You are not going to change his mind with one conversation. At best you can plant seeds and teach him something new or correct some misunderstanding he has of marxism (which sounds like he has alot of)

My frustrations are with people who have no idea what’s going on and feel proud about not wanting to find out.

This has been my struggle for a while. I’m pretty convinced that the principle issue of America/the west is not that there are “dumb people” that support Trump and right wing policies though they contradict with their class interest, it’s the people who are apathetic and are only able to think about what’s immediately in front of them (I need more money, I need this treat etc.) and disconnect everything else going on, such as when people are wrongfully detained they assume that it would never happen to them.

I’ve also found that when prodded, these people will not want to learn or get involved because it will make them depressed (they also say “I’m not interested” as if it’s some hobby), but also they have a discontent for their current lifestyle anyways. There are infinite excuses they will make up on why not to learn or get involved.

Have to hand it to her for having consistently bad takes. Makes it really easy to hate her

Not sure if this counts as right wing, but I sympathize with some of Dostoevsky’s philosophy. If we look at how fascism triumphed over socialism, there was an irrational and emotional component to it that drew people in, which in some ways socialism fails to do because it’s rooted in objectiveness. And I believe Dostoevsky touches on this in his works where he has characters that are disillusioned with society but also disillusioned with the revolutionary movement, because it all boils down to objectiveness. I believe he is a reactionary, but also in real life he was part of revolutionary movements so he has real lived experience of what it’s like to try to change society, which I find interesting.

That being said I do think socialism can have a subjective appeal to the masses, in that it aims to ensure prosperity and liberation for all.

Maybe I’m biased but you can even see the difference in cultures between predominantly Catholic countries vs Protestant countries. The former seems to have alot more distinctiveness and (not very, but slightly more) collectiveness

I don’t know if this is a cultural US liberal thing of thinking oneself too unique for a movement

It’s mostly this. We are brought up with individualist propaganda and great man theory bullshit to explain how everything works in our society. Then you get people who feel alienated at the mention of a “society” or “community” cause they think they’re special snowflakes that don’t fit in with everyone else, when our culture is designed that way.

We need to organize better. There is a lack of militant groups that aren’t just straight up fascists.

How to build up an organization, idk, that is the hard part. I feel like the most compelling thing you can ask someone is what would they do if shit really went down? Police won’t protect you. Your company won’t protect you. Your friend group or family is probably too small or weak.

Maybe its possible to sway left wing groups to be more militant and armed?

At least shit really hasn’t hit the fan yet that we can still organize.

Inshallah comrade

Bernie and AOC have demonstrated that they will compromise on their “principles” ( if you even consider them that) to fallback to the Democratic party line. Putting our support in them is not a way to move their supporters to the left, but for them to move leftists to the right.

I think AOC is just a careerist, and Bernie is genuine, but functionally they are the same. I think of it similar to the SPD in Germany during the late 1910s and how it compromised with the bourgeois which killed any real revolution from happening.

Bernie wants billionaires to “pay their fair share” and then what? Is that really the root of the problem? They start paying more taxes and everything becomes fine for us?

I think in order to move people further left, we have to break their trust in AOC in Bernie. They have to see that there is no politician out there that actually is fighting for their interests, and their salvation lies in their own hands and they must organize.

Edit: oops I meant to reply to your other comment

I mean with the defunding of USAID maybe? China giving an alternative to the IMF that allows countries to take loans to develop themselves in a more flexible way. It seems more promising than it ever has for the third world.

I think the working class in the west and eu is still too disorganized for a revolution. I believe the material conditions are there, but the class conscious and organizational structure to guide the working class are not, for various reasons.

100% agree that education focuses way too much on test scores. I went through alot of college realizing that “I dont have to actually learn this stuff, I just have to know what questions will be asked on the test and have good answers for those”. When you approach it that way as a student, you dont actually go through the process of really learning the material and cultivating your mind. After spending alot of time out of college and reading alot more, I realize that true education is having the space to acquire knowledge and wrestle around with it until you really understand it, and socializing with others about the material. You kind of do this when studying for tests, which is why I guess tests have been around for so long. In my time though there was the internet, which was just kind of like an extended library that was easier to search, and I realize that it saved me the hassle of needing to socialize with people about the material, which I think is pretty important when learning. LLM’s are probably going to result in worse outcomes, though maybe test scores will remain the same.

I had a friend in college who I thought was very intelligent, because he would basically take every assignment or exam and distill it down to what needed to be done to fit in with the grading system. I realize now just how harmful that approach is to truly educating yourself, yet it seemed right at the time because that is how the education system is designed (and it relates to capitalism because people want to use education to get a job and to get a good job you need good grades etc.)

