This is a Dengist community in favor of Bashar al-Assad with no information that can lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton, our fellow liberal and queen. This community is not ironic. We are Marxists-Leninists.
See this GitHub page for a collection of sources about socialism, imperialism, and other relevant topics.
This community is for posts about Marxism and geopolitics (including shitposts to some extent). Serious posts can be posted here or in /c/GenZhou. Reactionary or ultra-leftist cringe posts belong in /c/shitreactionariessay or /c/shitultrassay respectively.
We have a Matrix homeserver and a Matrix space. See this thread for more information. If you believe the server may be down, check the status on status.elara.ws.
Rules:
Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
☭ Matrix homeserver and space
☭ Theory discussion group on /c/theory@lemmygrad.ml
☭ Find theory on ProleWiki, marxists.org, Anna's Archive
Sort of cross-commenting from a smaller post for more.... commiseration? Understanding? Lol.
Stalin and Mao remain constant blockages for when I talk with my more soc-dem friends. Was with some comrades at the May Day rally in my city recently and my more soc-dem friend noticed one of them handing out pamphlets to a reading/analysis of On Contradiction by Mao, and they immediately brought up how "Mao killed millions and was a ruthless dictator etc etc etc" and in the moment we just kind of brushed it off because the speeches were starting - it makes me wanna scream sometimes.
For me it was as easy as distrusting the current system and understanding how deep the propaganda goes, alongside understanding the breadth and depth of actual history - but when trying to explain that all it took to radicalize me was simply reading accurate history to libs they look at me like I just did a Nazi salute.
It's becoming my latest obsession honestly - understanding how to communicate the fact that history isn't just one sided, and that people then acted as they do now: with limited info and hundreds of complications that need to be taken into account; that history isn't some flat chain of events but actually a huge yarn ball of cause and effect and that yes, sometimes things devolved into unnecessary chaos and gasp even necessary violence.
It makes me so frustrated sometimes, like people don't engage enough with history to understand the why. It's so much easier to simply say this thing bad and therefore all things attached to it bad.
I just want to shake them out of their placated stupor and make them understand that 1. An entirely new system of organized society is being tested and there will be mistakes and 2. Motherfuckers I know you hate were the ones fighting against it violently and sometimes can only be met with in kind. 😤
honestly for some people they have to get a bit into communism before they're able to see mao and stalin as anything. i know for me it took a couple years of study before i was willing to hear anything about them. hopefully they dont stagnate as socdems but maybe the solution is to start them off with more "sympathetic" figures like marx or lenin. hell, anarchist pamphlets could probably be useful in pushing them left enough to at least be open to these things
I am not sure you can really do much for them beyond educating them on how the myth of evil authoritarian communism is an excuse for evil capitalist misdeeds, and how the neoliberal worldview is simply unscientific in many ways (it uses authoritarian and totalitarian as buzzwords with little meaning and much hypocrisy). If they are your friends, you could try to chip away at their misunderstandings, but you should really consider how willing they are to accept convincing.
Oh, you can also point out how liberalism tends to support fascism when they are able to control it (Ukraine and West Germany), so their moral high ground is unfounded (I know your friends are social-democrats, but they are still afflicted with some of the same propaganda): Such will likely give them quite a shock! :>