I’m an Iranian immigrant. You really just need to remind her of the benevolence of the west. Austria, France, and the USA showed my family clemency and grace. Austria and France let them in as refugees, the US gave them citizenship. They’re successful business owners. I’m in law school and work for the CA legislature. This kind of success story does not exist outside of the west. Seriously, immigrants have no better choice than a western country, and that’s where my loyalty lies because of the huge chance and opportunity the west gave my family.
This kind of success story does not exist outside of the west
This. This is the completely unquestioned propaganda nugget that holds the whole belief system together. Who told you that? Why would you believe that?
Enormous, and economically successful countries like China, just have no immigrants, no refugees, and no social mobility? (not that the US has a ton, there's a lot of unacknowledged luck involved in this story too)
This story can absolutely happen in other countries. China even has a higher income mobility than the US. And if you look at the statistics, immigrants are actually disproportionately likely to be pulled down into the cycle of poverty that exists in the US, there's an alternate universe not so different from our own where this dipshit's parents had the resources to leave Iran, eventually landed in the US, and actually experienced downward mobility not upward, and rather than becoming exploiters themselves, hit a speed bump along the way like a serious injury or foreclosure or god knows what else and instead became destitute low-wage workers, who can't afford to live in (most of anyhow) CA, send their kid to law school to do unpaid internships, etc.
This person really has not considered that they aren't the protagonist of real life and most people's stories don't look like theirs
"wow the west didn't execute my family at the customs booth just because we come from a race of backwards communist islamist psychopaths. truly liberal democracy is the way, the truth, and the light."
I find it fascinating how every single time it is the exact same arguments, same wording, same tactics.
The only acceptable topic is the genocide perpetrated by the Oppressor on the Oppressed
If you bring up any other topic, ask any question, anything at all, you don't think Palestinians are people
It is like you, and her, are reading from the exact same ideological manual. it is scary.
Liberals really struggle with moral consistency.
It "sounds like we're reading from the same manual" because it's the natural reaction to a fucking genocide.
It's the same arguments and wording because it's 100% correct and it's all that should be needed.
During one of the news cycles, I accidentally clicked to view a pic and it was of a lady slumped over in her car with a gunshot wound in her head and was like "nope, I'm good. Absolutely fuck all of this and everyone who supports it."
I have a very educated Palestinian colleague who on October 9th was talking to me about Apartheid states and European (sole!) responsibility for Hamas' acts of 'defence'.
Some of these things are as built into people as allegiance to a football team.
He's very educated, and a Palestinian. Hmmm... Time to discard his opinion!
It reminds me of Christians who post shit like “My best friend just came out as gay. How do I get him to convert back to a straight man and get him to repent???”
The bill is coming due for the global colonizer complex, and they can't even handle the idea. Further, I want every single cracker in that thread really fixing their faces to shittalk Fanon put on pikes and paraded through downtown Atlanta
And the thing is, Bernie endorsed POTUS a long time ago, but you'd be forgiven for forgetting that given how rabid some of his followers still are.
lmao
When you define the world into oppressor and oppressed and justify anything the oppressed do against the oppressor you’re going to manufacture this type of insanity. This philosophy has become extremely common in US higher education, unsurprised to see it growing elsewhere too.
This doesn’t really explain it though. Jews have been the group that has most consistently been oppressed throughout world history.
Hmmm perhaps there's something going on here that you're failing to grasp
It doesn't matter what "most" of his supporters did, any number of his former supporters who didn't fall in line when he did is all that's needed to condemn the entire movement.
Tbh, and this may be an unpopular opinion, but just remain their friend and don’t get involved discussing these issues and show them love. Just say you disagree if they bring up politics.
I have a friend who is a Twelver Shia who idolises Soleimieni. We just don’t discuss these things and remain good friends.
If you want to change their mind, it is more likely their mindset will shift if they are close to someone who thinks different.
Would you say the same thing about a neo Nazi?
The answer has to be yes. [some shit about the bible]
This is the problem with liberals lol. They’ll know someone they disagree with on such a fundamental level, but they’re too much of a birch to confront them
To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from principled argument because he is an old acquaintance, a fellow townsman, a schoolmate, a close friend, a loved one, an old colleague or old subordinate. Or to touch on the matter lightly instead of going into it thoroughly, so as to keep on good terms. The result is that both the organization and the individual are harmed. This is one type of liberalism.
It does take skill, effort, and patience to talk about major points of disagreement (and actually go in depth on them) without blowing up a friendship. But that's valuable stuff to develop anyway, and if you can't talk to a friend about topics like this, how are you supposed to have the same conversation with strangers?
When a liberal says something like "just remain their friend and don’t get involved discussing these issues and show them love. Just say you disagree if they bring up politics", I wonder how much of that response comes from them knowing very little about what they actually believe. Like, could they really explain how they arrived at their opinion or why they believe the things they do in conversation?
Or is it just like taking medication - "I don't know how it works but this is what I was prescribed"?
But she is getting obsessed with her "Algerian identity", talking about how "look what the French did to my people", when she is of French nationality.
