I really stepped in it last night. My partner is livid with me for suggesting Stalin wasn’t the evil dictator he’s made out to be in the west. For a German who grew up with anti-communism and went to some very liberal universities for political science it was too much. They said something to the effect of “this feels exactly like if you said, oh Hitler wasn’t that bad, he was actually a good guy.” We’re in the midst of planning our wedding and they were suddenly at the point of doubting that they know who I am and if this is a relationship they want to maintain.
We have a hard time discussing politics as it is. We are still not so great at interpreting the nuances of way each other speaks, and our background knowledge is very different. So we have to figure out what we do from here.
I can’t come at this from the direction of “trying to convert them.” They already think I have gone into a conspiracy theory ridden and propaganda laden hole, and believe me, I ask myself the same thing every day. It really weighs heavily on me, as some of our close family members have fallen into conspiracy theory echo chambers.
We’ve decided we need to go back to basics and make sure our core values align, which I genuinely believe they do. They’re an anti-capitalist as well, although don’t have a strong idea of what to would be better, just that it shouldn’t be communism.
I’m not sure where to go after we sort out what our shared values are.
There’s a certain condescension I sense when it comes to the leftist sources I read, many on recommendation from GenZedong members. I’m often met with “leftists just make up all kinds of stuff to suit their narrative,” or “how do you know that’s a primary or reliable secondary source, it’s so easy to fake anything these days.” Meanwhile they go to Wikipedia and see that Stalin killed millions and signed a treaty with the Nazis, even as they understand that much of western capitalist media is propaganda as well. We can’t have any useful discussion on current events at the moment because we have vastly different knowledge of what’s happening, as well as entirely different analytical tools to pick it apart with.
They’re also terrified I’m going to say very extreme things in front of their family (privileged petite bourgeois liberals). I try to be careful but at the same time I won’t pretend to not be a communist. We have political discussions often and I’m not one to just sit those out. I’m sure my family would react poorly as well, but with the geographical distance to them it’s not as present an issue in our minds.
How do you all deal with this? How do you have these discussions and share these ideas with the more soc-dem or liberal minded people in your lives?
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That’s more or less what we need to do now. We do agree on those critical points, and those would be my deal breakers as well if I was actively dating.
I think the two primary cognitive dissonances here are
- when we met we were both liberals who had very similar worldviews even though we grew up in different, albeit both imperialist, countries. They see this as a huge change in a few short years (which it is), and wonder what “extremist” ideologies and historica narratives I will accept next.
- the anti-communist education runs so deep. To be fair, this has taken me a while to get past as well.
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I agree that this is bad-faith, but from a liberal’s point of view, they don’t see this as just following the science. Because they don’t study oppression as a material phenomenon, all they see is @knfrmity@lemmygrad.ml went from center-left to far-left.
I feel like there’s nothing to do with the SO accept try to explain the steps that got to Marxism (despite her condescension). If she can’t respect your viewpoint after that, you can either keep trying or end the relationship.
I am not trying to be an ass, but I’d like to ask for some context in the form of a harshly-phrased question before I answer you. Namely, how did it get to the point of y’all planning your WEDDING before topics like this were seriously discussed?
It’s a fair question. I hope this provides a little more context.
When we met we had very similar political views, as one often does growing up middle class in the imperial core. We’ve both changed our views on many things in that time. We both realized we’re anti-capitalist after getting together for example, and we’ve both been drawn towards pacifism.
We genuinely see a life together, we share core values and want the same things out of life, we have shared interests and have well fitting personalities.
Since getting together they’ve gone on a more of a “spiritual” journey into Quakerism and related political activism (fighting for peace, equality, and justice, put succinctly). I’ve gone on a political journey. While I don’t understand the spiritual things they’ve felt the draw to explore, I still respect that’s what they want and love who they’ve become.
We have discussions about politics and society regularly, and it’s not like I hid my engagement with leftist political ideas. What we have noticed is that we have a harder time having these discussions, as our background knowledge is very different. That and the way we talk sometimes leads both of us to sense condescension coming from the other, so we change the topic.
This one conversation yesterday really crystallized the disconnect between where we both are right now. It’s not about one topic or person or event in particular, and I’m happy to leave ones which are too contentious to the side. I think it’s more about finding a common place to start a new intellectual journey together, where we can learn theory, history, and analytical tools together.
