I def agree that being rude, disrespectful, or “talking down” to liberals isn’t the correct approach, and isn’t going to win any converts to communism.

I also personally hold the view that most people are essentially already communist, (at least with respect to their friends and family, and the work they do for each other), they just don’t know that’s what it’s called.

But also, their ideology is a few hundred years out of date, and we shouldn’t shy from telling them about why liberalism has failed on 100% of its promises.

There are two group of liberals:

1. Well intentioned and open minded, and yes it is good to discuss things with them for the betterment of everyone (at the very least it allows us to hone our arguments)

2. People who are in bad faith, and it’s not propaganda that makes them liberals but a combination of material interests and them just being shitty maintainers of the status quo.

I think you can identify which they fall under quickly and if they are in group 2, it’s just best to move on. I am not saying be hostile, because that’s a hamster wheel… Just move on.

When you reply to others on the internet, your reply is most probably going to be seen by other people. When you engage with liberals in honesty, showing the limits of their thinking, you are inviting those who are just reading to critically evaluate their arguments as well, even if you do not directly convince the liberal you are talking with.

So I think it’s useful to respond to arguments from liberals in public forums and such sometimes

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I agree that we should try to be respectful to liberals, and that we should try to educate them if possible. Even if they’re aggressively anticommunist, if it’s in a public forum, a good reply may convince some of the other people reading it

Deprogramming people is a very important task. The reality is that majority of people hold mainstream views. That’s what makes these views mainstream.

Vast majority of people are politically illiterate and they simply regurgitate the tropes they’ve been indoctrinated into.

The only way a communist movement can grow is if we learn to teach these ideas to regular people who haven’t formed strong political opinions of their own.

It depends on the context. I don’t see much point spending your time talking to them, especially on liberal controlled platforms. If they come to our spaces I see a lot more benefit in a conversation because they don’t have a hundred people behind them telling them they’re right and you’re wrong.

Irl is different. Talk to every working person in good faith, but that doesn’t mean backing down in order to keep the peace.

I don’t see the point of insulting people, but if they’re here they’re here to speak. If they’re wrong you can tell them that they’re wrong as directly as you’d like while explaining yourself to the best of your ability. Its not personal for the most part. If a conversation goes on for more than a few replies you’re probably sinking into the mud and its better to let them have the last word and move on.

Since we’re fighting for the hearts and minds of liberals we shouldn’t alienate them unnecessarily. I was a starry-eyed, bless-your-heart type liberal who considered myself a good, intelligent person, but I was never exposed to anything that would have allowed me to see through the propaganda until my mid-20s. But when I was, everything clicked and I was able to accept communism and ML pretty easily. It took a long time but I came around.

I don’t know where I fall on in the political spectrum, but I do find that the values of socialists overlap significantly with my own values. I agree with a lot of what I see posted to lemmygrad, but there are also many posts that I do not agree with or perhaps perceive as too biased.

Usually I don’t interact if I don’t have something positive to add, but sometimes I am in the mood to talk about it. I have found that in this space I am able to openly bring up points that I disagree on or ask questions as an ‘outsider’ without worrying about people being hostile to me. You have a great community here 👍

100000% agree. I will also urge fellow socialists to be kind incredibly patient as often as they can. If you can’t, just log off, ignore it and let someone who is more fortunate and has more emotional energy deal with it.

I had this issue recently. I had been sharing info for a bit on a discord and most everyone was getting I to it. But I went a little too fast and brought up NK and someone was like “NK is legit bad though” and I kind of went a little aggressive with it which caused them to double down and say I wouldn’t change their mind, which caused me to do the same. Someone else intervened and we kind reached a mutual stay of arms and they said they would be more open minded but this really drove that point home.

We may have had this argument hashed out a dozen times and we KNOW our facts are right but for many this is the first time they have probably argued with someone that’s not only outside of their echo chamber but also knowledgeable enough to push the limits of what they know. Gotta just be the calmer voice. Being overly aggressive with it will cause them to put up walls. Don’t treat everyone as if they are all arguing in bad faith. It’s tiring, and a lot of the time you just want to say “fuck off lib” but don’t. That’s what they do when they say “ok tankie” or whatever.

it depends imo

https://youtu.be/XkY88kvkdvU

Yeah I’m guilty of this sometimes