If someone is very opinionated after you said your point, do you keep at it, or do you walk away?
IRL? Sometimes I can get very passionate. One time my friend was egging me on to talk about Xinjiang because apparently he’d rather ruin a friendship than enjoy a trip to the city. Another time I spent at least half an hour on Discord trying to tell a friend China isn’t literally Satan and later learned he still thought poorly of me because of that a year later.
Online, I will give a genuine response once or maybe twice. Usually they’re unreceptive so I stop responding after that.
I rarely “engage” in “discussions” with anti-communists online, I usually just insult them in Danish
Me too (but in German instead of Danish)
Ich spreche ein bißchen Deutsch
Cool, desværre taler jeg ikke dansk og måtte oversætte det med DeepL.
I don’t bother. Our time is better spent figuring out legal ways to take as much money away from them as possible, not “engaging” in “discourse” with them. 🙄💀
I prefer an exploratory conversation to any “argument”. And if they are receptive to exploring an idea I will continue. If they are arrogant and not interested in dialogue then I will let them know they are being unconstructive and will leave it at that.
Sometimes I get heated although I am learning to be more dispassionate when talking to liberals You have to save energy. Sometimes you will run into a point with certain people where they are so convinced already of their stance that it’s pointless ex they say Ukraine doesn’t have a Nazi problem and Russia is evil.
At that point you’re not going anywhere.
At that point I like to drill into the uncomfortable logistics of their maximalist opinions (are Russian people themselves evil? Why? How about their kids?) but yeah, it usually goes nowhere good
Yeah. I actually would refrain from doing that with people you care about, too. Just not worth it. Marxists need friends and family too and being a Marxist in the west is very lonely. But yeah if it’s someone you don’t like or they’re a stranger and you’ve got an audience sometimes it’s game on lol.
If it can be a friendly exchange of ideas, and their position is based on something more than emotion or fear, then sure.
Otherwise it’s the “playing chess with a chicken” problem!
Depends on the subject and my mood. I generally like persuading and arguing though, a lifetime of experience has created a little diseased segment of my brain that’s always itching for a fight
Depends on how they behave and how close I am with them. I wouldn’t argue with a stranger who only argues in bad faith but I would argue with a friend or acquaintance who has the heart in the “left” place but believes bullshit about Stalin, China etc…
Basically it’s dependent on the situation and you have to figure out if you gain something from it (read: further our cause by fighting missinformation).
Always remember that we don’t need an entire country of MLs who have read every peace of theory ever conceived but rather a well educated spear tip and the popular support of the masses. Fighting capitalist propaganda can go a long way to achieve that. Even if you can’t change their opinion you might be able to plant seeds in their head that sprout later or at the very least show them that we aren’t bloodthirsty monsters or naive idiots but follow well thought out arguments and observations out of empathy for others and to stop as much human suffering as possible.
On the internet? Whenever I can, but that’s because I enjoy discussions and developing mutual knowledge, though I usually focus more on the people in the sidelines when the other person is going from “opinionated” to “asshole.”
In real life? Only if I’m sure it is not going to be harmful to my physical or mental health and if I care enough about what that person thinks already. Though I’m really good at getting people really angry at me by accident, so maybe don’t be like me.
