I don’t know if it’s just me or that I spend too much time reading YouTube comment sections or occasionally the enemy’s subreddit that is has given me a distorted perception of the masses or if it’s actually true that the broad masses are as reactionary and fascistic as they seem online and in media. It gives a kind of paranoia, a correct paranoia, that the Soviets felt in the 30s. I guess what I’m asking or looking for is whether my view of the American masses is distorted because of what I see online or if my view is correct. I prefer to be wrong on this.

  • @ComradeBongwater
    link
    16
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    Also an American. I have a more optimistic outlook than many here. So many right-wingers have the beginnings of class-consciousness, but are misdirected by race and labels.

    If it isn’t immediately apparent, all of these traits are exploitable by a tactful Marxist. All it takes is a willingness to pretend their ideas are not inherently reprehensible and a vocal criticism of the Democratic party. I have turned a couple of reactionaries into self-described socialists.

    The dominant components of reactionaries in my region and how to exploit them:

    1. Anti-elitism - i.e. politicians, celebrities, & owners of large corporations.
    • Point out the hypocrisy of politicians & celebrities.
    • Make sure they know that their class interests prevent them from understanding or working in service of the working class.
    • We’re experts at pointing out shitty lib takes; just dress your criticism in their language.
    1. Fetishism for working-class, blue collar manual labor. Large, unionized industries all across Pennsylvania have been hollowed out or outright moved elsewhere. Reactionaries long for their return to satisfy both their rough & tough image of masculinity + the material conditions that came with a unionized workplace.
    • Describe how capitalists are not working class.
    • Make sure they know that someone else makes their business’s day-to-day decisions, performs the labor that makes them wealthy, and does their taxes.
    • Show them that the “job creators” will never create jobs for them if it costs them a penny more than outsourcing or automating. If they know their labor is seen as disposable by capitalists, their animosity will grow.
    • Keep using the words “working-class” & “labor”. These carry the association with the physical labor that plays to their masculinity fetish.
    1. Desire to “have an open discussion” - They get great satisfaction over discussing politics with people they disagree with. It gives them an ego boost by letting them believe they’re open-minded despite being reactionary. If you don’t parrot Democratic party-line rhetoric or indicate you’re partisan, they’ll actively want to debate political events or philosophy with you.
    • Engage whenever possible.
    • Drop all labels and describe Marxist ideas in language that hasn’t had decades of propaganda against it.
    • Use “workplace democracy” and “keeping what you’ve worked for”.
    • Avoid anything that hints to your ideology.
    • Learn to rephrase “means of production” and similar slogans.
    • Accusations of closed-mindedness or adherence to existing beliefs work well with people of this mindset.
    1. “Triggering the libs.” They love to watch people experience large, turbulent meltdowns over small, effortless comments. They will say things they may not even necessarily believe just to get amusement from the reactions.
    • Say “fuck Barack Obama/Joe Biden/Nancy Pelosi” and similar as often as you can.
    • Mock liberalism extensively.
    • Speak crudely and don’t use language that sounds like it’s been focus tested. Drop the PC woke-speak when you can.
    • When pushing back on their ideas, use vivid, visceral language and connect figures they dislike to it too. (e.g. for interventionism: “Hillary Clinton wasted our money for X to blow up brown children in the middle east”).
    1. Distrust of elected officials of either political party. Material conditions have constantly degraded for many, especially in urban and rural areas. Suburban areas haven’t exactly prospered either. Conservatives here tend not to have love for the Republican party; when confronted with two distrusted options, they just tend to prefer the more hands-off approach.
    • Make it known that you loathe the Democratic party. Criticize them first and loudest.
    • When they complain about something good, make sure to tell them that Dems only pay it lip service.
    • Paint the Democratic party and Republican party as two sides of the same coin working together to fuck the people in favor of large capitalists.
    • Make sure to characterize partisan disagreements as purely performative.
    1. Disdain for a focus on identity. They are likely struggling and have a visceral reaction to the notion that other people’s struggles receive attention while they toil.
    • Paint social issues as a distraction from class (I’m intersectional, but you cannot sell these people on feminism/anti-racism until you sell them a more class-based analysis.) Tell them that the prevalence of social issues in contemporary media/culture is meant to distract and divide working class people from focusing on economics that benefit the working man.
    • Point out that the elites want us to focus on race/gender/sexuality because it prevents any of us from realizing we are all in the same boat and working together for better conditions.
    1. “Earning” wealth. Everyone likes to feel like they have earned what they have through their own labor. They are proud of what little they have managed to accumulate. They are incredibly scornful upon hearing others not having to toil for similar.
    • Reword the the theft of surplus value.
    • Point out that the value of this theft from workers is much greater than any amount of taxation.
    • If you need to defend giving assistance, use examples that are hard to justify opposition to (e.g. children and elderly). Then re-frame “free shit” as insurance for bad luck, cost-saving measures, and getting the value out of your tax dollars.
    1. Racism. Most reactionaries don’t actually believe that they are racist.
    • If they show overt racism, connect it to “mainstream media” and use similar arguments to dealing with opposition to identity politics.
    • Make them feel like a manipulated fool for playing into the hands of “elites”. Force the notion that racial analysis = small brain, class analysis = big brain as hard as you can.
    • The LBJ quote: “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket.” is your best friend here.
    • Ask them directly what they would do in X situation with Y material conditions.
    • Know they will be the toughest to engage with, and cut civility early if they’re not receptive.
    • Switch to bullying, belittling, and exerting dominance as soon as productive conversation ends. Especially effective if you can do it in front of peers that won’t take their side.

