My mum makes similar complaints, but if I told her to read Lenin, she’d call me a crazy commie trying to radicalise her/recruit her to the local ML party. And don’t get me started on what she’d say and do if I recommended anything Stalin wrote. (Which, from a normie perspective, is fair. Lenin is more snappy and sassy. Can be a lot more fun to read.)
That’s… somehow both surprising, and not. But also explains a lot. If she hasn’t been poisoned about the USSR and about communism by the Red Scare, of course she’d be more willing than my yardstick for mums, that being my own mum and my friends’ mums when I was really little, to read communist theory once given an author’s name to look up.
My mother… lived through the Cold War, but says she didn’t pay much attention. She knows what the USSR was, from a typical imperial core perspective, vaguely. I don’t know if she knows who Lenin was. Talking politics with someone who can do the amount of damage to my life simply by socially withdrawing from me that she can, isn’t worth it for the extremely slight possibility that she might be convinced to read one of my favourite nonfiction books and discuss it with me.
Basically, trying to bring her around is likely to further put her off socialism rather than get her to read about it, and I can’t afford to piss her off by trying.
It’s not financial reliance, that would be a lot easier to create other pathways for and rely on a lot of people/groups/tools a little instead of on her a lot. It’s… I have disabilities that are difficult to explain and require a lot of very specific support that is far more difficult to describe and define, that no one else, no matter how passionate they are about helping people or how well paid they are to do it, has ever been able to get right and help me more than they hurt me in trying and failing and in the process viewing me as a small child. Mum is the only one who’s ever been able to usefully help without treating me like I’m three years old and walking all over me.
So yeah, I can’t afford her not wanting to be around me. And because it’s such a direct thing, the bar for how much is safe to irritate her is far, far lower than your typical “I can’t piss my mum off because she pays my rent/she’s my landlord and I can’t afford to rent a room elsewhere” situation.
I’m not entirely certain mine wouldn’t report me to federal antiterrorism for telling her that.
My dad? He’d drag me into a city police station to ask the desk cop where he should report a Soviet spy. Generally act like a very confused old Cold Warrior. Just to terrorize me as much as possible, with no real intent to actually cause the government to waste any time on me.
Well, there is a definite functional literacy problem in a lot of countries that’s been getting notably worse in recent times, so I’d absolutely believe that things like that are a combination of Lenin’s stuff being tricky for a modern reader without some of the historical and cultural context of pre revolution Russia, and just… low literacy skills. And if wanting to read Lenin is getting people in that functional literacy gap to learn better literacy skills, then I think more people need to be convinced to read his work!
Also, your mum is so cool. I wish my mum would read theory. (Then we could have a book club. A book club with two members is a little sad, but it’d be better than not having one at all.) She’s the most communist leaning “liberal” I’ve ever dealt with, but she won’t call herself a communist and if you ask her to read anything that came out of a revolutionary movement, she starts sounding just like my stuck in the 70s Cold Warrior dad.
The thing is, the Red Scare was so pervasive that a lot of people with basically her amount of actual understanding do have a knee jerk reaction to “communism”.
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that’s based af
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My mum makes similar complaints, but if I told her to read Lenin, she’d call me a crazy commie trying to radicalise her/recruit her to the local ML party. And don’t get me started on what she’d say and do if I recommended anything Stalin wrote. (Which, from a normie perspective, is fair. Lenin is more snappy and sassy. Can be a lot more fun to read.)
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Oh wow… happy reading to your mom!
That’s… somehow both surprising, and not. But also explains a lot. If she hasn’t been poisoned about the USSR and about communism by the Red Scare, of course she’d be more willing than my yardstick for mums, that being my own mum and my friends’ mums when I was really little, to read communist theory once given an author’s name to look up.
My mother… lived through the Cold War, but says she didn’t pay much attention. She knows what the USSR was, from a typical imperial core perspective, vaguely. I don’t know if she knows who Lenin was. Talking politics with someone who can do the amount of damage to my life simply by socially withdrawing from me that she can, isn’t worth it for the extremely slight possibility that she might be convinced to read one of my favourite nonfiction books and discuss it with me.
Basically, trying to bring her around is likely to further put her off socialism rather than get her to read about it, and I can’t afford to piss her off by trying.
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It’s not financial reliance, that would be a lot easier to create other pathways for and rely on a lot of people/groups/tools a little instead of on her a lot. It’s… I have disabilities that are difficult to explain and require a lot of very specific support that is far more difficult to describe and define, that no one else, no matter how passionate they are about helping people or how well paid they are to do it, has ever been able to get right and help me more than they hurt me in trying and failing and in the process viewing me as a small child. Mum is the only one who’s ever been able to usefully help without treating me like I’m three years old and walking all over me.
So yeah, I can’t afford her not wanting to be around me. And because it’s such a direct thing, the bar for how much is safe to irritate her is far, far lower than your typical “I can’t piss my mum off because she pays my rent/she’s my landlord and I can’t afford to rent a room elsewhere” situation.
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my mom would probably report me to the fbi or something if i told her to read Lenin
I’m not entirely certain mine wouldn’t report me to federal antiterrorism for telling her that.
My dad? He’d drag me into a city police station to ask the desk cop where he should report a Soviet spy. Generally act like a very confused old Cold Warrior. Just to terrorize me as much as possible, with no real intent to actually cause the government to waste any time on me.
Well, there is a definite functional literacy problem in a lot of countries that’s been getting notably worse in recent times, so I’d absolutely believe that things like that are a combination of Lenin’s stuff being tricky for a modern reader without some of the historical and cultural context of pre revolution Russia, and just… low literacy skills. And if wanting to read Lenin is getting people in that functional literacy gap to learn better literacy skills, then I think more people need to be convinced to read his work!
Also, your mum is so cool. I wish my mum would read theory. (Then we could have a book club. A book club with two members is a little sad, but it’d be better than not having one at all.) She’s the most communist leaning “liberal” I’ve ever dealt with, but she won’t call herself a communist and if you ask her to read anything that came out of a revolutionary movement, she starts sounding just like my stuck in the 70s Cold Warrior dad.
I love your mother, she’s incredible.
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The thing is, the Red Scare was so pervasive that a lot of people with basically her amount of actual understanding do have a knee jerk reaction to “communism”.
That’s amazing