I’ve been talking (texting) to a relative a lot in the past few days since the topic of Marxism came up in physical discussion. I feel like there’s some progress being made, but she’s very annoying, and I don’t know how worth it it is. To start, I think I’d classify her ideology as doomer anarchism-pacifism with Christian characteristics. She says she’s for some sort of communism, but she seems to think that means only literal communes or reformism. She thinks all real revolutions have just been people imposing their ideology onto people, and that as soon as physical violence is inflicted it’s “impure.” As soon as you kill one person for any reason you just go mad and start killing people for no reason. Anything that can be achieved through violence is not worth it. I have shown her that China is at least a little better than the US and media lies about DPRK, but she seems to think that’s at expense of political freedom. She thinks AES is very socially conservative, and when I point to evidence toward the contrary she says I’m just cherry-picking evidence, and that somehow the fiction she’s consumed and her feelings matter more than any fact I lay down. She pointed to the book ‘gulag archipelago’ and I pointed out that the author was a Nazi and gulags were just normal prisons, but apparently that makes me on par with holocaust deniers. I say we need to look at failures and successes from the past to learn what’s best for the future instead of idealizing history, but it’s “impure” so that’s not allowed. She sort of accepts that they were just prisons, but then again she thinks all states are evil bc a state killed Jesus, so none could ever be half decent so why try. She thinks all humanity is evil and you can never trust a group, even though she’s read the Graber book that is basically the anarchist answer to the human nature argument. She’s also watched azure scapegoat(?) vid on it. I try to find the limits to her limits on pacifism, and she’s for self defense in theory, she can’t deny Soviets fighting in WWII was justified, but she won’t listen to arguments for organized resistance in any other situation. She doesn’t get that the implicit structural violence in capitalism is bad enough that revolution is self defense. I ask for evidence of any condemnation of AES, and she just says art and her individual thoughts and feelings, so I end up just straight up condemning individualism, bc everything is connected and your thought don’t come out of nowhere. I don’t think that helped. I say I’m a materialist and utilitarian so I try to see the world how it is, not based on abstract ideas, but of course I’m just an arrogant kid listening to commie propaganda.

Idk if this is a rant or question post anymore, but any advice?

Edit: she just said the anti-communist consensus in the west can’t be from a conspiracy, so it’s obviously right.