I’m dumbstruck as to what to do. The US is building literal concentration camps, and none of my co-workers care at all.
In fairness, I work in healthcare with an almost exclusively cishet white population who are financially well off.
Many of them espouse to be Christians, and no one cares at all that the American government is following the exact playbook from Nazi Germany.
What do you do? How do you make people care before it’s too late?
I’ve never done something on the scale I’m describing, so this is mostly just speculation, but I hope it could be useful.
First of all, find the people who do care. Talk with them. Make a local antifascist group in a secure messenger (Matrix/XMPP, or at the very least Signal), or join an existing org that you disagree with the least (don’t be afraid of the word “socialist” if you stumble upon them). Do not discuss anything illegal, as it could spell trouble for everyone - you live in an (increasingly) authoritarian country with a wide range of tools to repress you. Keeping it legal at least makes it less likely.
Now that you have a support network, you can start reaching out. Until/unless your organization gains serious traction, unite over common goals instead of squabbling over your differences. DO NOT guilt anyone for being financially well off, voting for the wrong candidate, believing in stupid things, etc. Find people who are somewhat unhappy or unsure about concentration camps. Try convincing them that concentration camps are bad - it probably would be easier if they are on the fence already or if they are being unjustly treated themselves. Show compassion. Do not be condescending or use the words that may trigger them (Nazism, etc), instead appeal to humanity and empathy to specific people who are being repressed. Bring some examples of unjust repression with you. Do not overdo it - you don’t (yet) have to agree on anything except that these concentration camps are bad. Propose to do something together - it can be small at first, like calling your representative or organizing a picket - common action builds connections and mutual understanding.
call them american
I dont want to be another i-dont-care-ican
What are we gonna do Franco, Franco Un-American^((franco unamerican - NOFX)^)
Have you ever wondered how people reacted to the original Nazis in the 1930s? Well… now you know. If can feel proud of something, it is at least I am extremely against it and the whole ‘what would you have done?’ is basically answered definitively for me.
If the concentration camps were started during the Obama administration and (nobody cared), then were operated during the first Trump admin and (the only caring-concern was performative) then they continued to operate under the Biden admin (while still nobody cared) then why would people suddenly start caring now?
BTW I’m referring to the immigrant concentration camps near the border. What ones are you referring to?
You don’t.
A large swath of Americans have made it clear they don’t care to pay attention and won’t care until it personally affects them.
So we’re simply going to have to watch our nation decline until the majority of Americans have personally been affected. Then we’ll begin a long, difficult path to gaining back what we lost, just to get back to where we were before the decline happened. Then we’ll be happy to be back in the same shitty situation we were before and probably let things slide back into a decline again.
Americans are stupid. And there’s nothing you can do to change that.
I sometimes wonder is Trump does a lot of crazy sounding shit to make people who speak against him sound insane.
My (great)-grandparents were part of the Dutch resistance during WW2. Along with a full 1.5% of the population.
Most people will not do anything, even if they are literally rounding up people for a genocide.
On the more positive side, a lot of people will support the resistance in small ways.
The number of people who actually, whole heartedly collaborated with the Nazi’s was quite small.
Even some of the German soldiers stationed in their village would turn a blind eye. Some of them realized they were on the wrong side and they just did the bare minimum of what they needed to do to not get in trouble and not get killed.
I heard something on a radio show during Covid on how to talk to people who have “gone down the rabbit hole”. It was discussing MAGA as a cult. The guest on the show was a woman who was raised in a cult in the 70’s and she “got out” and spent her time talking with others in the cult to help them to break free. I can’t find a reference to the show, but I think it was Carrie Miller hosting.
My takeaway was that you can’t come at people and tell them that everything they know is wrong and you will show them the way. They’ll fight you. You need to deprogram them similarly to how they were programmed into the cult. Small bits, here and there to slowly guide them to questioning their beliefs. Once that happens, show them how to research and seek out information and let them know that they will be safe.
If someone found a link to the podcast/radio show, I’d be super happy.
This is as inspiring as it is terrifying.
Great comment. Trump won and the amount of people here throwing the Nazi word around still don’t realise how self defeating they are.
You can’t tell someone their an idiot or evil and then expect them to try seeing things your way, you’re much more likely to end up entrenching their beliefs. The goal should be to win them over, that won’t be accomplished by telling them how wrong and stupid they are.
Engage, don’t alienate, no matter how hard that feels at times.