Listen, mate, you don’t need debate advice or communo-evangelical advice right now. You need relationship advice. There are contexts like working for capitalists or trying to organise radicalising liberals where you need to be shrewd about what you say and how you say it, but a relationship, especially a long-term romantic one, is not the place for being tactical or tactful. You need to be able to be who you are, and speak your whole mind, around the one person you expect to spend your life with.
With that in mind, you can see that your problem isn’t Stalin or spirituality, it’s how you approach conversations with each other. You said it yourself: You can smell the whiff of condescension from each other when you come to a disagreement, which means either that your do not respect the viewpoint being endorsed, or the core philosophy and worldview behind it. This is a serious point of tension, and needs to be treated as such. As a breakdown in communication due to an inability or unwillingness to move past a difference not of facts, but of outlook.
The difficult conversation you have to have isn’t one about how the Holodomor is propaganda, or you promising not to praise the USSR. You need to sit down with your partner and say, “I know we don’t see eye to eye on this, but this is important to me, and it’s clearly important to you as well.” You are both politically-conscious individuals and the politics you have arrived at are an expression of how you engage with and understand the world. You identities are bound up in, and so you need to navigate the topics with care and in a way that a disagreement about the topic doesn’t become a negation of your sense of self and feel like a rejection of your whole belief system.
Basically, this is not an online argument, so please don’t approach it like one. It’s not a problem that can be solved with a magic answer. You have to essentially be willing to say “I will disagree with you without disrespecting you and I ask the same of you in turn. We both love each other and have the best of intentions and want to understand how best to better the world, and I want to share my perspective with you and help you understand why I see the world the way I do.”
Be willing to avoid certain topics if your partner isn’t comfortable with them currently, and set your own boundaries as well. Have a negotiation about what engaging on this topic looks like, and what you would like to do together to help understand each other better. i.e. try to prepare a neutral ground based on trusting each other enough to have difficult conversations.
The bad news is that if you can’t come to an agreement about how to have the conversations, then that is an indication of a fundamental difference that you will not be able to resolve, and you will have to ask yourself how willing you are to live with that. But try. If you have that level of trust, it will hopefully work out to step 1 of the process.
Thanks, I really appreciate this.
We definitely have some things to sort out when it comes to the way we engage on certain topics.
Wow this sucks, thats the biggest problem with people from the emperial core, its that most of it are middle class petit burgeoises who are at best annoyed by capitalism, but not enough to lose complete faith on it. It doesnt help that they are the most propagandized people. Here on south america we have a lot more open minded people who are tired of capitalism, gringo’s midia and govermental bullshit.
Maybe when the western hegemony starts collapsing those people from the emperial core will grow some conscience that maybe, just maybe, believing on the stuff that come’s from the people who are opressing the population for real and are known for being bad IS an stupid thing to do.
And about you relationship and reactionary family, im sorry for not being able of saying anything helpfull, i am not the best to talk about relationships lol. I hope someone else here can help you better than i could ever try.
I don’t have much advice to offer, just wanted to say that I share your struggle. In my case it isn’t my parter (who luckily is a Marxist) but most of friends and all of my family. Seeing them spouse lib propaganda, unable to connects with them is a struggle. I can only imagine how that must be with your partner. I wish you the best of luck comrade!
in years of having to disguise myself as a “moderate” to do IRL politics, i have learned some thinngs.
The most important is to pick your battles. Is it worth it to get on someone’s bad side just to defend Stalin? Who cares. Convincing that single person won’t make a difference. It’s tough, but you just have to suck up your pride and ignore the ignorance many people have on these subjects. You also have to understand that people who have been indoctrinated since birth are not… easy to convert. If you have been told all of your life that water boils at 100 degrees no matter what, you would just think i was crazy if i told you that the temperature at which it boils on top of mount everest is different. No matter how right i was. You can present sources and do all the theoretical work you want, the truth is that with the majority of people it will just not work. Save your energy for something more productive.
Besides, if you engage one, two, three, ten times… then you do become the caricature of the annoying leftist that has to always be “akchually” and that pulls out so many unknown facts that people think it’s just made up jargon.
But if you don’t and manage to keep the “functional and moderate member of society” facade up, during important moments you will be able to go ham because people have come to know you as a reasonable person.
