https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/16301276

How do you square these two things?

i know it doubles down on the stupid. it's why we have to resist that march to darkness with everything we have. people are simple creatures. they go where they feel their needs are met. it's why the unions of the early 1900s set up soup kitchens and the salvation army fought street battles to shut those soup kitchens down. i'm not asking that people not see these morons as ignorant, i'm asking people to realize this leftist echo chamber behavior makes them less effective propagandists when they go out and hit the streets.

do you know what i've noticed in my time protesting of late? there has been an increase in tankies showing up places advocating for authoritarianism, but not their authoritarianism, our authoritarianism, as if authoritarianism can ever lead to anything good. and the ignorant masses see that and think it's who the left is and they turn away from us even though the the vast majority of leftists are advocating against the authority of monetary and military might, and want that authority distributed to the masses.

i'm just asking people here to think about how to make effective propaganda that doesn't just preach to the choir, but entices new people that we have something different to offer than the things they're escaping. there's a theology of food and liquor. the idea is that god made food, and the devil made liquor. on the face of it, god seems like our ally for this and the devil our enemy. but god uses the food to control us through his authority, and the devil helps us survive until tomorrow by soothing the pain of our subjugation. the most dangerous food is the low quality stuff the authority makes readily available that's low in nutritional quality. the most dangerous liquor is the church. if you want to help people remove themselves from the bondage of this society you have to perform some acts of self sacrifice and share some of your food with them as keep them away from the dangerous liquors like the church, opioids, and booze.

how do we keep people from the dangerous liquors? by understanding why they turn to them. they are in pain. they need hope. hope is the safest liquor, and after the devil realized that god was a slave driver, it's the liquor he focused on giving the people, but the damage done by his original liquors is hard to combat. in order to give people hope, you have to speak in terms they understand, you need a unifying strategy that they care about. right now, that's the epstein files. a lot of the left and the right working class people think there's a conspiracy of the elite to participate in a vast sex trafficking network. that's why we've been so focused on not letting any distraction work.

as for why i cited hannah arendt: i don't think her being an immigrant detracts from my point. i don't think immigrants are intrinsically different from us, nor do i think any nationstate is intrinsically different from another. it was nazi germany in the 1930s, it's the united states today. if we don't educate the children and show them how to build a better world it will be whatever new power emerges 20 years from now after another 60 years. hannah arendt's insights that all of these horrible things happen over and over again with a great deal of consistency and the only cure is patient education are extremely valuable. yes, we lack the time to do patient education if everyone is to survive. a degree of wielding violence in the name of community defense is necessary. but treating the pain of the ignorant will not help you. denouncing the people who cause this pain will.

remember, the greatest illusion of all is the illusion of separation. authorities of every kind have used this illusion to prevent solidarity amongst the working classes since the beginning of written history. our path to liberation from this scheme involves realizing the propaganda works, and that if we want to help people escape the propaganda that's programmed them, we have to produce propaganda for them that will deprogram them. to do this we can't go to our echo chambers and yuk it up at their expense. our disdain for them that we foment in our echo chambers will leak out and ruin the whole thing.

and no, i'm not asking you to accept transphobes like someone else said. i'm asking you to stop accepting the things you cannot change and work more to change the things you cannot accept. almost everyone here had to go on a journey to get to the position they now are in. think back on the person you were before you saw the world for what it is. what changed you? for me, it was people in my life telling me i wasn't seeing the whole picture. it took time, but eventually i got it. that there is any leftist thought that exists in our sea of right wing propaganda indicates that people's minds can be changed and improved upon. but you have to be considered about how you do it. don't play the right's us vs them game. they want you to play it. that's their entire goal: make us seem unreasonable to the people in their thrall.