I’ve spent years arguing with people online and really have nothing to show for it aside from my own education and amusement. I was radicalized by discovering r/chapotraphouse back in 2018 I think. Nobody argued with me there, I just lurked, loved the memes, thought it was the funniest place online, then started reading theory because so many people there talked about it. Even though liberals are obviously ignorant about communism, their ignorance is willful: they never thank us for educating them, they always get angry and double-down. (In real life, it’s much easier to embarrass them and get them to shut up.) Still, I admit that it’s possible to change someone’s mind in an online debate, I just haven’t seen it happen when it comes to communism (libs on r/changemyview can change their minds about lib shit). Have you ever seen a lib admit that they were wrong about communism?
I will continue to repost this essay, because everyone should read it:
https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/
The “Marketplace of Ideas” is a fiction; Ideology is a type of survival strategy. You are astronomically unlikely to, through an abstracted and remote medium like bickering on a forum, get someone who is attached to their survival strategy to change horses midstream for a new one. You can try to chip away at it overtime, trying to convince them some other strategy is superior, but it’s unreliable and inefficient to do with someone who you don’t personally know. The best you’ll usually do is persuade an inquisitive person towards pro-sociality, but I don’t think that’s quite what you mean.
Incidentally, since survival strategies are based on one’s environment, the best way to spread survival strategies (besides really getting to know someone’s conditions) is seeking to change the environment. r/cth was so effective for the ways that it not only built relative consensus over time within itself but changed the social norms outside of itself in a self-benefitting way, by attacking reactionaries, supporting progressives, seeking out spaces where the less-entrenched people would be idling around (that last one is how they caught me). Rituals of “debate” online only have very few practical uses, and none of them are getting the other person on your side.
I’ve read that article a few times and it’s stuck with me. What I don’t get, however, is why so much money is spent on “persuasion” messaging if that stuff in theory doesn’t work?
We’re going into a estimated 2 BILLION dollar Presidential election where obscene piles of money are going to be tossed at mainly TV ads, but also every bit of online ad space, YouTube ads, billboards, and tons of climate-killing yard signs…
and without doxxing myself let’s just say the political industry believes this stuff works. They have studies about certain messages and tactics and measure them in terms of percentage point increases in voter turnout. But then I look at these ads and I just see the same mushy garbage that’s always been there. What gives?
The essay discusses this, but so do I:
The cool thing about being tremendously rich and holding sway in media companies is that you can change the environment of tens of millions of people nearly at will by not merely giving them an input but a saturation of inputs, which crowd out what most of the tiny voices are able to accomplish. Between this and the fact that the overwhelming bulk of the ideology behind those ads is in bipartisan agreement, this seems pretty understandable.
Only few people are really swayed to a new position by some stupid ad, but you can impact their enthusiasm, you can change what they are used to and what they see as normal, there is quite a lot that you can do to a population when you embrace more indirect types of influence. The man on the TV can’t dictate to you what to think, good arguments or no, but he is like a common “friend” to you and everyone you know who is happy to influence each of you individually just like your other friends do, not to do what they say but to think in terms more like theirs.
It’s an overwhelming reason that personal advocacy is such an uphill struggle that it’s competing with the superstructure of ideology that is bankrolled by the millions like this from public schools to political campaigns to every park and monument and song and TV show and commercial. You can’t yell louder than a thousand of those voices and all you’ll do is fuck up your relationships and isolate yourself if you try. You wouldn’t even need to raise your voice if you just had a billion dollar microphone, though.
(though also those campaigns are just stuffed with money-laundering, but that’s beside the point)
Thanks for the depression! J/k I appreciate the convo.
I’m trying to find solutions out of this in the imperial core. I want my life to be useful and not just be forgotten like 99.9999% of humans that have come before me. I believe everyone has the same essential drive to matter.
So for me that means a) finding a way to reprogram the masses, and b) figuring out why I didn’t get programmed. Why didn’t the propaganda stick?
I’m a mostly well off white dude living in a suburbs aka the lib breeding grounds. I have enough income to be comfortable, cops leave me alone, and I’m not worried about any physical threats in my little corner or burgerland. And yet I am radicalized to the point I dream of
.
Compare to the people in this linked Reddit thread:
https://hexbear.net/post/1931625
All the classics are there: iPhone, making fun of “true communism has never been tried”, comparing us to nazis, we’re all lazy college students, etc. None of these people have anything new or unique to say. I am surrounded by people like this all day every day. These aren’t free thinking individuals but lemmings. Basically language regurgitation machines… but why am I not one of these people?
I also grew up in a very red area. I was inundated with this propaganda. Where I live I can’t go a mile in any direction without hitting 3 churches. Right-wing and lib indoctrination is like air here.
The only thing I can think of is that I am not totally straight, and that once I was poor enough to apply for food stamps. OK, but if my temporary brush with poverty was enough to turn left then why aren’t the millions of people living that experience and worse joining me? We all know a few poor or struggling people that hold onto lib and reactionary views…
I am starting to think the biggest hurdle to organizing is that the masses are, in fact, programmed by media. I agree with your point that it is overbearing due to the sheer scope of the messaging. But I can’t accept that we just wait for material conditions to get bad enough for people to turn left. It’s more likely they will turn to full Fascism. After all, the Fascists have all the money to buy propaganda.
So maybe the right way is to push harder against the basic propaganda that China is totalitarian, that Stalin was a terrible person who personally started Ukraine, that people in Cuba eat “mayonnaise sandwiches” as one conservative posted. We need more targeted messaging showing how much better everyday life in these countries is compared to the US. Show how nice Vietnam is after they won their war. Show how beautiful Pyongyang is to walk around. Show what a city looks like when every square inch of space isn’t covered in ads. Get the Victims of Capitalism Memorial Foundation going.
And most importantly, figure out the common thread between me and other leftists coming out of the “middle class” and find out how to replicate it.
Another point I should mention about my turn left is that I used to be a big Democratic party supporter. Like donated to candidates, held some roles in the party, even (ugh) worked on the Hillary campaign in a low level role (in the general, voted for Bernie in the Primary). It was the constant disappointments coupled with Democrats voting against what I wanted over and over again, then running the same shitty campaigns, that got me looking elsewhere. And the biggest “trigger” for me is seeing Democrats talk about how “democracy is on the ballot” and “Republicans are the worst” on one hand, and then leadership saying literally “we need a strong Republican Party” and “work across the aisle” BS on the other. It’s like they want their party to be weak! So, thanks Nancy Pelosi for helping go full commie?