I made the title sound like a joke, so feel free to laugh, but it’s actually serious and very personal. The question how to deal with conservative family members comes up a lot around the holidays. My case seems like a first-world problem in comparison. I mean, we share the same opinion for almost every immediate real world political issue that comes up.

The thing is, my family dosn’t really talk about feelings or express affection verbally (like, not ever!) and it’s a whole thing. But at least connecting over shared politics used to be easy and feel safe with him. It was kind of our thing and that safe space was important for us! Now it kind of doesn’t feel as safe anymore? We both feel passionate about things and discussions tend to get dragged out and emotionally exhausting. I don’t want that this year.

I love him and I’m incredibly proud of him. He’s super smart and he’s doing a lot of great work in his org.

But he also:

• quotes Trotzky, which makes me cringe

• and he’s sort of a tailist about being anti-parties, pro mass movements (even though he is in a party, but he wants parties to support councils and hand over power to them after revolution, I’m not sure I understand correctly).

• Opposition to “stalinist parties” (as if any party defined itself as stalinist) is really important to him, same with bureaucracy and I’m not even sure what that even means.

• He’s says he’s anti-imperialist (about NATO, Palestine, etc.), but doesn’t want to hear any good word about China or the Soviet-Union. I think our duty in the West is to counter NATO propaganda about China and fight our imperialists at home.

• And he thinks Russia is at least as much to blame for the war in Ukraine as the US, or more cause “they send troops first and have the same imperialist interests”. I disagree… (he’s still against the military buildup in the EU though).

• He thinks China is “state-capitalist” and every bit as imperialist as the US, because they export capital (with this, he refers to Lenins definition of imperialism, though he dosn’t like the terms “finance capital” or “monopoly capital”) and do “land grabbing” in Africa. To me, it’s plain ridiculous to compare that to the US empire, but I guess he’s talking about what he thinks China might become in the future?

I’m not a perfect marxist-leninist and I don’t have perfect arguments for all of those points. Or I struggle to put them into words. Now maybe the answer is easy: just connect over something else. But what, how and do I really need to avoid talking politics? It seems silly, since, being both Marxist, we agree on a lot.

It looks similar to the whole problem about splits in marxists orgs, but on an individual scale. But it’s actually more. I definitely wouldn’t feel as deeply about it, if it were anyone else. He already randomly cut me nearly completely out of his live for a while, years ago, when he had a terrible depressive episode and completely retreated and I couldn’t get through to him at all. Thankfully, he’s back on top with medication, therapy and a better social circle (part of what helped him is to meet cool people in his org, where he became trotzkyist). But I’m kind of still traumatized from how sudden the break was and how long it took. Also, we both probably have rejection sensitivity…

So maybe, I should work on connecting over other topics than politics, learn more about theory, be honest about when I’m not sure or don’t know something and try to talk feelings more.

What do you think? Anyone ever had something similar going on? Any good tips on how to talk about those political topics or on how to bridge a years old emotional gap?