They’ll talk for half an hour about university reform but the moment you ask “who owns the coal mines” or “where does the lithium come from” they say they haven’t thought about it then they get mad at me when I say the Nordic model is fascist

I can bait the ADHD ones into reading theory by simply using enticing vocab words but idk how to deal with everyone else

  • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    34·
    18 days ago

    Everyone involved needs to read more theory. My basic rule of thumb is that if you can’t explain a concept in a way a small child can understand, you don’t understand that concept. The other factor is that people have to be emotionally ready to engage with concepts. A huge problem with Internet Communists is that we tend to make dogmatic statements which don’t actually educate. Do not state that the Nordic model is fascist, instead explain the things that make it fascist and let them come to the conclusion that it’s fascist.

    • Damarcusart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      7·
      17 days ago

      This is absolutely the way to educate. Don’t tell them things, help guide them to conclusions, encourage them to think about and discuss the topic with you, give them information and ask Socratic questions about their understanding of things, always make it clear that these ideas are not a part of their personal identity, otherwise they’ll just feel attacked and refuse to engage.

      And it can take years of patience before someone really starts examining things closely of their own volition, you can’t force someone to change their mind, you can only help them along the way.

    • Ekranoplane [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      1·
      17 days ago

      The Socratic method takes multiple hours. I’m complaining about random little conversations with strangers in a gym or bar or whatever. Young people almost always self describe as socialists, but are really social democrats or whatever. I want to convince them to read theory in like a 5 minute conversation. So if I’m at the climbing gym and can tell the other person is a certain type of engineer tech bro, all I have to do is say lumpenproletariat or dialectic or something and they’ll then read whatever essay I send them. That does only work on very specific types of people, most people get turned off socialism forever if you do that.