    Some ideology-specific rhetorical tools:

    1. Libertarians:
    • Your end goal is the complete dissolution of the state.
    • You love guns.
    • Volunteerism isn’t very voluntary if you starve unless you agree to volunteer right now. The most voluntary/free system is one where food, housing, healthcare, transportation are secure.
    1. Trumpers:
    • Give Trump praise to win rapport.
    • Claim to also want a political outsider too.
    • Use “liberal media bias” extensively, and steer causation towards capitalism and protecting ad revenue. Say Trump’s trade policies hurt their advertisers (along with all your ideas).
    • Mention he has gotten a free ride his entire life and serves the elite because their financial interests are the same.
    • Ask how a person who has always lived lavishly would understand struggle or labor.
    1. Democrat Stans:
    • Point out that their values have only slid backwards since the New Deal.
    • Counter claims to social justice progress by mentioning we are more segregated than when legally enshrined.
    • Show that any progress made originated from revolutionaries, socialists, communists, and union, and that the laws they like only passed after liberals caved to pressure from the left. Make it abundantly clear that liberals gate-keep that progress.
    • Say Dems have the right idea, but their donors encourage them to poison well-intentioned bills with pro-corporate clauses.
    • Constantly bring up that centrist Dems dominating the party is what allows Republicans to move to the right and be so terrible.
    • Always mention that Trump’s extremism has made far-right views more acceptable and that the same process would work on the left.
    • Point out that the right will always characterize the left as radical, anti-freedom extremists. If this will inevitably happen, you may as well have someone further left.
    • Never discourage voting. This instantly makes you a useless idiot for the GOP in their eyes. Instead, promote direct action as being faster, more reliable, and less depressing than electoralism. Encourage lib-friendly actions like volunteering at soup kitchens.
    1. SocDems:
    • Always take the doomer approach. The more discouraged they are, the more alternative, more revolutionary actions they will entertain.
    • Electoral system won’t even allow a tame socdem and actively resists anyone who isn’t in the pocket of corps. Surely our efforts would be better placed elsewhere?
    • Say private property is the root of all our problems. No candidate who runs on abolishing it will ever win in our system.
    1. Bible Thumpers:
    • Jesus’s words on the rich
    • Jesus hung out with homeless, sex workers, and downtrodden.
    • Jesus was chill with property damage against bad institutions.

    Some general rhetorical tools I employ:

    • Figure out what they value as soon as possible. Frame as much as possible in terms of those values.
    • Pretend some shit they say is new and novel to you. Appreciate their viewpoint vocally.
    • Start from the assumption that most people agree on most things and that differences are small and less impactful than the agreements.
    • Frame disagreements as originating from perspective differences.
    • Tie your views to events and struggles in your own life or those very close to you. They’re more likely to empathize and consider a viewpoint when there’s a psychological aversion to directly insult your experiences. The more emotional, the better.
    • Tell them you used to hold that viewpoint until you learned X.
    • @CommisarChowdahead
      link
      3
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      The one thing I disagree with about this otherwise outstanding comment is the use of words like “socialism” and “communism”. I never start by saying these things, but once I’ve gotten to the point that the other person a. knows what my general economic philosophy is b. knows that I hate both parties openly and c. knows that I am friendly, I will slip socialism into conversation without drawing any attention to it. When they ask questions about why, I fill them in on what socialism, communism, Marxism etc. mean. Usually by this point I’ve already told them they could be making more money and have more control over their work life, so calling that socialism admittedly scares them a little but also excites them a lot. I’ve found this is even easier at union shops (though I’ve only worked at one), as the workers there are already at least somewhat primed to see themselves in contradistinction to management. Most people are really eager to learn about this stuff once they realize there is benefit to them involved. As much as people in this country are taught to hate communism, they are never taught what communism is outside of “big government controlling the economy,” so explaining the concept first and giving it a name later works very well. The other thing to consider is that if you get someone on board with the ideas but they find out from someone else that these are socialism/communism, they may feel tricked and not trust you any further.