When the question of Russia came up in my party (which is the youth wing of the main succdem party) i and a few closet-communist pals were the ones controlling the narrative because we could just talk basic geopolitics and people would believe us since we never came off as “extremist” by praising stalin in public (don’t get me wrong we hella praise stalin in private). Yes it was annoying having to listen to people talk about how evil red fash the USSR was or how china bad, but now we got all of those people to understand that NATO is at fault for all of this solely because we managed to never lose any credibility by avoiding pointless discussions.
btw, by “losing credibility” i mean “opposing the mainstream narrative and be labeled as a conspiracy theorist”.
It is a bit harder when it comes to people you really do care about. For me it was a mix if things. for example i try to get close to likeminded people, so i never come out as a ML but i do drop some hints about being leftist to “test” people i meet and see if they get it. This alone allows you to at least avoid MOST big issues. Another thing, as said above, is just your ability to swallow your pride. We still gotta live normal lives, there is no point in ruining relationships of friendships over politics. It can be taxing long term, but let me be real: the path we have chosen to follow is not easy, it has never been for anyone. Politics is a very important field of life, but the truth is that it is only one field.
Keep up the fight, but remember that no one expects you to be fighting 24/24. Politics are very important to me and i am sure for you too to a degree, but to most people it’s just not like that. In my opinion you should just try to asess how much they actually give a shit about hitler or stalin. because chances are that they don’t care nearly enough to have THAT jeopardize the relationship.
When the question of Russia came up in my party (which is the youth wing of the main succdem party) i and a few closet-communist pals were the ones controlling the narrative because we could just talk basic geopolitics and people would believe us since we never came off as “extremist” by praising stalin in public (don’t get me wrong we hella praise stalin in private).
I love this approach to anti imperialism online and irl. There’s a youtube channel called Geopolitics in Conflict iirc that covers all sorts of geopolitical conflicts in a anti imperialist/ even slightly marxist light if dare I say. Approaching normies from the praise Stalin angle really doesn’t work.
Does that mean you necessarily have to capitulate your beliefs? No, but there’s a time and place to know when to be frank and when to be coy.
Thanks for your thoughts on this.
The example of the discussion about Stalin was really just an example. It’s not a hill I need to die on.
I am trying to be more aware of how I discuss things and present information and I will definitely keep your suggestions in mind.
Why do you disguise yourself as a moderate in politics? Are you in a country where being a communist is forbidden?
It depends on in which context you’re organizing (e.g. are these petty-bourgeois people or workers?), but in my opinion, honesty is the best policy (with other workers at least). You’ll never destigmatize the word “communist” if you’re afraid to say it yourself. Also, with actual working people, you’d be surprised how many of them are desperate for a change that they’ll consider communism.
Being a communist isn’t illegal, there is an actual hammer and sickle communost party. The issue is that being open about being communist (when it comes to stuff like elections) is the best way to be sidelined as a lunatic and get 1% of the vote at most.
Imo it’s a better use of time to try and steer a major party a bit while conducting the real activity in the background
I have this trouble too, and there’s no easy way unfortunately to undo a lifetime of anti-communist propaganda.
A few starter convo hints: “If you don’t trust your government or media, why do you think they’re telling you the truth about communism, a system which threatens their profits?”
“The us / cia has strangled nearly every communist attempt in the global south, in its cradle. Why do you think they do that?”
Thanks for your suggestions.
I have posed the first question in some form before, but they’re still at the point where anything too positive about communism smells like propaganda as well. Hopefully we can move beyond the nihilist “nothing is true and you can never know what really happened” rather quickly for both our sakes.
They are anti-capitalist and do recognize some of pro-capitalist propaganda. They just haven’t started to deal with the internalized anti-communist propaganda yet. I also know that they have to make a lot of discoveries and realizations on their own, so above all I am trying to learn to have these conversations in a more productive and healthy manner, without being too assertive or confident.
Another obstacle to conversation is that I am not supposed to make comparisons to the US. It’s not helpful to say another country is better than the US because they are so bad, or something along those lines.
Is that what your fiancée says? This screams of liberal conceptions of “whataboutism.” While it shouldn’t be the only argument deployed in a debate, it’s extremely useful when discussing foreign policy.
If the US is claiming China is committing genocide of Uighurs, but historically has indifferently killed Brown people in the Middle East, labeled the The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) a terrorist organization, and conveniently stays silent on Saudi Arabia’s and Turkey’s human rights abuses, then why would you trust them? At best, they opportunistically care about Brown people. At worst, they’re actively making it up.
