Rant by Anand Giridharadas about turning people away from the pro-democracy movement
Gosh your country is a mess. Is it still “plain popcorn” time or should I get the fancier caramel and peanut kind?
MAGA is imploding
lol… no it isn’t.
So make the same mistake the Union did after the civil war and don’t hold traitors accountable. That would just lead us to the mess we’re in now, fuck that.
I can’t stand magats, but if you find common ground then it’s a case of “the enemy of my enemy” is my friend. Not going to lie, it’s really, really hard to do. You don’t have to like them, you don’t have to be their friend, but kindly encourage them to betray their cult so the rest of us can steer the ship back on course when they go into complete disarray. Even simply telling them, “You are seeing you have been lied too” becomes a little ear wig . Yes, you’ll want to throw up a little bit in your mouth just talking to them, but every bit helps. And if they get mad and start magat’ing out, just walk way.
I think the more useful tactic is to undermine the right-wing propaganda machine. We’ve known Trump was a pedo for years. Why did Fox and all of them hide that information and cover for him? What else are they lying about?
Or just pile on. “Oh, this is where you draw the line? Not when they cut medicaid to millions? Not when they deported American citizens?”
Could go on but y’all already know the list…
No.
They’ve had 10 years of leftists explaining to them that Trump is a nazi and a child rapist. They always knew. They made their choice.
If they’ve had a genuine change of heart, I suppose that’s one thing. But most of them have not. They still believe all the same horrible shit they did before, they’ve just stopped liking Trump as much. And even if they HAVE had a change of heart, they need to atone for all the suffering they’ve caused before they can expect to be accepted on the left.
They still believe all the same horrible shit they did before, they’ve just stopped liking Trump as much.
That’s the bottom line. Anything they don’t care deeply about doesn’t matter. When it affects the personally or violates their deeply held beliefs, suddenly a moment of clarity. They have zero empathy.
yep. words are cheap, especially words from this crowd. If they want to show how they’ve changed, CHANGE. Become better people. Support your community, all of it, not just the white christian segment. Gather your cohort and make the world better, then come back and ask for forgiveness.
I just saw, probably on Lemmy The Far Right Contagion, offering the explanation that many of the people turning to far-right movements around the world don’t necessarily hold far-right beliefs, and often oppose far-right policies. Instead, they feel abandoned by the current system and will align with nearly any movement promising to dismantle it.
If another movement makes them feel heard and offers solutions to their problems, it’s very likely to be able to redirect that momentum. Assuming it’s a better movement (and it would be hard to do worse), that’s a win for humanity. We won’t get there by branding everyone who got sucked into a far-right movement as an enemy for life.
That’s not to suggest that any person is wrong to be angry at someone who voted to hurt them, but is holding on to that anger more important than a better future?
Why do people like this guy always put the onus for reconciliation on the victims? If someone voted against humanity for years, and treated me and mine like garbage, why is it up to me to extend the olive branch?
If these fucking dipshits decide to vote for non-Republicans, that’s great, but it has fuck all to do with me. I’m in no way responsible for luring them back to humanity one painful step at a time.
Yeah seriously. I want an apology and a promise.
they were still racist, selfish, stupid, hatemongers.
all that changed is that their pedo leader was a pedo leader
… they still don’t support minorities and marginalized communities. Why should they be welcomed with open arms?
Getting then way from the constant propaganda machine is a first step towards what may not be a full 360, but at least potentially realizing that the ones they’ve been trained to hate are just a scapegoat for those who have really been fucking them (and everyone else) over.
They don’t have empathy unless it specifically happens to them. They didn’t learn a lesson, they’re not capable of learning this kind of lesson.
someone else can offer that to disenfranchised MAGA, im just gonna be mean to them
So, when a racist, white nationalist becomes upset with his cult leader over his refusal to release the names of the baby brain-juice drinkers in Hollywood and Washington…we should open our arms to them?
Are they “on our team” now, despite still advocating for most of us to be lynched in the town square?
No.
If that cult leader was a factor in him being that racist and white nationalist, and if this is an actual opportunity to pull him away from that, then yes. If isolation from decent people perpetuates the echo chamber I’d rather not let that continue in the name of a grudge.
But if that person tries to hold on to those beliefs they can fuck right off.
Still, people can change and I’ll encourage it in the right direction.
I don’t believe that Trump is making anyone more racist. They always were. What they like about him, is that he validates those feelings. He says everything they’re already thinking, and they relate to that.
