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this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2024
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the_dunk_tank
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It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
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"Maybe they'll come to some realizations" #723
I work with a lib who at times I begin to think is finally listening, a week later and we're back to square one. You can only talk to these people once a day at best, Reddit is for all of 24 hours a day every day. You'll never beat the all day brainwashing.
Did we not all beat the all day brainwashing here though? I mean I personally am an ex-lib.
Fair enough, I'm perhaps being too pessimistic; the lib I work with is very depressing in how he falls back into the stuff being spouted online very easily and I'm probably extrapolating far too much.
if his material conditions deteriorate, he might think back on things you said
That just means you haven't found the thing that speaks to their soul yet, just something that they agree with on a surface level and doesn't incept them with a will to unpack anything personally. For me my de-libining came after 2016 when I read what the groypers were saying and thoroughly read intellectual dark web stuff and saw that the lib brand of alternating snark, hysteria and patting themselves on the back for being the "decent" side was completely toothless against and ignorant to these rising political currents.
All of the Democrat messaging I saw felt designed to make them look good only within the parameters of right wing framing, and depended on taking the right's bad faith arguments at face value ("I thought you loved the troops but now you're attacking Gold Star families? Busted!"). I saw how the dirtbag left didn't mince words when talking about troops or back down when another self-righteous fake outrage campaign was started by the right, I saw Richard Spencer get punched once, lose the majority of his following and disprove the notion that the "marketplace of ideas" was the best antidote to hate, and I never looked back.
Same here. I even voted for Hillary over Bernie in the 2016 primaries. My thought process was very silly back then.
The key is, unfortunately, unless you have state power on your side to do a mass re-education effort (you don't, and won't) you're left with relying on individuals wanting to change on their own. The classic "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink." Well, you can make it drink... but, since we lack that power, we're left with just putting its face into the water and saying "drink! Drink for god's sake!"
Similar to addictions, until a person has a spark inside of them and desires to change their habits and thinking, basically nothing else from the outside will matter. You can bombard them with stuff like images of black, cancerous lungs and they'll shrug it off. Literally none of it matters until some internal switch happens. (Speaking as an ex-smoker. Nothing mattered from my friends/family telling me to quit. It just annoyed me more. Until I wanted to quit, really wanted to at a deep level, then it mattered what they were saying)
Anyway, all we can really do in the current circumstances is keep sprinkling propaganda or resources out there. Push back on possible weak points in their internal logic. But ultimately you also gotta accept many people will never change on their own or with your pushing. They have no real reason to change. They'll say stuff like "the orange man is fascist!" yet when you say "ok. Then why don't dems like Biden do something about him?" they get mad at you for suggesting an actual solution to the problem that they claim to recognize. They're addicted to liberalism I guess is my best analogy here. Liberalism, neoliberalism, whatever, it's all self delusion, worship of these mythical institutions and a belief that owning Donald Trump in court or in a debate matters. It doesn't. Also, the actual actual solutions, addressing the underlying fundamental issues that fuel fascism (improving material conditions and eliminating the 24/7 bullshit spewing machine of liberal media including the news but also all the other media we consume) is quite literally antithetical to their chosen worldview. And when you suggest that their worldview sucks shit they often, again, get mad at you for pointing out the truth. Because they're addicted to a lie, they've internalized it, and they aren't anywhere near ready to quit huffing that liberal bullshit
If this sounds bleak that's because it is. Doesn't mean we should stop, but, yeah.
Well yeah, agreed, but thats why I suggested that maybe they will realize something, not that we can pounce on this to force them to. Incidents like this that force them to face contradictions can in my mind be the spark that makes them want to change.
The person has to be so captured by an idea that they seek to learn more by themselves and replace one all day media diet with another
For me the Ukraine war, and specifically the whitewashing of Nazi symbols was the breaking point where I could no longer accept the contradictions. I branched out and eventually found this place.
I think a lot of people who are aware of the contradictions have no other place to go. They don't know that communities like this one even exist, so their only choices are following the far right narrative or the neoliberal narrative.
This is very interesting to me because I always considered the Ukraine War to be the type of thing you can only see the truth behind if you already have a leftist mindset. I never thought of it as something that could be the trigger point.
This I guess is my own myopic personal experience thing though. Since I've found it to be the thing that liberals (and leftist ultras) are most unshakable on. I mean the amount of [palestine flag/ukraine flag] you see on social media alone lol.
Well the place I was on previously can probably be pretty well described as "What if Hexbear was rabidly pro West in geopolitics?", so it was already pretty leftist.
It wasn't just the Nazi symbols though, it was also stuff like allowing Russians to be called Orcs, having a neocon splinter group fester away in a specific thread pretty much unmoderated (who later on all got banned for predictable reasons), posting pure propaganda and completely forgetting about the "reputable sources" rule, while ignoring all negative news from said "reputable sources", etc.
Some users also got really mad about the "tankies" in certain threads. It's always funny to me to see how close they really are to being "tankies" themselves. All it would take is having some skepticism over the Western narrative, and before you know it...
Ah, cool to see that someone can break out of being a NATO leftist lol. Ive only seen people get stuck there.