There's this red sails article that pops up every once in a while. Don't get me wrong it's a fine article, but there's a bit that goes "something something don't think people are brainwashed and just need to be exposed to uncomfortable truths."
And like, I get it. But...that's exactly what happened to me. I mean, I'm not going to say it was exactly one thing that caused it. However, genuinely when i learned about the Iraq War in detail*, that was basically what flipped the switch in my head. Obviously I wasn't as theoretically developed as I am today, but thats what made me genuinely want to read Marx, Lenin, Mao, etc. It was exactly that process of being exposed to information like that that made me want to be a communist, and want to fight for it.
This isn't some debunking thing. I think what I'm trying to explain is that my story seems to be very different from other people's, and applying my own experiences might not really work if it's not how things commonly work.
And, as much as it is important, I do want something more in depth than just "organize and educate." Don't get me wrong, that's good advice. What I'm trying to ask moreso is, what is the actually psychology going on behind these decisions here? Obviously there's no cookie cutter/one size fits all strategy here, but some direction would be helpful in actually attempting to convince people.
*To elaborate, I always heard of Iraq as just "the war." Kinda like how Vietnam was. But no one ever explained to me what it was and school didn't really neither. So when I learned it was basically the US invading Iraq almost explicitly for oil and no one got punished for it and basically everyone got rich off of it besides normal people while hundreds of thousands Iraqis died, it really shook me.
I think that, historically, the average person practiced politics through their social life. Like most members of the kpd/spd weren't reading and critiquing the major socialist writers of their day, they were a member of the same party as their coworkers, their neighbors, their parents, etc. This is what makes organizing in a modern context so frustratingly difficult - capitalism has destroyed all of those social clubs, most aggressively the communist parties and trade unions, and the only ones with an ounce of power that are left are the ones that are inherently reactionary in some way, like the police unions.
So with this as my hypothesis, my thought is that to meaningfully change people's politics you have to change their social life. For someone like me who is deeply connected to the internet it was enough to spend a lot of time simulating social interaction on a website and slowly getting warmed up to the phrase "Joseph Stalin saved the world from fascism", but for people who are not that strongly connected to an online forum their real connections with real people have to be what pushes them in that direction.
This is actually a reason for why I want to build up my social life. It's hard to work on building socialism if you don't have a social life
True, I would like to do that as well. Since I'm a bit of a loner it's not the easiest of things, but I'm sure that with a bit of patience and perseverance we can do that.
Inshallah my sibling. I've putting myself out there more. Going out alone and suggesting to my friends and family places to go out to. I'm going to the gym more as well and meet people there as well.
Great point imo. And nice detail about comrade josef. I had a party meeting recently and was asked "why stalin?" my answer wasnt as concise as i wished it would have been but once you read multiple viewpoints about him and especially his works, it becomes quite clear that he was a devoted socialist and a brillant politician. Afrer reading his works for dozens of hours, there is no doubt left that the truth is quite the opposite of what we are told.