she said she had to deradicalize herself a bit from this site because she was having trouble interacting with normal people and not sounding like she was unhinged

Im doing the opposite. I’m sick of being hinged. Im blowing my hinges way off and telling my coworkers they’re possessed by Hitler

The first thing you can tell people is to just read his website: https://www.zohranfornyc.com/platform. I was talking to someone recently, and we were talking about grocery stores and how in many parts of the country there are like 3, and one of the three is trash. It’s almost like they keep that one around because it needs to exist for there to not be a “monopoly” on groceries. Which led to the person I’m talking to telling me about all the construction companies getting consolidated across the region (he was a former construction worker).

I think it was Richard Wolf that I first heard this from, but eventually I said something to the effect of: People always say that capitalism thrives on competition. Competition drives innovation; innovation increases productivity; increased productivity means greater abundance for all of us. But when two people compete, what usually is the outcome? Someone has to win, and someone has to lose. Capitalism breeds winners and losers, and everyone likes to win, and no one likes to lose. What do winners do when they’re winning? They keep trying to win. The way you do that is by buying out the competition; that way they never really have to compete, and so they never have to lose. So instead of innovation, you just get fat and bloated companies that have no reason to do anything new or innovative.

In my town, through subsidies the federal government provided, they were able to provide me and my family with a considerable amount of produce, eggs, and dairy 2x a month for 5 months for only $350. That’s gone now, and I know several older people, as well as families living on limited income, who really benefited from that program. Local farmers benefited as well, because the town sourced all its food from those local farmers.

All these “government-run grocery stores” do is precisely what my town’s CSA program did: deliver people food at a very low cost. You could imagine a situation where these government-run grocery stores set the baseline for other local chains and ensure that people in areas that are under-serviced by the private grocery chains have access to food in their area. There is no way to “buyout” a government-run grocery store; the only way you can get close to a buyout is by forcing the government to close them. That’s what happened to our CSA. It was thriving when the funding was pulled.

Occasionally you have to dance around the subject; it’s not fun but you have to get your foot in the door somehow.

yeah the way we talk to each other here shouldn’t be how we talk to the broader working class. moving the masses takes a lot of patience and meeting people where they’re at, making them feel heard and not dismissed, and easing them further along by at once finding points of agreement but also encouraging them to go further with their critique of the system.

EDIT: also our private convos with people in our lives trying to change their minds separate from a larger org recruitment strategy or concrete organizing ask only has so much value, don’t drive yourself crazy trying to shift every single persons thinking. like it can have some light value and plant some meaningful seeds, but just keep some perspective.

Here’s one bit of rhetoric folks might find useful.

What is more important, people having a place to live, food to eat, etc or the profits of the wealthy? Zohran wants to try some new ideas that boil down to using power to help the working class in real material ways. And the panic of the wealthy and powerful very clearly shows this is a serious threat to their dominance of society.

The idea is to use this moment to empower class consciousness in contrast to liberalism.

e: This is also useful to help libs understand the alignment of capital in relation to this moment:

“I’m not a fan of Cuomo one way or the other," the president said. “But if it’s gonna be between a bad Democrat and a communist, I’m gonna pick the bad Democrat all the time, to be honest with you.”

I think “deradicalizing” is absolutely the wrong answer unless you are in danger of being beaten or shot. In terms of simply talking to people, it is good to stand for what is true even if it is far removed from what they believe, it’s just a matter of communicating it competently (and it actually being true rather than just moralizing bullshit, which is where “wall” discourse comes from).

I have had lengthy debates, for example, with an educated professional who said that they had never even heard of the idea of landlordism not being a real job, much less considered the idea, until I said it to them. I nonetheless was able to persuade them that it was true and build credibility over the course of a few discussions.

I myself struggle with the incredibly simple comment “Zohran wants to do socialism”. Because while the obvious and not incorrect response is to just outline what he wants to do and how that obviously is not socialism, just practical actions that help people. But there is a part of me that feels that by sticking to that, it leaves the potential to interpret, by silence, that socialism is still “bad”. So I am thinking about adding in there “socialism is a fundamental change in how people work and who owns what, and that is well beyond what a mayor can do”, to indicate that I don’t think socialism is bad even if it was something that was in a mayor’s power to implement.