It also makes the point that we shouldn’t see countries through utopian lenses. All countries struggle with mistakes, and if a socialist country sometimes struggles with it too (though hopefully much less), we should be critical of those events, but still support the country overall. The country is still doing much better than capitalist ones.
I’ve lucked into either dating people who are communist, or who at least have enough class conscienceness to listen to me talk about communist stuff.
But, in general, if people don’t pass the “vibe check” when I bring up easy to digest communist theory or history, I move on from that person. To my reasoning, if a person gives me a bad reaction to - say - mentioning that bread should be a human right, or that corporations dominate your news media and are directly tied to our political elites, it’s probably for the best that I pass on them.
When the war in Ukraine started, I ended up having to let go of dozens of deeply meaningful relationships. People who I thought were comrades outed themselves as propagandized drones who would freely turn against anti-imperialist movements (mind you, I make no delusions of Russia’s local-imperialist nature when I say that) if the media told them to. If the girl I’m dating now had been in that group of liberals, that would have shattered my heart. But, ultimately, my point of view is; beliefs on the scale of bringing about communism should always come above the needs or desires of individuals. My heart might break after leaving behind an anti-communist, but the time I’m not wasting on them, I could be using to educate, or organize.
Though, you’ll have to weigh it out for yourself in your own situation. I won’t tell you what to do with your life, if you want to try to repair any harm you’ve done to your relationship while trying to radicalize them, you’re more than free to.
In many ways, the work at present is to focus on anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism at an entry level point.
Yes, getting people to realize that Stalin wasn’t the devil incarnate or that The DPRK is actually the good Korea is a huge victory but ultimately the primary task is talking to people where they are at and linking the current issues they face to the broader context of capitalism, imperialism, colonialism etc.
It’s better to talk to a SocDem and to ask them if they think the world is moving forward in a positive direction and if they believe that enough is being done to deal with catastrophic climate change to prevent the developing world from being obliterated by famine and disease, y’know?
As for your partner, that’s a tricky matter. I would study up on which European powers signed treaties with Nazi Germany, I’d look into the so-called “denazification” and I’d take a very gentle approach. It’s probably better to realize that West Germany/reunified Germany isn’t nearly the wonderful place that lib historians make it out to be than trying to uphold comrade Stalin as the people’s hero that he is (at least not openly with your partner anyway.)
The history of the NATO stay behind organizations is a real “Are we the baddies??” moment and it doesn’t matter how bad the Cold War was, unleashing far right paramilitary terror organizations to murder European populations in cold blood to, essentially, subvert liberal democracy in order to prevent SocDem and socialist movements from gaining traction in Europe because of the fear of the red menace is utterly inexcusable. That shit was like ISIS-tier political violence and if learning about it in depth doesn’t make you think that Stalin didn’t go far enough then you are a lost cause.
Learning about the rebuilding of Germany and western Europe after WWII is next on my list actually.
There’s probably 100s of things to unpack, but some of the big things I can think of at the moment are:
- I’ve heard good things about Why Women Had Better Sex Under Socialism (Kristen Ghodsee), for an analysis on East Germany. Ghodsee isn’t a communist, but she views the GDR somewhat favorably.
- One of the key parts of rebuilding Germany (and the rest of Europe, as well as South-East Asia) is the Marshall Plan. The US used the MP to prop up rival capitalist countries like West Germany, among other things.
- The US selectively funded post-modernist philosophy and art during that period. For philosophy, I’d postulate it was to promote defeatist ideology. For art, it was probably to “prove” that capitalism has more culture than communism.
- The GDR was undemocratically dissolved.
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Focus on the present day and the country you two live in. Defending people who are dead and countries that are not your own is pointless with someone who is already anti-communist. Focus on pointing out the hypocrasies of your own country and the events and people that are around today. It’s easier to convince someone when it applies directly to them .i.e. look how bad our government is and why, rather than look how good stalin and the USSR is.
This way you can be more productive with your political discussions, and there’s less to disagree on because ultimately their opinion on stalin doesnt matter much, their opinion on the country you live in though and the system there is much more important, and you say they’re already anti-capitalist which is most important
Oh boy, this has been a big point of contention with my partner too and I’m still learning how to navigate it. They’re pretty much in agreement with me on most things, but their family are upper middle class USA Republican suburbanites. I don’t even say communist stuff around them. But like most Americans they aren’t even aware that the things they say are racist or xenophobic, and just telling them that “Asian hate crimes aren’t just a Trump thing” was enough to make me a “Chinese genocide apologist.”
