Which we should see as an excellent radicalization and growth opportunity!
It can be exhausting explaining ourselves again and again, always met with the same accusations and assumptions born from the mythos spun by our enemies.
However, we must remember these people are people, and many people change their minds given enough information, delivered with firm respect. For every belligerent person who appears like they wouldn’t change their mind for anything, there are 10 people quietly lurking who are more on-the-fence. Even those who regurgitate insults and contempt may change their mind when the stars align!
These people are not our enemies, they are victims to the greatest campaign of dishonesty in human history! It is our duty to draw out the poison and deliver the medicine!
I know many comrades here have very difficult lives and do not have the patience or energy to deal with such people. Please do not exhaust yourself interacting with liberals, and allow comrades with more energy to deal with them.
Radicalizing online is not the end-all be-all, but at this point in the psychological war for those within the Anglosphere, every victory is invaluable!!!
Hmm, I have another take on it.
Nobody wants to think they were “lied to”, even if it’s true. Westerners default to thinking of themselves as the main character of the story, and swallowing the idea of having been fooled is difficult, nearly impossible. You can’t be a victim, can you? That doesn’t fit the narrative arc at all.
Come at it from the other angle. Even those people deep in the shit pit of reaction can still FEEL when an atrocity is wrong, even if they twist it into blaming it on minorities or whatever. The right wing runs entirely on feeling, it’s literally all they have. The other side of their knife is taking blame away from the self- it’s never their own fault, and they never have to sacrifice anything. The other edge of their knife is the dulling and nullification of feeling.
When someone you know- someone shamelessly liberal- agrees with you that an atrocity is indeed wrong, embrace them and build on it. Not “No, but”, but instead “Yes, and”! They’re feeling something, and the people profiting from their suffering would prefer if they dull that feeling. Instead, link the feeling to facts- “Here is why the bad thing is indeed bad”- and turn that feeling into praxis- “You can fix it!”.
The problem is that a lot of libs don’t recognise real atrocities (especially if committed by the US) while imagining all the “bad guy countries” commit a dozen atrocities every morning before breakfast.
I’m just not sure how we can build on that without just confirming their worldview that the bad guy countries are the only ones doing bad things.
Doesn’t even have to be atrocities. Try policies. Privatisation of healthcare? Decaying and propagandization of school education? Crumbling infrastructure? The list goes on
That goes both ways though. Each side thinking they are right, the main character, impervious to being lied to and definitely on the right side of history. Or can you not also be fooled? Cause I know I have been, by both sides…
The difference between us and liberals is that we not only can admit to being fooled, we also actively seek out whether if we’ve been fooled.
We realize no one is immune to propaganda and act accordingly. And we mean no one.
Yeah it’s difficult all right, I’m wrong about something at least once per day
I can’t speak for all of us, but many of us probably did not come to communism as our first ideology once we became more political aware. Some did maybe, but a lot of us were liberals ourselves. We already came to terms with the fact we were lied to and are open to the possibility that we can and will be lied to again.
Personally, I started as full fledged American democrat before I left the country where I moved to socdem. Started reading theory “to be educated even if I don’t agree with it” and…found I agreed with it. A lot.
I have gone through several stages of being lied to and am well aware I am not impervious to it and happy to be corrected when I am wrong.
When you say “both sides” what you mean is “the same con artist wearing a new disguise.”
The “both sides” of capitalist, liberal “democracy” both work on behalf of the rich, not the people. That’s why you’ve felt cheated by both, because both will work against you.
Being aware of your own shortcomings is good though, it’s always important to question whether you have been fooled or not. That’s why us filthy dirty commies practice “self-crit” or “self-criticism” where we examine our ideas and try to challenge them scientifically, similar to peer review. Of course, we could still be wrong, but we can at least manage to be “less wrong” that way.