Copy-pasting this from yesterday, because its the same stuff.
This “we must be as uncivil and annoying as possible” is completely antithetical to spreading communism. You almost always hear this line from the self-described dirtbag left and chapos, and never from actual communists earnestly and patiently trying to win people over to communism.
Listen to Comrade Huey:
We need to earn the trust of the people by acting like Malcolm X, Huey, or Fidel when it comes to engaging with liberals and reactionaries. Not act like angry youtube manchildren, twitter radlibs, or brooklyn podcasters.
Being polite and patient (when dealing even with reactionaries like Malcolm X had to), in a public space, is just as much if not more about convincing spectators and third parties that communists are cool, level-headed, trustworthy, and want to serve the people.
Treat dealing with reactionaries as an opportunity to educate them and everyone watching the discussion about the issue. This is what I did yesterday with that liberal.
This is an awkward and shitty point to make, but shouldn’t we measure Huey’s theoretical lines carefully?
Its not just him, but Mao, Malcolm X, Fidel, uncle ho, Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Some of these figures could occasionally get snarky but that was the exception, not the rule. Their patient education of the masses by weighing in to public debates and topics is what won people over.
It’s like how you act around close friends vs how you going to act when around new people you want to have a good impression with. It’s fun to rip on ppl and act dumb around fellow comrades but when it comes time to debate and argue your points you gotta buckle down. Its, imo, another big distinction between communists and anarkiddies. Be the adult in the room.
This isn’t to say be tolerant however. But you gotta learn how to be passive aggressive and demeaning without coming off like a prick. As I said in another comment. Gotta work on the finesse. Destroy their argument and shit on their ego.
Yes I’ve seen this dozens of times in the past. It doesn’t change the fact that you DO need to cut through the bullshit of some liberals by giving them a negative experience.
When the liberal is not engaging you in a productive and useful way you need to find a way to create that productive and useful interaction. By creating an exceedingly negative experience for the unproductive interactions while providing a positive experience for the productive interactions you break down this wall.
If you try talking nicely to people that are not engaging you in a productive way you are literally wasting your time.
And in some cases it isn’t about the one single interaction. We are a movement as a part of a wider field of interactions. One comrade’s actions do not occur in a vacuum. If I give a liberal an extremely negative experience for their utter bullshit on one given day that opens the door for a more positive experience that the liberal aims for when they speak to a different comrade on another day. Sometimes this can not be avoided due to moods, timing, grumpiness, etc, as the exact conditions of any given interaction can differ wildly with luck.
I promote the “never stop explaining” mindset of Sankara. But if the liberal is not listening you should not be explaining, you should be working on ways to make them listen. The negative experience for not listening or engaging in a way that lets us get through is a necessary tool in the toolkit of getting through.
I agree some of them are obvious trolls, but being respectful isn’t only or even necessarily to benefit the two parties, but also everyone else who is watching the interaction. Third parties will be much easier swayed to communism when they realize its defenders are respectful, level-headed, disciplined, and people they wouldn’t mind meeting in-person.
If I give a liberal an extremely negative experience for their utter bullshit on one given day that opens the door for a more positive experience that the liberal aims for when they speak to a different comrade on another day.
People don’t realize that by doing this, in a public space like the net, it makes things miserable for third parties too. By “dunking” rather than politely educating, we alienate observers who are potential comrades.
I remember many years ago on /r/communism, the posters were so combative and rude to newcomers, it turned a lot of ppl off to communism. Even though I was starting to consider myself a communist, I never wanted to meet them or other communists because of how rude I thought they were. It took me a while to realize the “dirtbag”-method is not the way communists actually act in public.
I agree some of them are obvious trolls, but being respectful isn’t only or even necessarily to benefit the two parties, but also everyone else who is watching the interaction.
It’s never just one interaction though. There’s others in the thread whenever this happens, and those others typically have good faith people in them. Those sections of the thread produce something completely different.
I’m not going to be respectful to people engaging in unproductive and bad faith ways. They are not being respectful, that deserves calling out and dismantling. Standing around and respectfully allowing someone to run their bullshit all over you results in giving the impression to third parties that the things they say are deserving of respect. And given that most of the time this is gish gallop lists of communist crimes and supposed genocides giving people the impression they deserve respect is a poor move with an observing audience. You just resign yourself to a situation in which you’re individually examining one massacre after another explaining why it is or is not bad and get caught up in time wasting bullshit instead of doing anything productive.
