Personally I’m not that good at countering liberal comments on our posts, which seems to be happening more and more frequently with any posts relating to China. It’d be a lot easier if we could have a big pinned post with all the materials we need so we can just link to it whenever we need to.
I fundamentally disagree with Justice, in the fact that if we do not engage, if we do not counter at all ever, if we sit in our corner and talk about it no liberal will ever learn, and while we might hang on talking too them for far longer than its worth, and that it is infuriating talking to a liberal, we do not get anywhere if we do not at least TRY to talk to them.
With that ramble out of the way, I would say if you are going to link and leave, I would sugest leaving the individual links, however I would recomend also leaving a little bit of a statement with it, as it is easy to just ignore a link with no context.
I’m not sure if I’m being pragmatic or bitter, but I’m of the view that they’re not worth the effort. Liberals that are of the kind of mindset that would be willing to listen and reconsider their convictions won’t be found amingst the types that come into these kinds of places swinging Xinjiang and Ukraine around like a hammer. The kinds of liberals that do that will dig in and be stubborn, and would rather double down and make asses of themselves than admit to any mistake. And more importantly, those kinds of liberals are in the imperial core, where they have no real political agency because they can’t change the system from within and refuse to do it from without. Their opinions don’t matter, there’s no material difference to the work of AES states whether those liberals are class conscious or not. I mean it in the most pragmatic way possible when I say they aren’t worth the effort. Education effort should be spent on people at the periphery, in Africa and South America, where the fronts of this ideological struggle are and where changing someone’s mind could affect how they vote, and the cases they make in support at their local elections.
I understand where you are coming from, and I fully understand that we often spend too much time arguing long after the point where it is obvious the conversation is fruitless. That being said, the revolution is atleast one part education, and if I can find it agian, I will piput the Castro Quote here, but I feel we ought to engage, just a little. I would immagine most of us where at one point in time liberals, due to the society around us, but we changed we learned and we grew, and this is a fundamental part of the human condition. I am under no illussions of grandure here that arguing on the internet is the best way to educate, or that we touch many hearts, generally education, especially when dealing with adults and older children happens best when there is a rapport and trust with the teacher, but that being said, every so often maybe 1% of the time maybe a little more, something we say, some link we leave will get lodged into someone’s head, and they will think about it, and they might just come around. I understand it isn’t ideal, and it isnt “fun” and there are more effective manners of education but this is the what we we can do with the tools presented to us.
Now please dont read what I said as that somehow the liberals of the imperal core are the most important to educate, they are not, as you said pragmaticly the periphery is more fertile to this, but that being said, I dont think in my personal oppinion this means totally ignoring liberals from the imperial core.
Agree. I was a liberal once. Not just a pro-capitalist with shitty values. But someone who read the theory, did the homework, and accepted (a) the limits of human social possibility and (b) that capitalism was the only option to improve the world. But because I was so invested and so critical, I saw the flaws and the contradictions.
The problem is that liberalism offers zero tools to cope with or resolve those contradictions except for curious philosophical thought experiments. Then someone patiently explained a way of thinking that engages with and resolves those contradictions i.e. historical and dialectical materialism.
Another problem for western ‘progressive’ liberals is that they live in an echo chamber and have no awareness of it because they are convinced that freedom of expression is a thing capable of existing. It isn’t, because the ruling class control intellectual production and distribution.
The thing with online discussion is that you don’t have to convince the person you’re talking to, or you don’t have to convince them there and then. It creates a public record that others will see and come across. Simply by providing a counter narrative, the spell can be broken.
It’s like when we try to engage with libs here or elsewhere and they all gang up on you with their ill-considered ideas. They don’t make an argument because they think that everyone will agree that any unorthodox ideas will be treated with disdain ab initio. They can’t make an argument because that requires logic and evidence, neither of which are on their side.
By providing a counter narrative, we highlight this and show to those who see the cracks in liberalism that there are sensible, reasonable, well-read, and rigorous thinkers who don’t accept the liberal bullshit. By engaging with liberals, we create the possibility of escaping the liberal mind trap.
Agree. I think just 2-3 counter narratives with sources/etc are enough for those who don’t want to engage with the libs any further.
Lurkers/Others will see it, and with enough time then subconsciously they should start to question things. Like
coughpropaganda.I agree with pretty much everything you said; I think where we differ is in how engaging just a little should be done.
We each of us has a finite amount of effort to give, and in my view one of the biggest factors in how fruitful that effort will be is who you spend that effort on.
I think that Liberals who have taken it upon themselves to troll, sealion, castigate or enlighten us are one of the worst kinds of people you can spend that effort on. The Liberal mindset has a staggering amount of inherent arrogance, and when that’s paired with a determination to either vex or ‘save’ you, you’re better off sowing seeds on concrete than trying to turn them around. They already decided they were right long ago. And they’re certainly not going to give any credence to a list of sources or an FAQ, if they even bother to look at it.
I don’t disagree that we have a responsibility to educate, rather I think we have an additional responsibility to be discerning about who, when, and how to reach out with that education. It’d be interesting to see how many of us that converted from liberalism were set down that path by arguing with a Marxist compared to how many of us were prompted by questions, doubts and contradictions raised from reflecting on our material conditions.
Between the core and the periphery, each individual communist should work within where they can dialecticaly change things most effectively. The core needs to take the boot off the periphery, and the periphery needs to seize the means of production from the most exploitive industries of global capitalism (imperialism).