Not really the point of the post but I genuinely think that if you (royal), as a leftist, have a problem with Zohran you are missing the forest for the trees. Dude’s running arguably what is the most successful left-wing campaign the US has had in awhile and while his opponent is generating AI slop to use as attack ads, he’s going out and connecting with real working class voters at the gay club, at the airport, at the park, so on and so forth. I said it before and I’ll say it again, not supporting him is really stupid as an American leftist when you look at how his mayoral victory in the largest city in the country may shape national politics.

I’ve said before that electoralism has it’s uses, including spreading the word.

More seriously, electoralism can be a gateway for actual organizing, and there is use to running doomed campaigns. From and talking about why third party candidates have uses

that workers’ candidates are nominated everywhere in opposition to bourgeois-democratic candidates. As far as possible they should be League members and their election should be pursued by all possible means. Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers’ candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled.

EDIT: @FunkyStuff@hexbear.net said it best:

IMO tactically participating in elections to further the socialist position, without necessarily staking your movement on their outcome, is not electoralism, it’s just basic Marxist Leninist strategy.

I said ‘electoralism’ when I meant ‘tactically participate in elections’. A good reminder to myself that word definitions matter.

Oh, more American defaultism

“23 Things” is pretty good. I picked it off a library feature shelf a few years before I became an avowed socialist.

Chang kept saying “but I’m still a capitalist, I still think it’s the best system” and I couldn’t help but think “why?”.

Any advice for any of the common criticisms you see against socialism and how to speak against them as a normie?

It’s tough because I always have to stop myself from using jargon or going into tangents on history.

I was kind of hoping the counter propaganda community would help with that but it hasn’t been used a lot.

10000% agree and good ass post.

People may quibble with this but depending on where you live I think it’s also worth positioning yourself as being pro-Z but wary of the big D.

Ultimately we all have to accept how short Zohran may come up despite the optimism and momentum. To me, the biggest reason for that has to do with the historical hegemony of the Democratic Party in NY and their general antagonism to this very popular candidate. I don’t think his agenda is overly ambitious, nor should it be, but I think there will be a lot of rat fucking from his ostensible allies.

If you can’t change their mind about socialism, it may be worth laying the ground work for the argument to be had later that ultimately it was the party that held him back.

I am not suggesting you set up excuses in advance. It’s more about demonstrating that you can be a socialist AND be wary of the Democratic Party.

It’s not gonna be an easy needle to thread, but for any shortcoming in his admin, socialism will be blamed, not the party.

I think it’s worth pushing back on that now so we don’t look like the blind leading the blind if it/when it comes to that.

Vote for Z and vote PSL down ballot!

everyone i talk to is already woke (in the original sense of the word) to some degree. Since i’m not really able to shut up about it, as i have severe autism and basically can’t. People tend to either agree to some extent or not want to interact with me. Honestly though if you are using a term like social fascism in the prescense of the general public and outside of a theory specific context you are just ignorant of revolutionary theory. Building class consciousness needs to be a gradual process. Though, I guess in general being against electoralism is also ignoring revolutionary theory anyway so… Electoralism as far as i know has been pretty consistnetly been seen as a good way to build a base of support for a socialist movement to get the ball rolling.

No no use this to get them to go to an action or read a book with you

My thought is - he identifies himself as a demsoc, and is a member of DSA - a big tent organization that includes many strains of socialism, from anarchists to trots to socdems.

But his policies are definitely not “socialist” - he isn’t able to reorganize the economy in that broad sense with the powers of mayor. However, just look at his policies, and consider that if someone offered policies that will explicitly help you out with your most dire issues (your rent, your groceries, perhaps more local issues), don’t be afraid because they might call themselves a socialist. It means, at worst, that they just want to improve your life somewhat.

I think people understand very well that mainstream politicians on both sides of the aisle are beholden to the billionaires, and hopefully they begin make the association that socialists are the outsider group that is not.