Just wondering what everyone thinks about this. In almost every place I’ve worked coworkers with right wing beliefs are never shy about giving their opinion and views on things.
The major talking points are usually variations of stuff like: we spend to much on beneficiaries and they should stop being lazy and get a job. That poor people have kids so they can get free money from the government. We need or be tougher on crime. Even absurd shit like being outraged that a homeless person had a smartphone and indulging in such lavishness is why they’re homeless etc etc
Some of the shit I hear from otherwise seemingly lovely people is insane. I feel like I have to be so much more measured and have all my ‘evidence’ ready to defend my commie beliefs while these people can just say whatever bullshit they want and everybody just kinda nods in agreement.
Is this a normal thing in the Angloverse? Is it because their views are essentially the status quo already and they have just fully internalised the capitalist propeganda?
Please let me know
My reductive answer is because their beliefs cultivate such a deep alienation and incongruity with observable reality that they have to constantly affirm their beliefs and reassure themselves by saying their shit aloud. Edit: the alienation part is of particular importance because it compels them to involve other people by sharing their bullshit with others in a ‘testing the waters’ format.
I think there is truth to this, that it is a sort of reality-testing people do when they are heavily propagandized, particularly when it seems contradictory to their other beliefs about themselves like “I am a good person” or “I am not racist and treat everyone fairly” or “people like me, unless they are bad”.
But I think that there is another element to this, and that is that a lot of right-wing propaganda (in the US at least) has often been couched in a type of anti-intellectualism that is built on a sort of rural-working-class-trickster aesthetic, chiefly as an antidote to the smug liberalism of the more “cosmopolitan” democratic party. It is all bullshit, but I think the appeal is really, “Those know-it-alls are actually the real dumb-asses*”
You can see this in the work place in the first world, you are constantly encountering bullshit, so this lends itself to the same style of wit. Your bosses are all making dumb decisions, and even though all of those decisions have been a direct result of the profit-motive and the law of value, people in the US have been told that the law of value is actually an “invisible hand of the market” that always makes the objectively good decision for the betterment of everyone. Everything is on its head, and so instead of blaming the logic of markets you have people blaming their boss instead, because they hate their boss. They just identify their boss with smug liberals instead of a product of capitalism, so their fellow co-workers are either on the same page or they are smug liberals also.
I live in a smaller city with a large rural population so I have definitely experienced the reactionary behavior you’re describing. There is often a hostile attitude to the big cities and their perceived liberal smugness. I’ve often heard opinions that the big city libs don’t “live in the real world” and think that they hate the rural working class people. They see liberal solutions as too complicated and lacking “common sense”.
There is definitely a generally positive attitude when I present left ideas but they will often dismiss that as idealistic or not possible. Although that’s a result of decades on anti-communist propaganda.
I once had a very conservative coworker accuse me of successfully brainwashing her, since she had an encounter with a minimum wage worker and felt sorry.
My coworker claimed she had to listen to Joel Osteen to fix her brain after talking with me