It’s also pretty telling whenever I ask someone if they ever studied for a test and forgot all the material on the subject right after. That is contradictory to the whole purpose of education.

Wartime revolutionary action against one’s own government indubitably means, not only desiring its defeat, but really facilitating such a defeat.

banger quote. So he’s calling out the people who say they are against the war, but take no action that would impede the government from waging the war.

The war cannot but evoke among the masses the most turbulent sentiments, which upset the usual sluggish state of mass mentality. Revolutionary tactics are impossible if they are not adjusted to these new turbulent sentiments.

I think this is important when analyzing our own modern day situations, and not just taking what Lenin lists out here and applying it willy-nilly. It is my belief that we do not need to gain the support of the masses before performing an action because if we can understand the “turbulent sentiments” correctly, then we can come to a conclusion of what the correct action is. By performing the correct action we gain support of the masses. I think of it kinda like the whole UnitedHealthcare CEO situation, but the killer was not organized and only arrived at a correct action by chance.

Those who stand for the “neither-victory-nor-defeat” slogan are in fact on the side of the bourgeoisie and the opportunists, for they do not believe in the possibility of inter national revolutionary action by the working class against their own governments,

This is a nice way of framing it. In the end our goal is the revolution and everything we do is to achieve that end.

edit: I dunno how you are going about selecting texts, but could I submit a vote for Theses on the National and Colonial Questions

This is actually the first time I’ve seen the original

Yea the vision is very unclear to me, at least what they’ve announced publicly. I’ve seen people say the goal is achieving AGI but I’m not sure what that even means.

From internal docs leak it seems that the company is totally capitalist brained and it doesn’t have a clear definition of AGI either.

According to leaked documents obtained by The Information, the two companies came to agree in 2023 that AGI will be achieved once OpenAI has developed an AI system that can generate at least $100 billion in profits.

https://gizmodo.com/leaked-documents-show-openai-has-a-very-clear-definition-of-agi-2000543339

Again this is also unclear. How is it going to generate profits?

If it’s supposed to replace Google search, one avenue I can see is trying to incorporate ads into the LLM answers, which just degrades their product, but I suppose if they hit a mass market then they can create a sort of walled Garden that keeps people on it.

Another way is that it will totally replace workers. I don’t think this is possible and is AI idealism.

The other way is you make this a product that increases productivity. In that case you can replace workers because it makes the average worker more productive and then a company can do more with less.

But I’m just speculating, I think any of these can be totally wrong.

I wish that OpenAI and their ilk would die already so I could begin to make sense of the world

Ignoring the incoming climate catastrophe, I think the only way for AI to die is for something else new and shiny to come in that VC’s then stop throwing their money into AI buzzword bullshit startup and into that new industry. I think all these VC’s think the same way and want the next “internet”. It’s also why I think so much money was thrown into crypto as even though it was bs, it had a next big thing kinda vibe.

I’m hoping it doesn’t even get to that point and we can have some kinda revolution in the west because, fuck, we’re all dying so that these assholes can maintain their profits.

How do y’all talk to libs about how the media is portraying Trump as subservient to Putin? For example refusing aid to Ukraine and easing sanctions on Russia. I don’t really have a good answer other than the long history after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and that the US and Russia would probably never be allies.

I can understand why he’d be hard on Ukraine, but even I have trouble understanding why Trump seems so friendly with Russia

Unironically, there are so many parallels with Harry potter and the way modern liberals act

Joe Rogan is the ultimate example of social being determining your conscious. As he got richer and more popular he became more right wing.

I also agree and don’t think it was a deliberate long con by any of them (well maybe Tim Pool?). They are all just products of their environments. The right also understands how important it is to control the cultural hegemony. Theyre not just talking to people about politics, but all sorts of different niches.

American online right wing propaganda is way too strong, to a point where its just a self-sustaining plague on the internet. The way it turns apolitical people into right wing nut jobs is quite scary. I would bet most people in China are apolitical and that would be ripe picking for the propaganda.

I agree with you, but I also believe people can change. A change in conscious towards unionizing won’t happen overnight. It happens as the workplace and job market conditions change, and that is what we are seeing right now in Silicon Valley. Tech workers have been used to rising salaries and benefits for so long, and we know that can’t last forever. I think now we are going to see the decline. As the article mentions, AI is the hope for the owner class to de-skill tech workers and thus make them a more exploitable worker that won’t be given a salary that is enough to live a materially comfortable life.

Perhaps one unionization can inspire another?

Definitely something missing imo. The right has the monopoly on violence, and even though I’d say the left can ultimately appeal to more people and have strength in numbers, a willingness to use violence can overcome that. I think it is as you said: it sounds very LARP-y until it isn’t. This is probably by design though, as any leftist group that does pick up arms or does combat training will be a target for repression.