From all the concern trolling I see in the other instances it’s clear that there’s no winning over these people. Everything is “Kremlin propaganda” to them. I do think a lot of chapos did go a little overboard with the PPB, but even thoughtful responses were met with the “hateful rhetoric” and “Kremlin talking points” BS. As always, it is to the Global South we must look to for any hope in the future…
As someone from the global south we post a lot of cringe too lol
Was about to say lol
Some of the people I’ve encountered over the past few weeks feel like such relics. I don’t mean that they seem old or out of touch, but their politics seem to have ceased moving around 2009. It’s the feel good liberalism without specific policy goals. It’s so empty that I have to wonder what sort of lives they’ve had to be so just…liberal.
Like a lot of us were galvanized by the 2008 economic crisis, or perhaps we were part of anti-war movements, or labor movements or maybe we slammed head first into realizing just how anti-LGBTQ everything is.
But for some of the folk I’ve encountered, you’d think the primary three problems of the world are Russia, China, and liberals being uncomfortable online.
Please do not draw conclusions from how people post on a niche internet forum.
True, though it’s arguably worse in the general population. Western indoctrination runs deeeeep.
Idk may just be my personal experience but I’ve never heard anyone irl say anything close to as weird about geopolitical stuff or communism as I’ve seen from liberals since federation. Closest is my dad saying once that he agreed with Patton that the western allies should have “kept going” (like the opposite of our “Stalin shouldnt have stopped at Berlin” thing) but that was a one time thing.
Maybe its because I haven’t really bothered to say things that challenge liberal perspectives about geopolitics I guess? But it says something that they certainly haven’t volunteered that kind of weird shit.
That said I haven’t had much human contact since I lost my old job so maybe my experience is limited.
I’ve tried to talk to libs about China because I’m Chinese so maybe that’s why I have a different perspective.
Its like everyone around you refusing to believe that the sky is blue because BBC told them that the sky is green. After a while you start to question even yourself.
Someone here on Hexbear said something like liberals don’t believe in other countries as existing geopolitical entities with diverse populations and economies. They think of places like Russia and China as mischievous polytheistic gods with distinct character flaws and demonic powers to influence people’s minds. They think of Putin as some malignant devil in the clouds watching all discussion about him.
Xi Jinping will polymorph into a swan and seduce your wife though.
Here, show libs videos from this channel: https://vid.puffyan.us/channel/UCzDE2LGSmJnw53WrZ7mM_Aw (Living in China).
They’re much more likely to be receptive to Westerners who actually live in China, rather than native Chinese (racism, unfortunately, runs deep) on the grounds that 1.4 billion people are somehow spies and unanimously a monolith pulling the greatest conspiratorial ruse in world history whose level of planning and labor to pull it off reaches heights far beyond anything the liberals themselves could possibly conceive.
A couple funny/good videos I like (since you mentioned BBC) are these two here: Western Media’s Baseless Xinjiang Claims 外媒的涉疆谎言 Xinjiang Cotton 🇨🇳 Unseen China, and The BBC has EXPOSED my CCP Funding…🇨🇳 BBC曝光我们被北京资助？Unseen China
There’s so many videos of tangible, visual examples of Chinese infrastructure, and some compared to the US. These videos, more often than not, will shatter these people’s worldview and flip it over in real-time, softening their shields and making them more receptive to what you have to say.
I encourage you to dig deep through the channel’s history, as there’s almost always a video I can find that’s relevant to whatever topic(s) the conversation has engaged with. Best of luck in the field.
Trying to convince white libs that insert Bad non white country isn’t cartoonishly evil and out to get them personally as a poc is like banging your head against a wall
They see us as blinded by loyalty and discard our feelings because only us dirty coloreds can be influenced by propaganda
I just had a conversation about the wave of true crime media with my coworkers. They were visibility uncomfortable when I pointed out it just how wild it is the cops are so bad at their jobs an entire media empire spawned from it. One guy couldn’t bring himself to speak and we had to change the subject.
ooo I wanna hear more about this.
