I saw people talking about dropping marx quotes that highlight these contradictions in particular, of the rich actin in solidarity along their class concsious lines.
Anyone got any good quotes to share to help me agitate in non-leftists spaces?
I am currently on a good run radicalizing parts of the battle rap community, loll
Idk, maybe quotes could feel a bit preachy and turn people away? Nobody likes being told what to think, and I always felt that academicism has this effect. Helping them to reach the conclusions in a personal way is much better. You could comment your own personal observations, stuff like "yet another example of the elites rigging the game to forward their interests. All of this made very clear that we are stronger when working together to forward OUR interests, and I think we should keep working like that."
I think I know how to balance quotes and more modern ways of discussing issues without it being too annoying, I have been posting Panther/Maoist/Communist stuff in 'apolitical' communities such as drill music/ battle rap forums for years with a fair amount of success. My family is definitely what would be called lumpenproletariat, and after years of speaking to them about the every day bullshit of this system I feel like I tread a good line on all of this.
I can synthesise theory and such without too much issue, the biggest problem I am running into now is just knowing what to try and get across to people at this moment to really drive it home.
This is an example of something I already posted:
The rich have class consciousness and act in solidarity to protect their shared interests, and all it took was a bit of memeing for them to go mask-off about how little they care for regular people fucking over markets.
The issue is not manipulating the markets, the issue is who was manipulating them.
And because it wasn't a collection of billionaires, suddenly politicians are talking about regulations, corporate media is mischaracterising the issue, discord bans a community, facebook tries to stifle discussion, robin hood suspends the ability to buy GME and cancels some people orders, etc etc
The rich have class consciousness... when will we so that people can fight back properly against the system they created only for their benefit?
I (unfortunately) go to law school, and even profs tell me (often with a tone as if its a bad thing?) that "I am great at vulgarizing the law", aka... making it easier for regular people to understand without arcane terminology.
But honestly, I think a lot of westerners wrongly assume/fall back on never explicitly mentioning things from communist thinkers, when I have found even really idealistic libs to be accepting of discussions of Maoism when phrased properly, whereas I prefer to try and do both. Hell, I was quoting Lenin on revolutionary recuperation on Bernie mitten memes and getting traction, so why not outright Marx in this more explicit situation?
(EDIT: It goes without saying I am not American, so it's much easier to be pro-Mao without blowback, but still... people are more receptive to these things than ever, and after a bunch of CHUDs rushed your Capitol... you kind of have a high ground that was previously unavailable to you in being an open communist these days.)
Them go off, king. Spread the red seed all over them.
I guess I'm a bit sensitive about how to approach people with leftism because I'm from a place that has a bit of a leftist baggage (not the USA) and a lot of people have at least some formed leftist concepts, but it makes my skin crawl just how much people will try to talk to less informed citizens and shower them with academic stuff that matters zero percent for them, effectively turning them away from the concepts and the left as a whole. That plus trying to reduce the whole situation to just "Marx said this" "Gramsci said that" "that's capitalism for you" without acknowledging the present contradiction or material situation in any way.
I found that a good way to talk about this stuff is to just point them towards the major contradiction - the interests of the elite in question vs the interests of the workers in question - and kind of suggest what the thought should look like*. What difference could it make that I don't slap Marx's name or a hammer and sickle on it if the thought itself is marxist? I also think that people are way more receptive if the idea is something that seems to be the conclusions of a person in the same setting and the same situation as they are, like a fellow worker in some retail store. Saying phrases by some foreign guy they barely ever heard about, save for shitty internet fights, can be quite alienating in this regard, I think.
*It's interesting to note that people that I've talked to tend to arrive at either defeatism or capitalist realism. I think that having a general idea about how to organize would reel in a lot of people, by showing them that there IS something we can do, actually
I saw people talking about dropping marx quotes that highlight these contradictions in particular, of the rich actin in solidarity along their class concsious lines.
Anyone got any good quotes to share to help me agitate in non-leftists spaces?
I am currently on a good run radicalizing parts of the battle rap community, loll
Idk, maybe quotes could feel a bit preachy and turn people away? Nobody likes being told what to think, and I always felt that academicism has this effect. Helping them to reach the conclusions in a personal way is much better. You could comment your own personal observations, stuff like "yet another example of the elites rigging the game to forward their interests. All of this made very clear that we are stronger when working together to forward OUR interests, and I think we should keep working like that."
I think I know how to balance quotes and more modern ways of discussing issues without it being too annoying, I have been posting Panther/Maoist/Communist stuff in 'apolitical' communities such as drill music/ battle rap forums for years with a fair amount of success. My family is definitely what would be called lumpenproletariat, and after years of speaking to them about the every day bullshit of this system I feel like I tread a good line on all of this.
I can synthesise theory and such without too much issue, the biggest problem I am running into now is just knowing what to try and get across to people at this moment to really drive it home.
This is an example of something I already posted:
I (unfortunately) go to law school, and even profs tell me (often with a tone as if its a bad thing?) that "I am great at vulgarizing the law", aka... making it easier for regular people to understand without arcane terminology.
But honestly, I think a lot of westerners wrongly assume/fall back on never explicitly mentioning things from communist thinkers, when I have found even really idealistic libs to be accepting of discussions of Maoism when phrased properly, whereas I prefer to try and do both. Hell, I was quoting Lenin on revolutionary recuperation on Bernie mitten memes and getting traction, so why not outright Marx in this more explicit situation?
(EDIT: It goes without saying I am not American, so it's much easier to be pro-Mao without blowback, but still... people are more receptive to these things than ever, and after a bunch of CHUDs rushed your Capitol... you kind of have a high ground that was previously unavailable to you in being an open communist these days.)
Them go off, king. Spread the red seed all over them.
I guess I'm a bit sensitive about how to approach people with leftism because I'm from a place that has a bit of a leftist baggage (not the USA) and a lot of people have at least some formed leftist concepts, but it makes my skin crawl just how much people will try to talk to less informed citizens and shower them with academic stuff that matters zero percent for them, effectively turning them away from the concepts and the left as a whole. That plus trying to reduce the whole situation to just "Marx said this" "Gramsci said that" "that's capitalism for you" without acknowledging the present contradiction or material situation in any way.
I found that a good way to talk about this stuff is to just point them towards the major contradiction - the interests of the elite in question vs the interests of the workers in question - and kind of suggest what the thought should look like*. What difference could it make that I don't slap Marx's name or a hammer and sickle on it if the thought itself is marxist? I also think that people are way more receptive if the idea is something that seems to be the conclusions of a person in the same setting and the same situation as they are, like a fellow worker in some retail store. Saying phrases by some foreign guy they barely ever heard about, save for shitty internet fights, can be quite alienating in this regard, I think.
*It's interesting to note that people that I've talked to tend to arrive at either defeatism or capitalist realism. I think that having a general idea about how to organize would reel in a lot of people, by showing them that there IS something we can do, actually