unlimited willems on the piggies 
This is exactly what a lot of progressives were saying the past couple of years, that when normal people saw how brutal and gross the immigration policy they were voting for was they would lose their stomach for it. Trouble is the US doesn’t change its policies based on the opinions of its citizenry.
Politics are completely imaginary things that happen on TV for the average American. It’s the spectacle they want. The only time it becomes real is when they personally start to feel the effects, or start to think the effects might hit them. When the TV is no longer showing old guys getting angry, but instead showing masked ICE agents shooting tear gas and shoving people into vans, then yeah it does make the average person anxious. The American is a docile animal who likes to make a lot of noise, but truly wants nothing to happen and nothing to change. Actual change is frightening and doesn’t care about politics as a spectacule.
It’s probably also very hard to spin the fact that ICE built a literal concentration camp, that looks like a concentration camp, right in Florida.
This is exactly what a lot of progressives were saying the past couple of years, that when normal people saw how brutal and gross the immigration policy they were voting for was they would lose their stomach for it.
That’s really dumb because it operates within the framework that chuds/neolibs are stupid, essentially taking their public opinions at face value.
Same line of logic that gets people to think hypocrisy or policy betrayal on non ethnic cleansing matters actually…matters. Hasan put it perfectly, if the reality that chuds want to live in doesn’t exist and is a complete fabrication, they would rather pretend it exists or conjure it up.
They exist on a different plane of existence and people who don’t regularly interact with them are not understanding what they’re dealing with
“Normal people” aren’t chuds or neolibs though. “Normal people” pick their presidential candidate two weeks before they vote (if they even vote at all) based solely on vibes.
Alternate reality casting is extremely common though, I agree with that. I think it mostly manifests as a coping mechanism for politically-inclined people living in a country where on some level they know that their opinions and actions don’t matter to the ruling class.
Yeah I wanted to say this too. Normal people don’t know or care. They might know who the president is but beyond that they do not give a shit. I’d be surprised if more than half of Americans recognize the name JD Vance. The average American is full of ambient bigotry, but they have no formed beliefs until the moment they try saying stuff out loud. The average person’s political affiliation is a shrug and a vote for whoever their parents voted for.
Chuds are in their own fabricated reality, as are liberals. But that veil is only so thick and the average American isn’t usually following the spectacle. Normal people are going to see people getting shot with rubber bullets and come to a conclusion that something’s being done very wrong, there’s a problem in how something is being handled. That kind of thing does get attention
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That quick, massive swing from Republicans this year suggests a lot of them had their faces eaten by some leopards.
i bet a nice chunk is also “if this can be used against them it can be also used against me”.
everything this admin does is so brutish and unsophisticated it keeps peeling off their more squishy base
Yeah that libertarian-leaning chunk of the base has to be a little freaked out by the optics of all this. Especially as these raids are often disrupting the operations of Small Business Tyrants.
i know a few myself. sometimes they are easier to move to the left since they distinctly distrust the government and aren’t under the spell of hyper-nationalism
Marx is too scary for them but call Proudhon the OG libertarian and you got yourself some mutualists at least. don’t let perfect be the enemy of good
As someone who was dipping my toes in libertarianism (very briefly around 2002/2003 I was only 18 so cut me some slack) before learning more about anarchism and how American libertarians bastardized it and now am here, I think it’s absolutely a viable and oft overlooked tactic.
Each teenager is allocated 3 hours to 3 months of being a libertarian. No cash value if not redeemed. No warranty express or implied.
ugh i guess i owe money then i started at like 16 and only attached “left” to libertarian by 18 and rode that shit until my late 20s (to be fair i was basically a libertarian socialist in all but name)
i used to comment on reason dot org and call people vulgar libertarians there towards the end. not sure which was more shameful
Virtually every American has some form of pestilent brainworms. Figure out how to speak to them and get them on the pipeline. Deworming libertarians is an exhausting task I’d only really feel comfortable asking our white comrades to do.
it’s tough. sometimes i have to hide power level and pretend i’m on the exact same political journey as the person i’m working with but just a bit further ahead.
basically work them through it with me
Well, as a white person I guess I gotta do it.
I actually do a pretty good job of it sometimes.
I think a lot of liberals are quietly looking at the militancy coming from the community in awe, since we’re one of the only forces actively resisting Trump in a real way. Many white working liberals feel safer with the brown working class than they do with their own white capitalist class, which is a good thing.
Not sure why some conservatives are starting to defect on this issue though. Maybe they’re nervous about losing super-exploitable labor.
I think at some point, the white people I see attend our actions will be less Communist and anarchistic, but this is a good thing because that means the masses are starting to be politically activated. They can adopt more correct views with time and attention from cadres.
Not sure why some conservatives are starting to defect on this issue though. Maybe they’re nervous about losing super-exploitable labor.
I think in a lot of cases it’s that they never really put real thought into their support for mass deportation, or if they did it was based on a childish understanding of immigration being millions of criminal immigrants coming here to do crimes. Now they’re seeing mass raids, snatching randos on the street, no focus on criminals, maybe their family members, neighbors, or workers grabbed - people they thought were “the good ones”. The right wingers really don’t think shit out, I got into an argument with a weed dealer not too long ago who was in support of these raids and had never considered that he’s a fucking criminal who could be subject to birthright citizenship revocation and deportation to a prison camp in some other nation to rot and die.
It’s the recurring thing where they have zero empathy until it impacts them personally. Dick Cheney’s gay rights etc etc
I think it is similar to how support for Zionism has dropped, even in the islamophobic west, despite the world’s most sophisticated propaganda machine’s best efforts.
Supporting Zionism when your image of Zionists is respectable men in suits talking about democracy and your image of Palestinians is cartoonish scary Arabs using scary Arabic words. Supporting Zionism is a completely different thing when you have seen Zionists proudly showing off the lingerie they’ve looted from someone they’ve murdered.
There will always be horrible evil people but when it comes to it, actually violence is off-putting to normal people. I think showing how the sausage is made, the violence, the hateful cruelty, is always going to be a very effective antifascist propaganda technique.
I’m sure all of the people who are surprised by this would have been a-okay if they didn’t have to be confronted with it. Like you said, seeing the sausage get made makes the pretend game of right wing politics harder to maintain for a lot of people.
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I’m literally talking about people I know, I’m not guessing. I’m not saying all chuds are like this, but this is definitely happening to plenty of them.
If you think all right wingers are incapable of ever believing anything other than their bullshit, why bother with organizing or being communist? You’re a political calvinist in that case, people are either right or wrong and they’ll never change.
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What compassion are you talking about? I described their motivation if they’re shocked by this.
Remember we’re trying to build communism not do liberalism.
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uhh, so I didn’t show any compassion and you were just mad I said thinking right wingers are unredeemable means you’re a political calvinist? to be clear I still think that.
It’s really funny how Americans just change their minds on everything
there’s a good chunk of people that just obey whatever the TV or tiktok tells them
The NSA using “this you?” own to every American.
Remember how abolishing the police had majority/near-majority support in the wake of the murder of George Floyd? Public opinion is fickle and malleable.
Well, remember how the entire political establishment was mobilized in explicit defense of cops for months? Yeah, it’s malleable, but it’s not just rocketing around for no reason.
You better be organizing people open to new political perspectives right now!
Meanwhile, dem leadership still tacking right