Ah yes, because citizenship should blind one to what their country did to their people, and in living memory no less. Also the slaughter of peaceful French Algerian protesters by a chief of police who served in Vichy France.
Same boat, and I'm never forgiving the nation of devils for scattering my family to the cosmic winds over at least a hundred fifty years if not longer, stripping me of any history or culture one could take pride in, and leaving me with a nebulous void to either be filled with "Amerikan", or nothing. I'd rather be Nothing.
Your friend needs a life. Join a gym with her, start a running club, get her a Switch, get her obsessed with something besides social media.
Have you thought about play vibeo gameos so ur friend don't think abt her current country's destruction and immiseration of her natal country and possibly her growing self awareness that but for a few lucky breaks she would probably be on the business end of the extractive apparatus she currently benefits from?
Yeah, absolutely the pinnacle of r/neoliberalism to give advice about a friend who's obviously feeling a lot of stress about current events that amounts to "have you tried looking for ways to get her to stop talking about it?"
this woman sounds cool as shit hopefully we'll see her around here once she ghosts this asshole
also once again im reminded why i think this tiktok ban might actually go through this time. it's because of palestine, not "muh evil ccp brainwashing"
Not everything a resistance movement does is justifiable. But if you’re more concerned about them and not the fact that they’re fighting back an oppressive force, then you’re probably an inhumane Nazi who supports the oppressive force. They literally did this with Ukraine, and I would say that situation was more “complicated” compared to Palestine and Israel where the situation is much clearer. But no. Palestinians’ complexion is too olive. You need nooooance
I’m interested to know how many of these POC are actually friends with the neoliberals vs. if the neoliberals are delusional and think these people still like them vs. the neoliberals not revealing their demonic faces because they know they would immediately be ostracized
Wonder how many of these "radicalization bad" people will say "war is war, vote joe baidn" when you bring up 30,000 civilians murdered in less than half a year. God forbid a resistance group fights back 😔
Have you considered the fact she has grown up her entire life in countries that are NOT welcome to her?
Since 7th October, we have been bombarded with footage of cities being flattened, hundreds of thousands of people being displaced, towns in the West bank that were mentioned in the Bible get flattened and replaced with condominiums and refugees running towards the first food they have seen in weeks get shot at by machinegun and drones.
All this death and destruction, and its constantly just explained as Necessary, or that the killings were justified.
Algerian colonial history can be summed up as the French not seeing the Local Arab population as human beings. This Dehumanised view leads to treatment that is utterly indifferent to suffering at best and sadistic at worst.
Now we are watching the same attitudes and actions happen again in real time.
-24 votes
(Response from the OP)
She has grown up in countries much more welcome to her than Algeria, where being Bi is literally illegal, where women have fewer rights, where atheists basically don't exist in public, where activists like her are routinely abused and killed.
Algerian colonial history? Sure. But it's been 60 years now of brutal conservative autocracy, and that's Algeria, too.
42 votes
Response from the poster I originally quoted above:
Makes you wonder what sort of place Algeria would be if it was a French colony for over a century.
We can talk about all the terrible things France did to oppress, exterminate, and abuse Algerians during that period and you might shrug it off as "thats in the past, we dont do that now", but then you look at what is going in in Gaza and its the same sort of violence, the same mass displacements, and the same seizures of wealth and land by the powerful from people who have lived there for thousands of years,
Its the Classic Neoliberalism. Yeah we've been Bad, yeah we acknowledge it, yeah we didnt apologize, make up for it or Took accountability but we bettered ourselves and wont do it again.
What? You're calling me a hypocrite because we are doing it again? No, you See this time its legitimate. And we Said that Back then as well but this time we're Not lying, Pinky promise.
On a real Note - i actually get disgusted at how fast neolibs, who are acting Like pacifists, get to Peak Western Chauvinism with the Classic "i Just Wonder how algeria would have been as a french Department"
As If Not everyone could See their implicit Claim that those unruly savages should better be ruled from Europe. And in the next sentence they'll say how horrible colonialism was and how it somehow Ended before the First ww because their Mind has to rearrange History so their ideology still makes sense.
Clueless, chauvinist neoliberalism is the default political setting in the west. I have encountered far too many real-life people exactly like this to believe that these are bots.
That's because the Algerians living abroad left Algeria because they were working class people looking for jobs, Iranians left Iran because they were rich and close to the shah
One group actually suffered the bloody consequences of other's (fr*nch) actions.
And the other bitches online and simps for Nazi royalty that nobody inside Iran wanted.
Bonus points if they keep trying to insinuate that Iranians in Iran don't approve of their government; we all saw how many people inside Iran were "protesting" the gov during the women, life, freedom movement.
It had more support outside of Iran than inside Iran. I don't like the iri either, but pretending that Iranians don't approve of (and want) the iri (and the policies they push out) is like looking at the US's incredibly racist history of presidents, senators, Congress men/women and thinking that Americans aren't racist.
Policies get popular for a reason. The far right in Europe are never going to support migrants and refugees bc Europeans themselves are largely racist.