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We should encourage good faith liberals to talk with us (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by ExotiqueMatter@lemmygrad.ml to c/genzedong@lemmygrad.ml

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The vast majority of liberals who ever comment posts on lemmygrad and hexbear are of the insufferable variety while the ones who are willing to have actual conversations are a very silent faction that we see verry rarely. I think we should find a way to encourage the latter to engage more with us while keeping out the smuglords.

Of course, keeping out smuglords all the while making sure that as much good faith peoples see us could prove difficult and would demand to have a strict management to make it possible given the current conditions off the lemmyverse but I think it would be worth it.

One way I think we could go about it could be to make a pined megathread every week/month depending on what is the most convenient that would be meant specifically for curious liberals to come talk to us. It should have strict healthy debate rules to keep smuglords out and curb excesses from those of us who tend to be too harsh toward even good faith lib, the subjects doesn't need to be strictly political, in fact I believe that more casual conversation and memes should be encouraged to break with the more serious talk from time to time, we should also encourage varying conversation topics with more economics and political theory as our conversation with liberals tend to center around history and actuality and barely touch on other topics, which I think is kind of a shame.

Of course that's just an idea I'm throwing out there and I would like everyone to give opinions and ideas below.

Edit: By "good faith peoples" I was mostly thinking of the apolitical peoples, the ones who aren't really invested in politics, I worded that a bit badly.

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[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 27 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

I don't think the occasional open megathread would hurt but focusing too much effort on trying to reach liberals is a tactical mistake. There is a much broader mass of people out there who are not liberal, most of them are just apolitical or only very superficially political in one direction or the other, and these are the people who we should be trying to reach first, not groups that are already ideologically hardened, whether liberal or conservative. It is more difficult to break through already established barriers than to lay down foundations on empty or mostly empty land. In order to reach these people you need to emphasize shared material interests, and preferably do so outside of the kind of online milieu which tends to disproportionately attract already politicized individuals as is the case for this platform.

[–] GinAndJuche@hexbear.net 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Not wrong, but a catch-all “disagree and and want a proper discussion” would solve the “liberal only” complaint. In my experience chuds are easier to convert, but a chud thread would be a miserable idea.

Either way, if it had a specific comm with ban happy mods it might not be a bad thing.

[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

chuds are easier to convert, but a chud thread would be a miserable idea

I completely agree on both counts.

[–] GinAndJuche@hexbear.net 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Kinda catch 22 in a way, if we walk through the brambles and suffer countless stinging thorn we might win them over….might… and it fucking sucks

[–] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 8 points 7 months ago

"liberal" here is an unmarked term that thereby refers to both a broad group and a specific subset of it, like how "man" can mean both "humans generally" and "males specifically". Furthermore, most "apolitical" people are just casual liberals rather than dedicated ones, because we live in a neoliberal society.

[–] ExotiqueMatter@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 7 months ago

There is a much broader mass of people out there who are not liberal, most of them are just apolitical or only very superficially political in one direction or the other

I was mostly thinking of those peoples, my bad if that wasn't clear.

[–] MarxMadness@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

There is a much broader mass of people out there who are not liberal, most of them are just apolitical or only very superficially political in one direction or the other

Reaching out to these people is good, too, but I'm not sold that they're easier/more worthwhile to bring around than more committed libs (let's define that as regular Democratic Party voters):

As @GarbageShoot@hexbear.net pointed out, a lot of "apolitical" people are still pretty dug in on their priors, they just... aren't that interested in politics. Maybe that changes with exposure to leftist politics, but maybe the effort we put in just gets us (more) armchair revolutionaries. A lot of more committed libs have done real-world stuff like phonebanking, canvassing, staffing events, maybe even some protesting.
A lasting change to your worldview usually requires significant learning, which takes time and attention. Committed libs already set aside time and attention for politics; it's a matter of getting them to read/watch something different in the time they already spend on politics, not carve out new time to read/watch something they might not be interested in at all.
As long as you're somewhat honest with yourself -- which is a prerequisite for being persuadable -- being dug in on a position can backfire if it's a bad one. If I'm a lib who's genuinely horrified at how the U.S. handles its southern border, leftists pointing out how Obama and Biden have worsened the situation is not something I'll dismiss out of hand. It'll stick with me. If I'm used to occasionally hearing about bad stuff but resigned to being apolitical, how is hearing about one more bad thing going to change that?
Bernie based his campaigns around turning out apolitical people and the left wing of committed Dems; there was some success there, but not enough. And the task there was only getting apolitical folks to do the easiest form of political participation: voting for a popular candidate.