These “people” are so off-the-wall genocidal that even calling them liberals feels somehow misleading. I know that liberalism is the moderate wing of fascism, but it feels as though there is no moderate wing left. I know this is not so much a departure from there normal mode of thinking as a particularly ugly contextual manifestation of the white supremacy they hold so dear. But my God, things are rapidly getting out of hand.
Best case scenario, I see them frame the conflict in Palestine as a conflict between religious extremists. How far up your own ass do you have to be to make such a claim? Pushing back on this idea, insisting instead that the operative identities here are colonizer and colonized, oppressor and oppressed, and that the conflict will only end when the oppression ends, someone was more than happy to call me a “terrorist sympathizer” (lol) and told me that I should be gassed.
“Israel’s right to exist” is a thinly veiled dogwhistle for genocide apologia. “Terrorist” is functionally a racial slur, now more than ever. “It’s a complex situation” is a lazy yet effective strategy for muddying the waters long enough for their Final Solution to be enacted yet again. Shaking liberals awake causes them to lash out violently and retreat into the dark crevices of racism and profound ignorance. It feels so hopeless.
I feel like I am in some kind of nightmare, where all of these people I previously thought could be reached have gone fully mask off and revealed themselves to be monsters with scarcely a soul to share. They are subhuman, blood-sucking fiends who need to be eradicated like one might eradicate cancer.
The worst thing, as I’ve already revealed, is that it makes me into the worse fucking person imaginable. I genuinely wish all these people would be shot. I find myself regularly thinking that the population needs to be culled, decimated until these psychopaths no longer disgust me with their breathing. Surely, if we just get rid of the bad people, everything will improve! Now look who’s Hitler.
I just don’t know what to do anymore.
It’s just settler hegemony. They didn’t enter a vacuum sealed logic chamber one day and come out bloodthirsty freaks. Most of them just internalize and repeat whatever they think most of the people around them believe and say to prevent being alienated. The societies that they live in are colonial societies built on stolen land, and those societies have a interest in perpetuating the cycle of colonial extraction. As long as liberals don’t have to see the bloodletting, it’s easy for them to believe whatever allows them to go about their day not thinking about the fact that they live on the death star. When they can’t ignore it, the simplest solution for them cope with cognitive dissonance is to adopt whatever hastily cobbled together pretext is handed to them that justifies the imperial bloodletting – even makes it noble. That lets them go about their day with their worldview intact, because the alternative would be extremely disruptive to their sense of identity and community.
When you try to persuade libs about this stuff, you’re not just trying to convince them of a set of facts: you’re implicitly telling them that their entire society is evil, and that they should be traitors to the interests of that society. Whether it’s productive to try to personally convince individual Euro-Americans liberals about that is a question I can’t answer for you. When you get frustrated about why it’s so difficult to get these people to accept an obvious truth and how quickly, easily, and desperately they’ll cling to a lie, consider true size of the pill they’d have to swallow in order to accept what you’re saying.
Step 1: Take your Palestine flag with you
Step 2: Upon seeing a lib, make sure the wind carries it to their face
Step 3: Enjoy them being annoyed at you
If you’re trying to convince a person, you should first assess the situation. Ask yourself this - “is this person willing to listen to you?”. If so - you probably should, though in a careful and controlled manner. If not - don’t bombard them with facts and history, maybe you should try developing the required conditions, mainly - they must be made responsive, they must want to listen to you. Also - some people won’t ever listen to you, for example when they have a material interest in this or that thing. I would not even try arguing with the bourgeoisie - they clearly have a material interest in capitalism and its preservation.
Perhaps you should try asking questions. When they give you typical “dumb liberal” answers - challenge them by creating a logical contradiction (“if that is really so, then why didn’t X happen?”), which will make them think. That means you should be bulletproof when it comes to knowledge of theory and history. Dig deeper until you hit the root cause of their ignorance, and then explain to them the real reasons behind what is currently happening.
Convincing takes time. Think twice before committing time to this task - there may be better things to spend it on, especially given the fact that most libs won’t be receptive to new ideas straight away, that may only happen when the material conditions around them worsen so much that they would not accept the status quo anymore.
100%. It’s that or give up, right? Any other option requires a lot more people on our side, which means we’re back to talking to them.
The real question is where your communication efforts are best spent.
These people are ignorants, their world understanding comes from mainstream media and the first article that shows up in google. So while it is worth talking to them to sow some seeds of critical thinking, it is not worth arguing with them.
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I’ve been chatting with friends about this same issue, and here’s what we have observed… Many people wanted to “choose sides”. They did, and now they can’t discuss anything. I believe that is the wrong approach. Because when you choose sides, you choose the starting point, and then you can point to a single horrible event that happened the other day, or fifty years ago, or whenever, and then everything after that is justified because it’s “revenge” or “justice” or “they deserved it”. And then you either end up justifying terrorism or genocide.
So it’s hard to reach people on this issue, but if there is a way, I think it’s by actively reframing things. “What is your short-term goal? Do you want to stop the killing? How can we stop people from dying?” By focusing on saving lives, we can sometimes force people to confront the basic problem that their current stance advocates mass murder. Most of the time, you can’t reach people, at least not now. But sometimes you can, and even if you fail to make progress right now, sometimes the words you say can give people a hint in the future of how they, too, can act like a decent human being.
I believe it’s not the best issue to start with from a purely tactical perspective. People will go to great lengths to avoid being cast as if they’re on the side of evil.
No its not worth talking to libs about Palestine. Or anything really. If they want to learn, great but the vast majority don’t.
