Loudly. I’m that meme where I promise myself I won’t get political again then 15 minutes in I’m wildly gesticulating and accusing them of revisionism and magical thinking. I did last night with my brother

Well usually what happens to me is I wear my keffiyeh and then my unhinged parents will scream at me about le antisemetism completely unprompted even if I said nothing

I don’t engage with people really except for online. If I’m ever talking to family or coworkers I just zone out, withdraw internally, and let the human puppet I call my body do its thing.

I just went for a walk the other week with a relative and as we were just discussing things I again made the mistake of being myself and discussed things that I think about and think are important, like climate change and my actual work with paperless people.

After about 30 minutes they said “could we not always talk about something depressing”. I said sure and went on to shut myself up and proceeded to discuss things like canning and cooking.

This person is super anxious and depressed most of the time, they think our world and the people in it are fucked. He thinks people are shit. He thinks I see hope in the world only because I am “naive and idealist”. He thinks my sensitivity to justice is just my autism aka pathology. He is miserable and I am not. He has no interest in facing the world as it is and protects his cocoon of gaming and treats. This I do find depressing.

You are also right, it feels super unsafe being around these people. It’s people like this that have given me and my partner covid twice and yelled at me for asking for some caution with it.

i bully them

It’s simple: i don’t

Depends. If it’s the people around me who aren’t my loved ones I don’t care to speak with them anyway and I don’t care what they think.

It’s situational with my loved ones. Typically I just mind my own business but when the heavy stuff comes out and I’m asked for my opinion directly or I hear someone say something incredibly wrong or moronic: they’re getting both barrels. I don’t care what their politics are. Some people ask more questions and are open to hearing more about what I have to say, some want nothing to do with me anymore (nor I them). Probably most just assume I’m crotchety and opinionated and won’t engage me in that way because they can’t be bothered.

a couple examples: my gf changed her mind from reactionary to more of a vaguely leftist tought. persistence and mainly patience did it. she is a reader so i introduced her some very light theory (bauman) when she was ready. then a good smart youtuber. dont be sectarian, keep it real.

i pulled an old friend a bit left too. i talked about his shitty job and climate change, and why these things are like this. and gave him a hopeful view of what can be. he noticed capitalism is crap and i presented the anticapitalist options. this happened over a few years. always keep it real.

each person is a little different but there are people who simply don’t want to hear it because they are privileged, dont want to deal with it and so on. don’t hide your opinion if you can (like if your job or living space doesnt depend on it) but don’t waste time pushing things with them too hard until or even if they actually want to hear it.

your parents though? older relatives? yeah most old people nowadays are arrogant and will. not. hear. it. because they think themselves smarter than those damn youngns and they tied their group identity to that shitty opinion. rich people? much harder too, but we shoudnt need many of them anyway.

remember leftism isnt sponsored by big money. WE are the ones who have to do this work. you just have to have the sensitivity and patience to do this properly without driving people away. and DON’T feel like you have to change everyones minds immediatly or at all. people tend to change their minds slowly over time and you have their honest listening ears for only a small amount of it, or little of it at a time. sometimes they wont budge and thats okay too. keeping your loved ones is always more important.

edit: thank for the updoots le kind gentlesir also try not to get that mad at people for believing propaganda. its fucking powerful and most people are not at fault for it. dont take shit from fascists and trolls tho.

I take a stand, often without saying where my stand ideologically comes from.

I am usually polite about that, which works better, but I also don’t allow thought-terminating cliches to win such as “well that’s your opinion” (the lib/chud already gave theirs, so that’s usually dropped as a salted earth tactic) or even “to each their own” (whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean especially in the context of an argument).

You won’t have many friends if you need them to agree with you about everything and be as adamant about said things.

I know some people will see this as abandoning principles, but I disagree. All my close friends know exactly where I stand and unless I’m drunk I won’t go on political rants. For the ones who have known me long enough, they greatly appreciate it lol.

So long as nobody takes an issue with my politics or says something I find heinous, everybody gets along.

Well depends, with my family and especially my wife, I push it until they are genuinely uncomfortable then back off. A while later I see a shift in her opinion. Mostly I don’t initiate the conversation either, it’ll be something like an exhibit on the Siblings Scholl or a demonstration against Nazis organized by the local SPD and greens or something.

Generally, I bring up those uncomfortable topics with the people who I know are willing to discuss them in my life, though if someone mentions any trigger phrases such as “unseasonal weather” or “golly gee everyone seems to be getting sick, I wonder what it is”, I go all-in.

I have yet to be fired, cut out of a will, or to lose a friend over this. I’m lucky in that most of the people I talk to about these things are “progressive” at worst, which means they’ll usually agree with most of what I say, though they tend to balk at eg killing all landlords. Frankly the majority of people in my life are uninformed and seem to get engaged in those conversations because they learn something and it gets them thinking. The ones who don’t tend to disengage and let me rant for a while, which is fine by me because it’s quite cathartic.

All that said I don’t have any relationships I’d really classify as “deep” so this probably won’t work for everyone.

At least in terms of Gaza, the IDF fascist paratroopers do a good job of making propaganda against themselves by literally filming their own war cimes, so I would start by showing them how vile and bloodthirsty the freikorps really are. Seriously, even the biggest chud probably will probably find it a little tasteless of making a joke out of a destroyed home by knocking on the barely standing door frame.

I honestly think leftist discourse as a whole needs to get out of its own head. The right does very well of employing tactics such as dog whistling and misdirection. We really need to invest a lot into our populism department, especially since we have blatant right wing propaganda, such as the manosphere and sigma bullshit, to deal with on a daily basis.

We need some action. Why not rent out a billboard of the aforementioned videos, with the headline being “THIS IS WHERE YOUR TAXPAYER MONEY IS GOING”. We’re also gonna need some young, charismatic speakers. Lenin didn’t inspire the people by recording a bunch of video essays.

i simply do not. 90% of my internal monologue is already too spicy for the normies so i’m used to keeping it to myself.

real example from talking with mom

“There’s money for bombing children but not for the forest service 🤷”

you can infer the context.