It was sad really. They were talking about the one dhalmer victim that the cops gave back to him. They were trying to work out how the cops didn’t realize it. What details caused them to overlook the situation. I told them the cops knew. They knew and didn’t care. It was poor black gay kids mostly. Half of them they had already arrested for the crime of going to a gay bar, the other half had been arrested for the usual racism. I pointed out how these cops would have been trained by working under the apartide rules of Jim Crow. So after they gave the crying bleeding child back to the man that openly stated he was having sex with him, they laughed and placed bets on if they would ever see the kid again as they drove back to the station so they could clock out and beat their wives. Obviously that is the only interpretation that fits the data. One of my coworkers glitched out. He got quiet and started doing the, “no, but see… if they…” routine for a minute before we changed the subject and he just sat quietly. I am the most cis het white guy at work so when I talk shit on the cops really people really have a hard time pushing back. They want to, I work in a middle class environment so they want to.
Uploading
into a coworkers brain like it’s “Snowcrash”
I do feel bad for giving him such a hard time. I am sure he was just trying to vibe and get through the shift you know
One of my coworkers glitched out. He got quiet and started doing the, “no, but see… if they…” routine for a minute before we changed the subject and he just sat quietly.
I am the most cis het white guy at work so when I talk shit on the cops really people really have a hard time pushing back. They want to, I work in a middle class environment so they want to.
You’re doing the lord’s work comrade
One of my coworkers glitched out.
I’ve never heard anyone irl say anything close to as weird about geopolitical stuff or communism
People generally try to avoid political topics in conversations. Especially around people who aren’t very close. It took me around 6 months of knowing some people to discover one guy was a BJP supporter, one guy supports the Nazis over the Soviets, one guy thinks Putin invaded because he has cancer, one guy thinks Chinese people can’t access VPNs or they’ll be taken away, one guy discovered the truth about Ukrainian Nazis, how Soviet backed Afghanistan was much better, yet still supported American interventionism because he works in America so it’s good for him, etc.
I could literally keep typing for paragraphs and paragraphs but yea
Idk may just be my personal experience but I’ve never heard anyone irl say anything close to as weird about geopolitical stuff or communism as I’ve seen from liberals since federation.
Back when the SMO started in early 2022, I was hanging out with some ppl IRL and one of them just blatantly said “they should just take him [Putin] out” (as in assassinate him). And this was at a milquetoast event where geopolitics wasn’t even the reason we were there (it was a trivia night). So yeah even irl normies have some pretty warped views. Another guy I know just blatantly repeated the “China is buying up all the farmland in the US” nonsense…
Please never go on South African twitter or Facebook if you think the stuff you’ve seen on Lemmy is bad and gives you no hope. There are plenty of dumbasses in the global south/third world
I don’t want the West to be savedAnnoying internet arguments aside, the people on the ground in the core also face the most expansive and advanced police state mankind has created yet. This makes doing anything close to truly subversive impossible without extreme precautions. Some Ferguson organizers dying (being murdered imo) comes to mind.
there were several post george floyd executions as well
can you link me to any reporting on that? I haven’t read anything specifically but I believe it.
I’ll have to do some research but the killing of Daunte Wright was sus and I think there was another Fed style execution of a blm guy out west around the same period
Michael Reinoehl was death-squadded by state & local police deputized by the feds.
It is obvious there were murdered by the police, you shouldn’t hedge your bets on this.
I searched Ferguson and got some stuff about BLM protests in reaction to the murder of an 18 year old. Was there something more recent or was this what you were referring to?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/puzzling-number-men-tied-ferguson-protests-have-died-n984261
yes the shooting of Michael Brown from 10 years ago. Weird to type out, goddamn
Two young men were found dead inside torched cars
Ah yes, a very normal and non-suspicious death that happens normally
found dead inside torched cars
Ah yes, a very normal and non-suspicious death that happens normally
Obviously not at all in this case, but it is normal for a certain car manufacturer
No witnesses, no suspects. No motive could possibly be speculated!
I feel like this is a copout.
This is an overwhelming case of too many labor aristocrats that can’t abandon their class interests.
The way some of you are hyperfixated about Ukraine, cling to China as to fulfill their “communist” promise, and go on being defeatist about America is baffling.
deleted by creator
Where in my comment did I give anyone an out? I simply added to the conversation by stating a difficulty of organizing.
plz explain. do you hold hope for america? I feel like the Ukraine thing is just because the way democrats just rallied behind another proxy war, and when you say that they go BOT!!
Also to expand on this, the vast majority of people in the US who consider themselves progressive, who are likely the ones that could otherwise be convinced to join in to a labor movement, are exactly the ones who have been persuaded to believe the #1 priority for good people™ is to support Ukraine. They have also been persuaded to believe that anyone who says otherwise is a threat to freedom and democracy™. In short, the war propaganda has reset a lot of the progress we made during the Trump years where people started to see how broken and irreconcilable
was, by giving them false consciousness.
