Talking to your friends about their Fascist Ideology
Talking to your friends about their Fascist Ideology
How do you do it?
I stopped participating in a group chat with some long-time friends about a year ago, mostly due in part to the exhausting conversations over politics. Ironically, after Trump was shot, the group decided to silo the conversations into two groups, one for non-politics, and one for politics, and pinged me. We're that kind of group where we go long periods of time not seeing each other in person due to life and kids, but it was nice to have them reach out.
But oh, that politics channel has not changed. Meanwhile, my worldview has shifted dramatically to the left of theirs (and beyond, really). The spectrum is:
- Center Leaning Republican (a Rogan, Pool, Peterson enjoyer),
- A Center leaning Dem
- A Vote Blue Democrat (they are also the only queer person in our group)
- A 3rd Party guy (basically a libertarian but refuses to adopt a label, and doesn't vote, but also a Peterson enjoyer, rabid anticommunist, they always know a guy, or have a family member, you know what I mean).
- All white, all male
Something interesting happened when I returned, though. The topic that started this isn't relevant, but it prompted the Center Dem friend to ask me where I get my views from. I sat on that question for an evening and then just wrote out a summary of the Marxist-Leninists view on capitalism and imperialism, without ever using "capitalism" or "imperialism", without referencing Marx or Lenin.
It was long, but, his response was, basically, "Ok, that makes a lot of sense, actually." I then told him that Marx and Lenin would be happy to know you agree because that's their analysis in my own words, as I understand it.
Usually after bringing up someone like Marx, I'll get dunked on with a barrage of anticommunist brainrot, but that didn't happen this time.
So it got me thinking about the title of this post. How do you talk to your lib friends about their distorted world view?
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I generally don't use a frontal approach instead trying to get them to partake in radical media. Anything by Boots Riley( The Coup, Sorry to Bother You, I'm a Virgo), Damnation (which is no longer on netflix), and a bunch of other stuff. It often lays the groundwork for Yellow Parenti, and other docs. It's a long process.
I should really watch Andor. Also, I've seen "Sorry to bother you", I'll look into the other stuff Boots Riley has done. Man, I really need to pull the trigger on a home NAS, so I can start downloading and archiving my own media again.
I have a jellyfin/arr setup and it's one of the best things I've ever done. Highly recommend. Looking into using it for IPTV as well so we can get rid of our cable boxes.
I need to put this on my list this year. Just gotta save up the money. I have a bunch of nice 2TB HD just looking for a home.
Word. If you're paying for any streaming services and you have a good private tracker, it might be worth it to just throw a temporary box together with spare parts (or even put it on your least used computer) and one of the 2tb and then just cancel your least used service to save money. It doesn't require a lot of resources. I've built two now that run ubuntu on old chromeboxes with upgraded storage and memory. And they hold up surprsingly well as long as I don't mess with 2160p. Jellyfin's got decent apps for roku and then the firestick (which usually work, but i think it's more of an issue of the firestick just not aging gracefully)