One of my oldest friends is a borderline anarcho syndicalist, but is reluctant to even consider a total rejection of capitalism because the alternative is something his entire world has convinced him is an equivalent immoral totalitarianism that is just another set of rich wankers enslaving people.
Anyway. I recently let him know that after Gaza, I consider the entire US state to be a bunch of psychopathic anti-humans, and that I think we have always been the bad guys, and the Soviets had the right idea, and their collapse was an epic tragedy for humanity.
He definitely was not receptive.
Now I think I have been dropping counter propaganda into our Signal chat too frequently, and I got some pushback from him after the election. Not sure what to make of it. Kinda worried I might have strained our friendship. He has firmly stated he is not interested in my Commie takes at all.
Gonna try to back off and chill out. But now I am kinda paranoid. Like, the US really has tried to ruin the lives of anyone who tries to have anything to do with Communism. What if the next four years starts some kinda new Red Scare? There’s no way my friend will risk getting caught up in that, just to humor my ideological journey.
We both have kids to worry about. Both of us got raised in right winger families. His traditional US nationalists. Mine Evangelicals.
It’s gonna be tough if I don’t get to talk to one of my best friends about materialism and anti-imperialism.
I think it’s an unforced error to try to relitigate the Soviet Union with people, even if they bring it up, though it seems your friend didn’t. I think it’s better to be forward facing and the only time you really need to dwell on these sorts of litigations is if you’re trying to figure out specific tactics, some historical group had a good solution, and your buddy is like “isn’t that what evil people do?” In an interpersonal relationship and not an org, that will rarely come up.
The point of attack should be liberal philosophy, which seems to be a prominent phantasm in this person’s mind and is very commonly what people get hung up on, and it’s something that cannot be ignored. It’s liberal philosophy that underpins all the justifications for the current world order, so if you want him to radically cut against that, it’s more productive to argue, say, utilitarianism being the more rational framework compared to bourgeois natural rights that allow people to pretend it’s an a priori moral law that they can buy up all the housing and then profit off of desperation.
Lastly, if you see they’re in an anarchist direction, support that instead of trying to make them precisely what you are. From your description, it seems the most likely path to success in that department (if they ever move at all) will be from becoming an anarchist first and then learning about other forms of leftism. Or just let them do their thing and be an anarchist, since it’s not like it’s a divide that is terribly important when we are short a revolution.
you could try showing how much more equal USSR was compared to even the social democratic Europe.
it wasn’t replacing rich with another, sure, high ranking CPSU members had additional privileges like larger apartments or access to imported goods but we now have capitalists owning $100m yachts. Its not comparable.
Taking away the excessive material comfort of a handful of posh people is literally the same as keeping most of the population desperately poor and building a police state to keep it that way.
Anarchists are cool, I can’t say that enough. But just as we commies have patsocs infiltrating our ranks, so also are there are fair amount of self described anarchists who are basically radlibs, read none of the theory, and do none of the praxis. Anarchists that are OK with Amerikan foreign policy aren’t anarchists, they don’t hang out with other active anarchist groups, and they wouldn’t get too far in the community.
I’m sorry, but your friend is hopelessly liberal. If they have some material comfort generated by the Amerikan empire, it’ll be hard to change their mind until they personally are faced with difficulty caused by being part of a marginalised social class.
A powerful way to get people to be receptive is to get them to like you and consider you a font of wisdom. This does not require pushing them, just being available and usually correct and a person they enjoy spending time with. I would recommend honoring their wishes and reading more so that you’re ready when questions do come down the pipeline.
Also you don’t need to convince them all by yourself as a first step. You could try to get them involved in events they would find worthwhile instead and let the radicalization happen socially. If they are borderline anarcho-syndicalist then maybe they’d want to support a picket line, for example. Maybe there are people looking for help on projects your friend would find interesting.