    • @TeethOrCoat
      link
      34 years ago

      These tips were informed by actual practice and you’ve used them to great success? Any stories to share?

    • @Hildegarde
      link
      3
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      Remember to save this reply, comrades (the star button). Thank you for sharing!

  • @some_random_commie
    link
    11
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    Here in China, I often tell people that it isn’t the US government they have to be afraid of, but the entire population. The tendency is always for anti-US forces around the world to try and at least claim their beef isn’t with the “American” people, but with their government. This isn’t a bad thing to say for political purposes, but it simply is wrong, and I always tell this to Chinese people who say these kinds of things.

    One thing I remember from my early student organizing days, when our little student activist group was first flirting with student government politics, is that we went through the effort to put the question of supporting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on the ballot. I think the anarchists in our group who did it thought about using it to bolster the view that the wars were unpopular, but as it turned out, more than half of the student population voted in support of them! And this was right in the middle of the largest wave of anti-war protests going around the country at the time. I had read MIM way back then, but didn’t make the connection myself until years later. It took many more years of anti-war activism, and a much fuller theoretical exposition of the labor aristocracy thesis than MIM ever attempted, to get me to finally see the “American” people for what they are.

    Yes, the “American” population is awful. Short of a civil war where millions of people died, there is no possibility of a communist revolution in North America, outside of a Balkanization scenario, and even then only in the territories not controlled by the English-speaking European nation. Communists in North America should probably model their activity off of anti-Nazi resistance in occupied Eastern Europe, or anti-Franco resistance in Spain, rather than say, the Russian or Chinese experiences. But even there, communists could recruit people to actually fight the government, whereas this is all but impossible in North America (though hopefully this is starting to change, but I wouldn’t hold my breath).

      • @some_random_commie
        link
        5
        edit-2
        4 years ago

        MIM

        The Maoist Internationalist Movement. I read their articles evaluating other groups in the US, and some of their defences of Mao and Stalin back in the day. I thought they were kooky, mainly because of their “All Sex is Rape” line (which today, I’m absolutely positive they didn’t actually believe, but would say it just to keep certain types of liberals out of their organization), but I also didn’t accept their labor aristocracy line, until years after their founder Henry Park went crazy and died. When I finally came back to them after years of student activism, I found they actually do some have some interesting stuff on the topic in their old newsletters, but really, they were not very good at putting forth the position.

        Anyway, here are the archives of their site, hosted by the only remaining cell still operating of MIM, MIM Prisons. Warning: it is possible they have altered some stuff here and there, and have themselves admitted to doing it when former members requested to have their writings removed from the site. But I think 99% of it is there and unaltered.

        https://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/

    • @SovietIntlOP
      link
      44 years ago

      Right, I come from a largely liberal state and you’re alot less likely to see Nazis walking around my city for sure. But despite that the internet you’re more than likely to be exposed to those fascists. It is bound to give a distorted view of the broad American masses but it is in fact those broad masses that are reactionary.

      The black panther party is a party I as an American uphold to a very high degree. The Maoists among them had the right idea and they had the right idea of converting the Lumpen into proper Proletarian vanguards. The urban Lumpen seems to me the most revolutionary of the masses here; the ruining of their party by the reactionary government and the opportunism of the NAACP weakened the party. The BPP was in the early stages of building dual power. I fear that while BLM showed alot of promise early on -they pushed forward a radical line- they no longer have proper leadership since it’s been coopted. There is no centralized structure to BLM so there’s no way to join it and teach or influence. Being a Marxist Leninist I believe in joining as broad an organization as possible to fill their ranks up with really radical lines.

      But I’m just rambling, I think I need to spend less time reading reactionaries online and just try and focus on the real world struggle.

    • Muad'DibberMA
      link
      4
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      I think the anarchists in our group who did it thought about using it to bolster the view that the wars were unpopular, but as it turned out, more than half of the student population voted in support of them! And this was right in the middle of the largest wave of anti-war protests going around the country at the time.