They’re*
The thing is, a lot of these people are literally Nazis, and I’m starting to wonder if it was “people saying Nazi too much” or it was actually “there was a fuckton of Nazis and no one took people saying that seriously and now there’s Nazis around and people are blaming the folks who were warning others about the Nazis for not seeing Nazis soon enough”
Since we’re not in a .world comm, there were just a lot of fucking Nazis. The US has always been significantly further right wing than it’s contemporary nations, at least since the 1800s, but since the 1920s it basically accelerated to light speed. Every minor progressive victory was a half century or more after other countries, and immediately hated by more than half the country; hence why so many rights in the US are tenuous scotus decisions and not laws.
The rest of the world after the 1950s has viewed you guys as the next Nazis. Hell even in WW2 you were only the good guys by comparison, and even then the Soviets were the protagonists of that era with all their flaws.
Only very recently and only in aesthetics has the US really made any strides, and because you chose aesthetics over legislation that progress was easy to destroy. You had a far right wing black president people called progressive because of the color of his skin, you ‘legalized’ gay marriage without legislation, you had all other companies doing rainbow capitalism to show how open and progressive your society was, despite having the highest wealth inequality in the world – and that’s no easy feat, North Korea exists.
The fall of the US to fascism was inevitable, because both the ruling class and the majority populous has always fully supported fascism, they just hate the aesthetics.
The US was doomed from the start, it might have been better to let every state be it’s own country. We would probably see some wars with the more extreme places/states of the country.
Trump won and the amount of people here throwing the Nazi word around still don’t realise how self defeating they are.
Sometimes you have to call Nazis Nazis. And people who support Nazis are Nazis. And sometimes you can’t deprogram a Nazi.
These aren’t victims. They’re intentionally malicious people.
I have the urge to help victims. I have another urge entirely in regards to Nazis.
Yeah and especially when they created a system that doesn’t even allow you to really vote for somebody who you believe in.
The US is a timebomb which is going to explode.
The moderate right provide a platform for the far right but I don’t think that makes them default Nazi’s.
Besides that, I’m not suggesting that you can always deprogram a Nazi, but you can absolutely target the moderate right swing voters who may not take kindly to being called a Nazi.
Honestly, your point of view is no better than the “all Muslims are terrorists” mantra and people like you will sleep walk us in to another four years of Republican rule.
Yeah you are right, but US politics doesn’t allow for nuances. People aren’t left or right or conservative or progressive. They will have bieves that suit a certain direction on the politic spectrum, but people can have opinions regarding different topics all across the eniter spectrum.
Something I’ve had to accept over the course of my life is that the vast majority of humans will passively accept anything as long as they feel like there’s something they can do to not be killed. Only when it feels out of control whether they might be killed will the majority of people feel the need to act and no sooner. There has never been any changing this. Fortunately the vast majority of people are not needed to affect positive change. People who care need to set the tone and followers will follow as they do. Your efforts would be better served among people actively resisting or building structures that benefit people.
Don’t waste your energy on people who won’t listen.
Look for people, places and groups that support your own beliefs.
If you can’t find those people at work, then just be nice to them but not too close. Them in your free time, use your energy to support those people and groups you believe in.
Don’t waste your time on those who won’t listen.
Look for the helpers.
What do you do when those people are your family?
Easier said than done (though recent events have made it a little easier).
Not impossible, look into cult deprogramming. My mother a few years back had a media diet of Steven Crowder and talking heads alike. She has very different views now. Her social life has improved, she dissects political news and generally became a more stable person.
Perhaps you can find inspiration from Daryl Davis, who convinced 200 Klansmen to give up their robes.
I had a conversation with my second grade teacher on Instagram the other day. I posted Matthew 25:35-40 on my story with the comment “I can’t believe so many Christians I know support a president and a government that would willingly and forcefully kick Jesus himself out of the country thousands of times.”
She replied saying that this verse doesn’t apply for the same reason that I don’t allow just anyone into my house: because there are people who shouldn’t be there. There’s just so many things wrong with her logic AND her premises that I barely knew where to start, and that’s part of the problem. Fascism works by sowing doubt in the fabric of credibility. All she really knows is that her idea of Jesus comforts her, and so finding comfort somewhere probably means she can find Jesus and righteousness there too. You can’t really teach someone to care because they probably already do care, but you have to teach them to see the things that are actually happening, to trust the real experts, and to see the connections between themselves and the people who need care.
In Luke, when Jesus says (again) to love thy neighbor literally the next question someone poses to him is “but who is my neighbor?” Jesus responds with the tale of the Good Samaritan. In this story there is a man, a traveler from a foreign land, who was robbed and beaten and left on the roadside, suffering and ignored by passing strangers (including a priest). The Good Samaritan feeds him, fixes him up, and puts him up at an inn.
