I really stepped in it last night. My partner is livid with me for suggesting Stalin wasn’t the evil dictator he’s made out to be in the west. For a German who grew up with anti-communism and went to some very liberal universities for political science it was too much. They said something to the effect of “this feels exactly like if you said, oh Hitler wasn’t that bad, he was actually a good guy.” We’re in the midst of planning our wedding and they were suddenly at the point of doubting that they know who I am and if this is a relationship they want to maintain.
We have a hard time discussing politics as it is. We are still not so great at interpreting the nuances of way each other speaks, and our background knowledge is very different. So we have to figure out what we do from here.
I can’t come at this from the direction of “trying to convert them.” They already think I have gone into a conspiracy theory ridden and propaganda laden hole, and believe me, I ask myself the same thing every day. It really weighs heavily on me, as some of our close family members have fallen into conspiracy theory echo chambers.
We’ve decided we need to go back to basics and make sure our core values align, which I genuinely believe they do. They’re an anti-capitalist as well, although don’t have a strong idea of what to would be better, just that it shouldn’t be communism.
I’m not sure where to go after we sort out what our shared values are.
There’s a certain condescension I sense when it comes to the leftist sources I read, many on recommendation from GenZedong members. I’m often met with “leftists just make up all kinds of stuff to suit their narrative,” or “how do you know that’s a primary or reliable secondary source, it’s so easy to fake anything these days.” Meanwhile they go to Wikipedia and see that Stalin killed millions and signed a treaty with the Nazis, even as they understand that much of western capitalist media is propaganda as well. We can’t have any useful discussion on current events at the moment because we have vastly different knowledge of what’s happening, as well as entirely different analytical tools to pick it apart with.
They’re also terrified I’m going to say very extreme things in front of their family (privileged petite bourgeois liberals). I try to be careful but at the same time I won’t pretend to not be a communist. We have political discussions often and I’m not one to just sit those out. I’m sure my family would react poorly as well, but with the geographical distance to them it’s not as present an issue in our minds.
How do you all deal with this? How do you have these discussions and share these ideas with the more soc-dem or liberal minded people in your lives?
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That’s more or less what we need to do now. We do agree on those critical points, and those would be my deal breakers as well if I was actively dating.
I think the two primary cognitive dissonances here are
- when we met we were both liberals who had very similar worldviews even though we grew up in different, albeit both imperialist, countries. They see this as a huge change in a few short years (which it is), and wonder what “extremist” ideologies and historica narratives I will accept next.
- the anti-communist education runs so deep. To be fair, this has taken me a while to get past as well.
I don’t. My partner and I share our views. Her family is left-leaning; and my FIL is or used to be a communist. Coming from a semi-fascist family, let me tell you, it feels pretty neat being able to just be yourself like that. It makes going back to the folks and having to play pretend all the more obnoxious.
I don’t think I can give you any good advice because it’s just too easy to irresponsibly tell the online stranger to dump their partner even though they’re halfway into planning their wedding. I personally wouldn’t be able to repress myself like that or act insincerely throughout a life-long relationship, but I can’t say in good conscience that I’m certain about my judgement of your situation.
In any case, if you end up deciding to go on with your partner, I’d follow comrade @Navaryn@lemmygrad.ml’s advice on “laying low” to buy yourself credibility and not get immediatelly disregarded as a crazy, for your own long-term mental and social health. Also other comrades’ advice on talking about things on “historically neutral terms” so to speak.
Yeah, that is also a thing i should’ve said. It’s a skill in and of itself to be able to get the right points across while dancing around dangerous words.
In the right context, it’s entirely possible to convey messages such as “the last capitalist we hang will be the one who sold us the rope” or “as a leader stalin is unmatched in terms of right decisions” without entering “crazy” territory. Having a good sense of humor helps too, stuff that gets a chuckle is easy to remember.
But i will say this to anyone reading these answers: this comes with experience so get out and talk to people. Yeah maybe you will not get along with everybody but you’d be surprised how easy it is to meet people with similar ideas to yours or people that don’t care enough for it to be a point of conflict.
in years of having to disguise myself as a “moderate” to do IRL politics, i have learned some thinngs.
The most important is to pick your battles. Is it worth it to get on someone’s bad side just to defend Stalin? Who cares. Convincing that single person won’t make a difference. It’s tough, but you just have to suck up your pride and ignore the ignorance many people have on these subjects. You also have to understand that people who have been indoctrinated since birth are not… easy to convert. If you have been told all of your life that water boils at 100 degrees no matter what, you would just think i was crazy if i told you that the temperature at which it boils on top of mount everest is different. No matter how right i was. You can present sources and do all the theoretical work you want, the truth is that with the majority of people it will just not work. Save your energy for something more productive.
Besides, if you engage one, two, three, ten times… then you do become the caricature of the annoying leftist that has to always be “akchually” and that pulls out so many unknown facts that people think it’s just made up jargon.
But if you don’t and manage to keep the “functional and moderate member of society” facade up, during important moments you will be able to go ham because people have come to know you as a reasonable person.
When the question of Russia came up in my party (which is the youth wing of the main succdem party) i and a few closet-communist pals were the ones controlling the narrative because we could just talk basic geopolitics and people would believe us since we never came off as “extremist” by praising stalin in public (don’t get me wrong we hella praise stalin in private). Yes it was annoying having to listen to people talk about how evil red fash the USSR was or how china bad, but now we got all of those people to understand that NATO is at fault for all of this solely because we managed to never lose any credibility by avoiding pointless discussions.
btw, by “losing credibility” i mean “opposing the mainstream narrative and be labeled as a conspiracy theorist”.
It is a bit harder when it comes to people you really do care about. For me it was a mix if things. for example i try to get close to likeminded people, so i never come out as a ML but i do drop some hints about being leftist to “test” people i meet and see if they get it. This alone allows you to at least avoid MOST big issues. Another thing, as said above, is just your ability to swallow your pride. We still gotta live normal lives, there is no point in ruining relationships of friendships over politics. It can be taxing long term, but let me be real: the path we have chosen to follow is not easy, it has never been for anyone. Politics is a very important field of life, but the truth is that it is only one field.
Keep up the fight, but remember that no one expects you to be fighting 24/24. Politics are very important to me and i am sure for you too to a degree, but to most people it’s just not like that. In my opinion you should just try to asess how much they actually give a shit about hitler or stalin. because chances are that they don’t care nearly enough to have THAT jeopardize the relationship.
Why do you disguise yourself as a moderate in politics? Are you in a country where being a communist is forbidden?
It depends on in which context you’re organizing (e.g. are these petty-bourgeois people or workers?), but in my opinion, honesty is the best policy (with other workers at least). You’ll never destigmatize the word “communist” if you’re afraid to say it yourself. Also, with actual working people, you’d be surprised how many of them are desperate for a change that they’ll consider communism.
Being a communist isn’t illegal, there is an actual hammer and sickle communost party. The issue is that being open about being communist (when it comes to stuff like elections) is the best way to be sidelined as a lunatic and get 1% of the vote at most.
Imo it’s a better use of time to try and steer a major party a bit while conducting the real activity in the background