council.
If they think that nukes are a tool for aggression or they make claims like how the UNSC is useless and/or needs to have more permanent seats then they are ultimately idealists and it's extremely hard to have any discussion with them about politics or history because they're going to be an utter lib about everything and I find that there's more room for discussion with someone like a neocon than someone whose view is so clouded by idealism.
TL;DR: if you don't recognise that political power comes out the barrel of a gun then don't @ me because we won't be able to have a discussion.
One of my least favorite type of libs is the "if fight back against your oppressor youre actually worse than they are"
Agreed.
Although you can be a good communist and play to the internal contradictions in their argument here and use it as a lead-in to discuss why police are bad (sure, people might do a little looting but a police officer resorting to violence to stop that makes them even worse than the looters) or anti-imperialism (yeah, Saddam Hussein was a bad guy but when the US invaded Iraq on both occasions they resorted to violence against him and that makes the US far worse than Saddam Hussein ever was.)
Obviously they're going to disagree with you because they'll make exceptions for state-sanctioned violence but it's up to you whether you use the opportunity to just agree with them and railroad your own talking points into an exchange which will make any onlooking radical centrist sit uneasily with their own convictions or you can draw out the excuses and either use it for your own entertainment or to use it as an intervention to identify the limits of their arguments and the inherent hypocrisy.
It depends on who's there to witness the exchange, what you want to get out of it, and how much hope you have for the person you're talking to tbh.