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.
This discussion makes me think of a concept from Mao's On Contradiction,
Mao is talking about changes in society more broadly, but I think this idea can be applied on an individual level as well. A person's internal state needs to be such that they are open to new information, in order for that information to meaningfully shift their perspective.
So my hypothesis is that you were able to change your mind when you learned more about the Iraq War because, for whatever reasons, your internal state was receptive to new ideas. Some other people may be presented with that same information, but then just mentally discard it if they aren't in a place where they're ready to hear it. So essentially I'm agreeing with what some other commenters have already said, that organizing is most effective when it's focused on people who are sufficiently agitated and open to hearing what we have to say.