Most of those people feel isolated, because those feelings are not acceptable to the rest of us. That’s why they gravitate towards others that feel the same way. When it comes to Trump and their cult…they’ve finally found their people. They feel like they belong, with them.
If they’re feeling disillusioned right now, it isn’t because they feel any different. They haven’t changed. The only thing that might have changed, is they are realizing that Trump is fake as fuck, and has just been using them all along.
That doesn’t bring them any closer to “our side”. It just gives “us” an opportunity to drive a wedge between them and their cult leader. It weakens their movement…but it doesn’t make us allies.
There’s plenty of people beyond saving, that’s for sure: but I think people aren’t so immutable. I think people are being made more monstrous by the capitalist system we live in, and the people at the top who exemplify avarice as a path to success. I’m not going to be buddies with ex maga unless they’re really going the extra mile to make up for the damage they’ve done, but I hope at least some can be decent humans.
It depends what we mean by “not turning away”. Absolutely on board with telling people they can join, and look at our side and what we have to offer.
Absolutely opposed to “OK so lets extend an olive branch and start hating trans people, cheering on ICE and concentration camps so they feel at home”.
Anyone who wants to embrace that all people, are people and deserve respect, dignity and kindness, and that the government is supposed to be trying to help as many as possible… can become an ally and friend.
Absolutely opposed to “OK so lets extend an olive branch and start hating trans people, cheering on ICE and concentration camps so they feel at home”.
I’m quite certain no one meant this when they said “not turning away”, lol.
I mean you do hear it left and right among democratic politicians, strategists etc… blaming our losses on going too far in woke, or supporting trans too much. Like say Gavin Newsome who’s clearly trying for a 2028 presidential run, and his first step was starting his show, bringing on Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon etc… and looking for points of agreement, and the first one he chose was that “it’s very unfair for trans women to compete in sports”.
Exactly this. This should mean something like stopping rhetorical attacks on right wing followers and focusing in on leaders and ideas
And then extend that to “if you’ve been lied to on X maybe they also tricked you on Y”. Don’t give up Y to try to bring them in
I think the left would benefit more from being open to socialists rather than coddling fascists.
I would be way more sympathetic if these MAGA “defectors” gave a tiny shit about the little girls who got rapped, rather than than being disappointed their side lost this round.
I think the left would benefit more from being open to socialists rather than coddling fascists
For a lot of red states, the exceptions have been FDR and 08 Obama…
Progressive campaigns wins votes. It just also pisses off billionaires so the candidate has to choose between gaining votes directly and money to spend on ads no one even sees anymore.
Recently I remember something from the Democrats where the person was complaining that most of their funding was coming from the voter base and not from rich capitalists. Like, you’re getting money but not the correct, evil money and that’s bad?
The problem is more about what they’ll be expected to do, once they’re elected. If regular people are giving them money, they’ll be expected to do things that will help regular people. If it’s all coming from wealthy elites, then they’ll be expected to do things that will help the wealthy elites.
Rich people will typically just want you to stay out of their way, and do nothing. Regular people problems are often much more difficult to solve.
Making the lives of regular people better usually means making the lives of the wealthy “worse” by way of income redistribution. Guess who has the money to ensure they come out on top?
I put worse in quotations because functionally, your life isn’t much different if you have 8 digits in your bank account vs 9+. It’s still an obscene amount of money for one individual to have and likely will have zero impact on your quality of life.
There are defecters from the Trump cult, not the Republican party. They still would prefer people like me don’t exist and will work against me having civil rights. They still cheer when people who don’t look like them get tortured and killed, and will support that however they can.
I’m not going to talk to that kind of person, I just flat out refuse. More power to the people who can tolerate that, but I don’t know that the hate party is redeemable.
It’s not a nice thing to have to embrace, but it’s true. When Vera Papisova spent a year undercover dating right wing men, this was her takeaway, too. That part of the reason they get so radicalized is because rational people have a very hard time wanting to even try to see good things in them and socialize with them at all. Yet that isolation promotes exactly the radicalization we’d like to see less of in our society. Continually saying “no, fuck them” feels right but builds more and more echo chambers where these people are only talking to other highly toxic people in a spiral of enabling terrible thought-patterns.