Yeah sometimes I’ll see you guys engage with one of these people politely and informatively and they just go “UGH, can we defederate from Hexbear please? This brigading, trolling and propaganda is annoying.😤💅”
But I’ve also seen a couple come to us because “I wanted to see what you were about and you weren’t as bad as people were saying.”
Those people don’t really believe in anything, when the US states department dumps Ukraine and moves on to other imperial projects they’ll shift their whole “belief system” right along with it
In a years time you’ll see these very same people begin concern trolling about the bad behavior of Ukrainian refugees, they’ll start using words like “ungrateful”, “authoritarian” and “mentally colonized by ruzzia”
But you’re right there is no hope in the north until climate change begins wrecking property values in significant numbers
The industrial and revolutionary fulcrum of the world lies in the global south
There’s a reason so many people believed the Iraq war lies. Propaganda works. Then and now.
It works, but how is baffling. Anyone paying a mild amount of attention knew we had been fucking over Iraq since the 1st gulf War. Basically the first Bush admin said if we topple this country it will be nightmare. and they stopped. (getting a ton of ppl they told to rebel killed in the process. we even loaned Iraq military hardware to mop up.)
The end of history is actually about how the lumpen have no memory of any political events that are no longer being blasted 24/7 on the news. History may as well not exist for 90% of Americans because history is in books.
Mix that with straight jingoism and you can blow up anything. Fucking sad.
deleted by creator
I was extremely polite in that lemm.ee thread, admitted we could stand to tone it down a bit, even called out a rude post from one of our own, and I only got hostility from them in response. There’s literally nothing we can do to not be called wreckers
There was a surprising amount of hostile replies aimed at HB users… whereas HB users themselves were fairly constructive IMO. Even one post by a HB user calling for defederation was worded much calmer compared to some of the .ee instance natives
I feel like we need an independent thought alarm emoji
It should be even bigger than our other emojis
I think your responses were more than forgiving, and the troll responses were so obviously in bad faith that I’m surprised they’re still up?
This is all a bit new to me but holy shit. I don’t want to assume the worst but I saw that other guy puppeting accounts earlier?
You’re not wrong but I’m surprised it was an online forum thing that made you realize this
It hurts me a billion times more hearing absurd anti-communist and reactionary statements irl
Wait until you get to the part where people do the victim blaming, high school drama, and content warning stuff on each other for a) ego, b) personal advancement, c) stomping down on minorities that piss them off by existing
IN SUPPOSEDLY LEFTIST GROUPS LMAO
“The West”
“The far far East” 
Eh, I heard someone who visited Cuba being told that the US has a lot of revolutionary potential by Cuban communists so
I once tried explaining the concept of a mortgage to a Cuban and they were stunned that a country so rich would have such a complicated nonsense system of home ownership
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
They may have a lifetime of practice defending their revolution, but nothing compares to the horrors of the posting wars.
This is the attitude to have. Anything else is defeatist.
There is always “we can’t do a revolution here but we can funnel resources to where a revolution could succeed” but that’s an edge case and I agree with the sentiment.
IDK where I land between genuinely thinking a revolution will ever happen in the imperial core (at least in a meaningful amount of time before it all collapses due to climate change) but I think it’s also possible to think, “We might never see a revolution here, but we can do our best to lay the groundwork for one and seed enough class consciousness as to prevent further US imperialist interventionism” which is different to defeatism IMO. Not that revolutionary defeatism doesn’t also have its place.
Eh, this take is axiomatically unacceptable to me. Regardless of how absurd and hopeless it feels like achieving our aims in Western ‘democracies’ (and boy howdy does it feel absurd and hopeless), the abandonment of it is a tacit admission that billions of people are gonna need to die in rather catastrophic fashions before we get anywhere. Which, like I said, is a no go for me.
I always think of that Camus bit. One must imagine sysiphus happy. The prospect of revolution in the core is 100% absurd, but what the fuck else you gonna do? Give up?
As of 2017, I was watching Chris Hayes every night. People can change their minds. A lot of the libs we see here are just hall monitor types.
anybody who’s still a committed lib after watching the US botch the response to COVID is unsalvagable
Death to America
Does this mean you’re going to defederate again? Please let it mean that.
