• axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 years ago

    A lot of these murderers openly admit how gullible and susceptible they are. It’s the same story with Qanon reactionaries too. They always tell a story that’s like “yeah i never really paid attention to politics or the news but then one day I saw a meme that broke my brain.”

    Yes, that’s all it takes to radicalize them because they live their entire lives coasting on the basic assumptions of white supremacist imperialism without question and it destroys their mind to learn their ideology is in fact a particular ideology that can be put into words. It’s completely gibberish racist drivel, but it snaps their worldview into focus like they’ve never understood because they’ve literally never thought about it before. The racist gullible nonsense was already bubbling in their heads.

    • MemesAreTheory [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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      2 years ago

      HEY. Some of us learned about communism through memes and had a similar experience tyvm. You put some respect on memes!

      But the difference in ideological miasma people are steeped in leading to fascist bullshit and communism is clearly huge and I find your insight valuable for sure. I find that leftists are generally the most empathetic people who drive themselves crazy trying to make sense of how needlessly cruel our world is without a proper critique of it, so it’s a process of trying to ask a question they don’t have the words for that leads to their revelationary moment when they finally encounter leftist theory (even if that’s in the form of memes). That’s a remarkably different process than the fascist light bulb turning on as someone has their entirely unconscious and unquestioned ideology put into language for the first time, even if the subjective feeling of revelation is probably similar.