It’s extremely valid to feel like “why would I waste time on these monsters?” because they are indeed monstrous. Yet, we have to have a growth mindset and believe people can change, and not just believe that, but give them opportunities to change. Continuing to isolate them in right wing communities where the only viewpoints they are exposed to continue to radicalize them is not working. When they say “the liberals gave me no choice but to turn to the right” what they actually mean is no liberals or leftists would take the time to talk them down from their own idiocy, so they continued to lean into it out of pure spite, not reason. They like to call people on the left “snowflakes” but these people are so fucking broken and hurt inside and so deeply just want to be accepted that they will chop off their own limbs in an attempt to somehow teach us a lesson, as long as we get hurt, too. Desire for acceptance is literally what drove them into the MAGA Cult. They are broken and hurt because we did not accept them, despite the fact that they are too stupid to see how their own behavior is why they are not accepted.
I know many people here think the solution is to go whole hog and crack down harder on this than we did on the South during reconstruction. Unpopular opinion around here, but I disagree. I think that will create more young conservative people, because what they will see is a wide swath of people being vilified and potentially put to death by the state for their political views. They won’t think “gosh those views were so dangerous they must be snuffed out” they will instead erroneously think “they must threaten the broken system that is hurting us to be snuffed out, therefore they must have had some positive ideas.” We don’t live in a system where people trust the decisions of government or of large groups in general. Putting them all to death (especially without trial) will just radicalize a whole generation of young people who will question why the things those people thought were so “dangerous.” That doesn’t mean there doesn’t need to be consequences for being a part of this, there absolutely has to be, but the penchant for retributive violence on the left is going to harm things more than it will help things, in my personal opinion. It’s like the US War on Terrorism. Did killing people indiscriminately win hearts and minds of the Iraqi people or did it radicalize a whole generation against the US? Because I am pretty damn sure it was the latter.
Thank you. Hatred, while understandable here, is not the answer. It’ll only push “defectors” to more extreme corners.
If you want more people to join progressive sides, you can’t ostracize them further. Show them that hatred doesn’t solve anything. Fighting hatred with hatred is pointless.
It’s also a distraction. The rich class wants the people to be divided. Being like “no you can never join our side” will do exactly that.
This actually sums up pretty nicely the rant that Anand has in this piece. Your war on terrorism analogy is absolutely perfect in this situation as well.
Cory Doctorow just published a piece MAGA crackup
… Like all successful political campaigns, Trumpism is a coalition. Coalitions form when groups of people set aside their disagreements and join together. Virtually every important political change is downstream of a coalition.
The easiest kind of coalition to form is an oppositional one, where groups agree on what they don’t want, without agreeing on what they do want. Think, for example, of the Andrea Dworkin wing of the feminist movement making common cause with Jerry Falwell to oppose pornography. Obviously, these people have a completely irreconcilable goals for what they want, but when it comes to porn, it’s easy for them to agree on what they don’t want.
That’s fine when you’re waging the campaign against something, but if you happen to win that campaign, you’re in trouble. That’s when the fight starts over who will get their way. That’s the moment when winning coalitions become bitterly divided
That’s fine when you’re waging the campaign against something, but if you happen to win that campaign, you’re in trouble. That’s when the fight starts over who will get their way. That’s the moment when winning coalitions become bitterly divided
This is a perfect summation of the Republican Party since at least the rise of Mitch McConnell. He was extremely, extremely effective at getting the GOP to coalesce against things, but had absolutely no plan on what to do when they won. Ok, the dog caught the car. Now what? That’s where they’ve pretty much been stuck on since. And since the only thing they’ve been conditioned to do is ratchet up the cruelty and hate that got them there, that’s all they’ve been doing since.
Well said, Humans are social creatures, everyone wants to feel accepted and like they matter in their community. When you aren’t getting that, you get extremism.
Like seriously, I despise the right, especially the people using it to influence and gain power knowing they dont believe their own bullshit they’re spewing. But we have to extend these people olive branches and try meet them somewhere or they will just go farther into their echo chambers. I’ve had a hard time putting that into words here on lemmy and its been frustrating bcz the sentiment around here is ‘the only good nazi isna dead nazi’, and then every MAGA person is lumped in that group (and for the record anybody reading this, I agree with the sentiment). But these MAGA followers aren’t the nazis, the leaders are, and the people in government. These are people who have been duped just like the rest of us. And we’ve all somehow bought it hook line and sink. This isn’t just fascism, its class warfare, and the billionaires are winning right now all around the world.
