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!!!
I completely agree with that. I find the trick is recognizing whether a person disagrees, but wants to have a genuine discussion to understand where you’re coming from or just trolling. I think we can give people the benefit of the doubt, but as the discussion progresses it’s important to watch for signs such as the person ignoring or misrepresenting the points you’re making, talking past you, using tropes, etc. At that point it’s best to just leave a note pointing that out for people reading the thread and disengage.
You have the patience of a saint for continuing to debate them after the Reddit influx. I’ve completely stopped trying to debate the libs on Lemmy because it ruins my mood and mental health more than it has hope of convincing them or even starting a productive conversation where either one of us stand to learn from the other. I still make it a point to expose myself to all dissenting views because I feel that as a socialist I should at least be aware of all the viewpoints, but I don’t care enough to actually engage with them anymore.
I usually just hope that other people reading learn something. I’m trying to engage less with them less as well, blocking a few really prolific trolls definitely helped. I gotta say though, with hexbear federating the vibes got so much better.
While you were away, reddit made a big fuckup by charging a fortune to use their APIs, killing third party apps. This caused many redditors to jump ship to other platforms, and lemmy was the biggest alternative.
Hence all the libs.
I heard about that, I should have figured the consequence.
Well, it’s like old GenZedong days, only we can’t get quarantined 😈😈😈😈
Hexbear is also federated now, so we have r/chapotraphouse veterans here now too.
lol libs on from lemmy.ee and lemmy.world are having a complete meltdown over that, for a while they were big enough to run around and brigade things they didn’t like and all of a sudden the floodgate opened on the left 😂
While you were away, reddit made a big fuckup by charging a fortune to use their APIs, killing third party apps. This caused many redditors to jump ship to other platforms, and lemmy was the biggest alternative.
Hence all the libs.
So many federated libs have a “fuck you, got mine” attitude and outright brag about throwing money at their corporate masters, so why did they leave Reddit in the first place?
Gotta say I was expecting some friction with ya’ll at lemmygrad after Federation (because we are all libs on hexbear) but so far you folks rock and I have been very pleased to see your high quality posts on my feed.
Loving to see posts like this. Can’t remember the Sankara quote but ya’ll know it. Cannot get tired of explaining ourselves because when the people understand us they will side with us.
Loving having new comrades in the posting trenches with us.
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.
Hey this is about me!
I probably don’t know the right words to use and I don’t know my history or theory and couldn’t hold my own in a real debate but I sure am learning a lot from you all when I find your posts on All and your comments all over the place.
Realizing that, I don’t exactly know where I fall politically. Previously I would say I am left, but seeing conversations I realize that I don’t even know where Left-land is. At the moment I don’t see myself agreeing with a lot of stuff posted by hexbear/lemmygrad users, but I’m open to learn, and, more importantly, have a fuller understanding of your perspective(s).
Coming from Reddit I’m not used to the incredibly in-depth dialectic with a non-/anti-Western point of view, nor the intense levels of trolling/sarcasm/dunking that you all seem to love so much. So it’s hard to navigate conversations sometimes, and figure out what is a joke and what is serious. And even if I personally don’t engage in the conversation, usually someone with a similar mindset to me will do so, and I appreciate it when you folks take the time to soften your words/message to
actually(edit to cross out judgy word) explain your position.Additionally I hope we can see and treat each other as individuals and not our instance names when traversing the fediverse (honestly this is more about non-hexbear/lemmygrad users, but felt I should say it anyway). It certainly is a shame that some instances choose to defed you. I hope mine doesn’t, but I’m prepared to move if mine gets overly censor-y, though my understanding is that sdf is unlikely to do so.
Anyway, keep it up, there are absolutely people out there lurking and reading what you all write, and occasionally learning something.
Stuff like this is why I loved the internet so much long ago (near 30 years, wow) and I’m really happy to see it hasn’t gone anywhere, I just lost track of it.
Cheers!
These people are not our enemies
That’s where I disagree. Liberals fund the police and the military, which is the main reason much of the world is enslaved and unable to fight climate change. So long as anyone is making excuses for this shit, they are most certainly the enemy of history. That being said, people can change. I know that because I did.
Liberalism as an entity is absolutely our enemy. I just mean individual liberals.
I believe this war will continue to heat up, and I just prefer to convert enemies in order to lessen their ranks, while we still can.
I have never regretted extending humanity and compassion to my enemies, and trying instead to see them as a victim of brainwashing, which they are.
Don’t forget, brainwashing is a co-opted term, and you’re using the co-opted version. Brain washing is literally the act of washing the brain from impurities and toxins. This is what you are describing as your preferred course of action, which is also the strategy of Mao and the PLA. They captured KMT soldiers and they washed their brains clean of anti-communist lies and showed them the truth. Once their brains were cleaned, the KMT soldiers saw that the correct course of action was joining the PLA.
Our rhetorical opponents are not brain washed, they are brain dirtied. They need to cleanse their minds of false beliefs, and our role in the process is to help them find and eliminate those false beliefs.
Seriously tho what’s the difference between a Soviet gulag and a Western prison? Any society that still has crime requires correctional facilities, the USSR is no different. Why do libs insist on Soviet ones being called gulags? If you want to criticize their prison system just call it that. I know it’s a Russian word but we’re speaking English here which already has a word for prisons, and to me the Soviet system really does not seem different or unique enough to warrant its own word as a proper noun. (I-it’s not just to make the Soviet system seem more evil by distancing it from their own Western prison systems right? I-it’s not that right?)
Gulags were used to try and rehabilitate dangerous people back into society, which is in theory what American prisons do too. But in practice American prisons are where the poor are tortured, raped, beaten, branded with second-class citizenry and commited to a lifetime of hellish punishment, especially for crimes of poverty.
You forgot enslaved. America outlawed slavery except as punishment for crime, so how do you get your slaves back? arrest them all for nonsense!
Why do libs insist on Soviet ones being called gulags?
Because GULAG is a Russian acronym (Chief Administration of Corrective Labour Camps). They were literally called gulags. They are corrective labor camps, not storage containers for human. Granted, most US prisons are labor camps as well.
i dont think they were called gulags tho. gulag was the name of the central administrative body, but the prisoners didnt call the camps gulags. just camps. or prison.
it’d be like calling US prisons BOPs.
I have absolutely zero patience for anti-communism