There’s two laws… two. The first is to love God, the second is to “go and do likewise” as the Good Samaritan did. I’m a godless commie and I know this shit.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+10%3A25-37&version=NIV
It’s also worth noting that at the time, Samaritans were seen as an enemy. “To the Jews, a Samaritan was more revolting than a Gentile (pagan); Samaritans were half-breeds who defiled the true religion.”
So when it was written that a good Samaritan was an example of a neighbor, it was more impactful than the phrase implies today. Part of the point was to say that even those perceived as “enemies” are ordinary people that should be treated with the same dignity and care given to one’s own tribe.
A good Christian would let people stay in their house, though. If they were robbed, they would still have treasure in heaven.
More Christians faith is paper thin at best.
I would say that the initial problem here, is that people give a single shit what a 2000+ year old, bronze-age sex manual, has to say about literally fucking anything.
If they claim to care about it then it can be used to point out their hypocrisy.
Sure, but part of the problem then is that you have to convince them of that, and that’s even harder than arguing and using the Bible as at least part of your premise
I spend a good amount of energy trying to explain the merits of Marxism-Leninism and Leftism in general on Lemmy (and IRL, though that’s much trickier). Ultimately, you can’t make someone care. You can’t convince people of something they choose not to want to believe, either, no matter how much evidence you throw at them. Roderic Day wrote a great article titled Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing” that perfectly encapsulates this process. People license themselves to believe whatever it is that they believe benefits themselves, regardless of evidence or empathy.
What you can do, however, is explain the merits of that which you believe in, and this is far more effective with people already targeted by the current system. Those closest to the edge, those radicalized by their conditions but not yet organized or versed in theory, are the perfect people to talk to. The effort required to gain an ally in that sense is far less than someone who is convinced that the system is fine, but just needs a little tweaking. Building strength through organization helps legitimize your positions and expands the circle, so to speak, by moving the “line of radicalization” further. Person A, who believes the system is fine but needs tweaks, goes from comfortably mainstream into the new line of radicalization, one step away from working to supplant the system, when those who were radicalized near them organize.
Further still, as conditions deteriorate, more people are impacted and more people are radicalized. This is both good and bad, bad in the sense that more are affected by the evils in society to a greater degree, but with the good being further chance of organization.
Just my 2 cents as someone who has spoken with many different people about Marxism.
Thank you.
No problem!
You can stop using stupid shit like “cishet white” for starters. Statistically, most people who do not care will be cishet white. Those who care, will also mostly be cishet white. With this type of exclusionary discourse bordering on racism, no one will ever listen to you because from the start, you already sound like you have nothing important to say. There’s three types of people in the US: Slaves working 2 and 3 jobs to make ends meet, middle class being pit against the slaves by the third group, the capital. By using exclusionary discourse, assimilated from bougie fake activism, you’re promoting infighting within the classes that should be hunting the capital like animals, the French way!
Edit: your country has sacrificed countless children to never eschew the right to bear arms. Well, stop bitching online to make yourself feel good and use them.
By using exclusionary discourse, assimilated from bougie fake activism
This is a totally normal, relatable sentence
I’ve seen some leftist arguments that were denser than lead, this ain’t that. Let me rephrase for them, though:
Stop allowing social media fart sniffing contests control how you do activism. There’s mastodon, and then there’s real life.
Stop allowing social media fart sniffing contests control how you do activism
I’m onboard with this sentence. I’m sorry, but if you’re going to preface an argument on the premise of kneeling to another’s level, then actually commit to the kneel.
I used that term to show that they are privileged folks who likely won’t be directly targeted by the administration, at least at first.
Removed by mod
Ah yes, mob “justice” always works so well.
Nobody is advocating for cross burning. People need to rise against the first steps of a totalitarian government that only serves the oligarchy.
Do you want people to care or do you want to lecture people who don’t agree with you. People like to give lectures on politics, but no one listens to them. If you want people to care you have to care about them.
As someone who admittedly is guilty of “lecturing,” many do enjoy it and have DM’d me or replied thanking me for it. Different people respond better to different approaches, be they the walls of text I am frequently guilty of or shorter questions trying to get them to elaborate on their own understanding.
Actually, I don’t remember if I ever thanked you for your work; We don’t always agree on everything but your positions are thought-provoking, your delivery respectful, and your patience seemingly infinite. So, thank you. I wish there were more people like you on the left.