      I was in highschool when the US invaded Iraq and afghanistan, and I remember at least half of the students in my class were pro-war. Being anti-war was considered “against the troops”, and the army encouraged classmates who signed up to wear their army fatigues on certain days. You are 100% right that the enemy is not just the US government, its also its citizens.

      • @TeethOrCoat
        link
        44 years ago

        The fact that they learnt nothing from that experience and are now doing it again with the PRC further bolsters this idea.

  • Muad'DibberMA
    link
    94 years ago

    Unfortunately I’d have to agree, that the broad masses of US’ers are reactionary; I’ve seen it not only grow within my lifetime, even within my own family, but as I learn more about metropolitan labor aristocracy, I realize that even among the “pro-union leftists”, it was always about integration into the american dream, and an alliance with capitalists, not opposition to them.

    I also see my friends which were supposedly “left”, getting rallied into the social imperialist policies of bernie sanders, and fully entrenching themselves as healthcare socdems, rather than turning towards anti-imperialist/communist politics.

    If there was ever an anticapitalist left in the US, it has long since been bought off, house-broken, and embourgeosieified.

    I’m still optimistic tho, because even though the US was able to bribe its own workers, it can’t do that for the rest of the world without maintaining its super-profits, so its imperialist system is slowly unraveling. Class struggle continues outside the US’s borders, US citizens are not the majority of the world and will play little to no part in future politics, and communism will still win regardless.

  • @glucosemaximos
    link
    7
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    I would say it depends on where you are in America, of course being from the south i see quite a bit of reactionary tendencies. The media portrays an extreme view, however seeing the roots of the extremes, like how conservatism is like soft fascism, then i see where the reactionaries come from. When given the chance reactionaries will shed their facade of caring conservatism and go full blown reactionary, in a recent case being the shooting of BLM protesters by a 17 year old from out of state. In certain people you can very much so tell that if shit hits the fan this person is going to be reactionary, the thing about contemporary events is that these reactionaries are letting loose because they believe they are morally justified by their lables of BLM protesters as “antifa terrorists” that they don’t have to feel guilty about shooting them, and that they will be remembered as a hero by their fellow reactionaries, as is the case for Kyle, the 17 year old. With the media it does put reactionaries on the forefront of our minds which only empowers them and the cycle continues. I would like to think that America wouldn’t be that reactionary if shit were to hit the fan, but with the knowledge that many Americans are falsely guided by propaganda, then they are highly likely to fall into a reactionary mindset given an incentive, say, a call to arms, I personally know many people like Kyle, which scares me to think that possibly these people would go and do something akin to what he did given the chance. The main point i am trying to get at is with the polarization of politics in America causing people to flood to extremes on both ends of the political spectrum, we cannot be sure if those around us are reactionary due to many people masking their true beliefs, and so there might be a lot more Kyles out there then we think. Honestly I hope i’m wrong.

    TL;DR: because of political polarization there could be many more potential reactionaries out there then we think.

    • @SovietIntlOP
      link
      7
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      Reading blackshirts and reds makes me realize how basically fascism wasn’t defeated in the 20th century but rather retreated to the west capitalist countries and buried themselves in the systems of those nations. Since 91’ capitalism has been largely unchecked and fascism allowed the safely to exist. Won’t lie that it almost kills my hope but that would be reactionary to fall into such a rabbit hole. The work before us is insurmountable, we have two beasts to kill; capitalism and latent fascism that has been allowed to grow.

  • @Castrationist
    link
    44 years ago

    I think in general the closer masses are to the Imperial core, the more their collective ideology is reactionary & America is the belly of the beast so I think you’re entirely correct. Within those conditions I’d say you’re best off just avoiding social questions when you don’t know someone’s positions & focus on economic facts like how the FED has no idea wtf they’re doing long-term and the US market plan for the last 50 years has been to give away market share to corporate monopolies as much as possible.

  • @TeethOrCoat
    link
    44 years ago

    Well, if you were paying attention to socialist twitter, you’d get the feeling that people are getting radicalized really quick. There was that no comrades under 1k thing, communism trending, marxism trending. I’ve even seen an unapologetic pro-communist (not an indictment of capitalism, not democratic socialist, not even socialist, but communist) tweet get like 140k likes in under a day. I saw that and I was like WTF? Anti-capitalism sure, socialism sure, but COMMUNISM? I’ve never heard of it to say the least.

    In general though, you’re probably right that the masses are reactionary. If not socially, then definitely when it comes to imperialism since even sections of the left capitulate just as easily as everyone else when the propaganda swings right back around.

  • @calmlamp
    link
    1
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    deleted by creator