Maintaining relationships with liberals? I don’t. I’m literally fighting with myself on whether or not it’s worth torpedoing a relationship with someone I love telling their genocidal, narcissistic Anglo Democrat parents off for their nuke-happiness, their gullibility, and most importantly, their hypocrisy.
the problem is the emotional damage for that part. I recommend always thinking that in the future, will you regret losing these people forever, when there was a way you could keep them?
That’s kinda the sickest fucking thing; maldefinition. I’m not worried about how much it’d hurt me. I’ve wound up needing to cut off almost every person I’ve ever known for my own safety or peace of mind at one point or another, it won’t do me any different. But I worry about what it’d do to my partner infinitely more; because they can’t pick their blood, but if I were to go off at their relatives, that’d put them in a place of ultimatum and manipulation. Something I refuse to do.
Literally the Doseone lyric; “the extent of my affections are destroying me”. I am constantly running the numbers; and I’ve never once liked the odds enough to try it.
I’m pretty up front with my politics. Idk how people don’t discuss and come to an understanding with their partners political views before getting in too deep. I could never do that. I feels ones political views is an important part of their identity. So the only time I’d ever be in a deep relationship is if I knew I was with another leftist. Which is probably why I’m still single. lmao. I really got nothing I can say to help you out of this situation op. Just gotta be yourself I guess. If I was pro communism and my SO equated me to a Holocaust denier then they wouldn’t be my SO anymore. Same with most my close friends. Most know I’m hard left. The few I don’t bring it up with just aren’t really considered close friends anymore. I try to inform the ones I can. The others I just let go or only talk to sparingly. Such is life for a lefty in the imperial core.
I’m up front with my politics as well, and I feel that I have been open with them about my political journey. When we met we were both liberals. We’ve both changed so much in the time since, but obviously in somewhat different directions.
This happened to me too. My SO’s family were petty-bourgeois landlords, so when I started talking about communism, she became very upset. Needless to say, partly due to this and partly for other reasons, we broke up.
Yeah I’m at the point where I don’t think I could date someone unless they’re some sort of Marxist-Leninist, who’s open to organizing.
This is likely to be a constant sore point as long you maintain a narrative that is critical of the current social order.
I’ve found the vast majority of these problems are the result of two things: intellectual laziness and ego. Far too many people (e.g., “woke libs”) prefer to be seen as an educated resource rather than actually educate themselves on the subject. The aesthetic of being “informed” is the primary objective. These people will be happy to cause a scene and shut their minds to anything that requires them to look inward. They’re also the first to attack your “way of arguing” and your “aggressiveness” instead of anything about the content of your statements. This is an easy out for people with little understanding or education.
At this point you have to determine if these are the types of people you want in your life. I have a number of lib friends and often we just don’t discuss things too deeply or too often. But I also know that their hearts are in the right place even if their direct knowledge and/or language is not. This greatly helps.
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Well said.
Make no mistake - comments regarding “seriousness” or “not being very effective at debating” or similar are nothing more than character attacks. If the point is to call into question someone’s character then it’s effective. But it is not, and never will be, a way of arguing against the substance of a topic.
Sometimes I cut that shit off with something like “pretend I was never born, now focus on the actual point of this conversation.” No need to spend time allowing someone else to derail a conversation. Either engage directly or not at all.
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I think it important to maintain that communism is not a cult. Your personal relationships, whether familial, platonic, or romantic, exist for specific reasons, and those reasons are not political struggle. That is what your comrades are for. If your partner refuses to accept your views or activities, this is something you have no hand in; but on your end, it would be unwise to disqualify anyone from your life on the sole principle of political disagreement. There are more extreme cases, where one’s views call into question one’s moral fibre, but I would not draw that line at communism.
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I wouldn’t bother trying to rehabilitate Stalin’s image, but if I were to attempt that, I’d start with how easy it is to point out that the vast majority of western info about him is a pack of blatant lies.
Yeah I get that. It’s not really about any particular person, thats just where this came to a head and it serves to illustrate the situation.
I actually had a similar situation in my life, but with the roles reversed. I was a dedicated leftist when the Syrian civil war broke out but I didn’t have a good theoretical or practical understanding of capitalist propaganda, and I almost dumped my bf over his support for Assad because I believed western lies. Learning is a process that takes time.