Thank you so much for the kind words! Genuinely. Many will slander me a troll or whatnot, but it’s words like yours and the others that say similar that keeps that patience going. I mean it.
Idk I listen to politics lectures all the time, most of which I don’t fully agree with, many I disagree with outright, listening to other takes, especially opposing ones helps me scrutinize my own reasoning and critically analyze what’s what.
It’s not really the lecturer’s fault he was lecturing, if he was right and so he should be lecturing others on truth. Much like any subject really.
This idea that all opinions are equal are how we ended up in a post-truth world.
Thought-terminating clichés of “everyone likes different things” or “people believe different things” are not just signs of a lazy intellect, they are the harbingers of our doom.
You can have beliefs that aren’t facts, in fact - you have to, but you can’t just believe whatever, you need to be able to justify it, and to do that you need to understand logic, you need to understand evidence, you need to understand the scientific method and how to reason.
There a big difference in seeking something out and someone walking up to you and talking at you.
Especially at work, where you can’t leave and should probably be focusing on the work.
That’s 100% true and a fault in OP’s attempt, but the broader question remains, if some people don’t seek it out, what do you do then?
Yeah, but what do you do when a good chunk of the population doesn’t go ‘seeking something out’, yet vote and influence the lives of those who do anyway?
Try making friends first, or at least understanding them. If you aren’t willing or capable of doing that you are just going to make things worse.
Huh? Did you respond to the wrong user?I’m not OP, I don’t go out talking at people at work.
All of my friends are already pretty much on the same page more or less, it’d be hard to be friends with someone who is against human rights or doesn’t care about such things as I’m a minority.
The question i posed in my comment was about a societal scale: what do you do to reach a disengaged electorate or an electorate that has no desire to know the truth and is not actively seeking it out whatsoever, instead believing things that re completely transparently false.
Because as it stands, the current strategy of content online or in traditional media simply ends up preaching to the choir, the lectures containing truth end up reaching only those who seek them out and as such already have an allegiance to the truth and likely at least to some extent agree with them, or see them as epistemologically well justified beliefs imperically and/or logically.
I personally rather obviously can’t make friends of like 50% of the population of a country for instance, so it’s not really a workable solution lol and I don’t think that’s what you meant.
So how do you show those people who believe transparently false things because it suits them the truth and teach them to want to seek out truth and want to believe the truth and to spot falsehoods and not be swayed by rhem, when those people have absolutely no interest in such things?
And if you can’t, what do you do then? Because these people will literally destroy a democratic society if given the chance.
Bingo. This is the fundamental disconnect I encounter on a daily basis. All anyone wants to do is lecture me about how they are right, and I am wrong if I think different than them. And if you don’t give into them they simply start insulting or shaming you, hoping they can emotionally abuse you into compliance with their beliefs. Or they just think you are evil and divide the world up into hyperbolic terms.
That isn’t how you learn or win people over to your side. All it does is promote ignorance & alienation, and that’s what we have an overabundance of in our current society.
I’m apparently old-fashioned/out of date, but I went to college to learn how to understand, assess, and communicate with other people… seems like that is no longer what people are taught or at least, no longer value it.
All anyone wants to do is lecture me about how they are right, and I am wrong if I think different than them
The only relevant question is - are you wrong?
Is your take actually valid? Based on sound imperical data? Is not fallacious? Does your reasoning stand up to scrutiny? Is it fact, or a belief? Is it a justified belief?
Ultimately you shouldn’t need to be coddled if you have any allegiance to the truth.
It’s one thing if a 3-year old gets 2+2 wrong. It’s another when it’s a 33 year old. Would you waste energy on that, or would you assume that the 33-year old doesn’t care enough to bother no matter what approach is used?
The unfortunate reality is that democracy as a vehicle for progress is a failure because not enough people have an allegiance to the truth, nor have the basic epistemological tools for determining what’s knowledge, what’s belief, what’s a hypothesis, what’s theory or what’s valid evidence or any idea of what the scientific method even is, or what an axiom is etc.
They favour their delusions (I don’t mean religion specifically) over truth.
Truth doesn’t feel good. People want to feel good.
Psychologically it’s not different than biology in the sense that people don’t want to work out and eat healthy… they want to be lazy and eat energy dense food.
Yes but like exercise, intellectual exercise feels good too. The question is why do some people not do it.
It’s less about valuing communication and more about the dopamine hit. Delivering that lecture and educating the simpletons feels really good.
Yep. Anger and egotism are proven my studies to basically be like taking a hit of cocaine. It gets people off.
Lemmy is my cocaine.