Copy-pasting this from yesterday, because its the same stuff.
This “we must be as uncivil and annoying as possible” is completely antithetical to spreading communism. You almost always hear this line from the self-described dirtbag left and chapos, and never from actual communists earnestly and patiently trying to win people over to communism.
Listen to Comrade Huey:
We need to earn the trust of the people by acting like Malcolm X, Huey, or Fidel when it comes to engaging with liberals and reactionaries. Not act like angry youtube manchildren, twitter radlibs, or brooklyn podcasters.
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See my other response below.
Being polite and patient (when dealing even with reactionaries like Malcolm X had to), in a public space, is just as much if not more about convincing spectators and third parties that communists are cool, level-headed, trustworthy, and want to serve the people.
Treat dealing with reactionaries as an opportunity to educate them and everyone watching the discussion about the issue. This is what I did yesterday with that liberal.
Its not just him, but Mao, Malcolm X, Fidel, uncle ho, Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Some of these figures could occasionally get snarky but that was the exception, not the rule. Their patient education of the masses by weighing in to public debates and topics is what won people over.
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It’s like how you act around close friends vs how you going to act when around new people you want to have a good impression with. It’s fun to rip on ppl and act dumb around fellow comrades but when it comes time to debate and argue your points you gotta buckle down. Its, imo, another big distinction between communists and anarkiddies. Be the adult in the room.
This isn’t to say be tolerant however. But you gotta learn how to be passive aggressive and demeaning without coming off like a prick. As I said in another comment. Gotta work on the finesse. Destroy their argument and shit on their ego.
Yes I’ve seen this dozens of times in the past. It doesn’t change the fact that you DO need to cut through the bullshit of some liberals by giving them a negative experience.
When the liberal is not engaging you in a productive and useful way you need to find a way to create that productive and useful interaction. By creating an exceedingly negative experience for the unproductive interactions while providing a positive experience for the productive interactions you break down this wall.
If you try talking nicely to people that are not engaging you in a productive way you are literally wasting your time.
And in some cases it isn’t about the one single interaction. We are a movement as a part of a wider field of interactions. One comrade’s actions do not occur in a vacuum. If I give a liberal an extremely negative experience for their utter bullshit on one given day that opens the door for a more positive experience that the liberal aims for when they speak to a different comrade on another day. Sometimes this can not be avoided due to moods, timing, grumpiness, etc, as the exact conditions of any given interaction can differ wildly with luck.
I promote the “never stop explaining” mindset of Sankara. But if the liberal is not listening you should not be explaining, you should be working on ways to make them listen. The negative experience for not listening or engaging in a way that lets us get through is a necessary tool in the toolkit of getting through.
I agree some of them are obvious trolls, but being respectful isn’t only or even necessarily to benefit the two parties, but also everyone else who is watching the interaction. Third parties will be much easier swayed to communism when they realize its defenders are respectful, level-headed, disciplined, and people they wouldn’t mind meeting in-person.
People don’t realize that by doing this, in a public space like the net, it makes things miserable for third parties too. By “dunking” rather than politely educating, we alienate observers who are potential comrades.
I remember many years ago on /r/communism, the posters were so combative and rude to newcomers, it turned a lot of ppl off to communism. Even though I was starting to consider myself a communist, I never wanted to meet them or other communists because of how rude I thought they were. It took me a while to realize the “dirtbag”-method is not the way communists actually act in public.
It’s never just one interaction though. There’s others in the thread whenever this happens, and those others typically have good faith people in them. Those sections of the thread produce something completely different.
I’m not going to be respectful to people engaging in unproductive and bad faith ways. They are not being respectful, that deserves calling out and dismantling. Standing around and respectfully allowing someone to run their bullshit all over you results in giving the impression to third parties that the things they say are deserving of respect. And given that most of the time this is gish gallop lists of communist crimes and supposed genocides giving people the impression they deserve respect is a poor move with an observing audience. You just resign yourself to a situation in which you’re individually examining one massacre after another explaining why it is or is not bad and get caught up in time wasting bullshit instead of doing anything productive.
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Yes. Some comrades forget to use the carrot after they’ve gotten the stick out though.
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yeah, catra got this from one of the lemmy mods