GenZedong

I hate that redsails article because it really is just an exercise in pedantic semantics. It sets up a straw man for what brain washing is and beats it into the ground. Propaganda works. It isn't fool proof but brainwashing is a thing.

Even a bad lie can obfuscate the truth a little so they repeat the lies over and over.

The subconscious mind has safeguards to protect the well being of the body and conscious mind. Being able to reject information without examining it fully is an essential ability or people would never be able to make decisions in a crisis. Rejecting information that opposes your personal interests isn't a conscious decision.

Keeping the working class impoverished keeps peoples brains in crisis mode in order to curtail peoples ability to think things through.

With no time to think it out, a personal interest in rejecting the truth and and hearing 10 lies for every truth people are brain washed, or maybe its better to say they are "brain filthy."

i think the article was referring more to why westerners are hostile to inconvenient truths, or they rationalize it away, or refuse to internalize it like the boy in the striped pajamas (i think). i definitely had a large portion of my life where i would avoid uncomfortable information, and it made me kind of an idiot. it's one of my favorite articles because i've seen the phenomenon from all sides. it isn't that you absolutely can't talk to these people, but it takes a lot of time and effort, for everyone involved, to even get to a point where they're willing to hear what you say

This discussion makes me think of a concept from Mao's On Contradiction,

Changes in society are due chiefly to the development of the internal contradictions in society, that is, the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, the contradiction between classes and the contradiction between the old and the new; it is the development of these contradictions that pushes society forward and gives the impetus for the supersession of the old society by the new. Does materialist dialectics exclude external causes? Not at all. It holds that external causes are the condition of change and internal causes are the basis of change, and that external causes become operative through internal causes. In a suitable temperature an egg changes into a chicken, but no temperature can change a stone into a chicken, because each has a different basis.

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.

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.

Generally, it's a two-stage process. One must be sufficiently unsatisfied with the status quo or open to new ideas before new information is accepted that overturns your worldview. The working classes are generally going to already be closer to that, but even among workers there is significant striation. New information does work, but on people who are in the proper stage for it. It's driven internally.

What we do is focus on those that are radicalized and lead them to correct theory and practice over time. Agitating among those whom the system benefits (or those who believe the system benefits them) is far less effective than focusing on those left behind. Dialectical Materialism informs us that it is through the working classes actively engaging in social relations that they come to working class ideology, we meet them there and guide them to proper theory and practice.

The red sails article I think has good intent, but overdoes it a bit in trying to debunk the perspective it's fighting against. I think what it's trying to fight against at its core is more or less the idea that people are "stupid" (and therefore easily manipulated into working against their own interests). But it goes so far in the other direction, it comes across like it's arguing the reverse, that people are actually more aware even than they let on. From that article:

If you want to be radical, then, begin by radically rejecting the oldest and most vicious and most widespread bit of ruling class ideology: the idea that there is no wisdom whatsoever to be found in the behaviour of the masses. Reject the idea of “brainwashing,” and insist on seeking the kernel of intelligence and truth and wisdom in everyone’s current actions, even when they seem repulsive or hopelessly short-sighted. Identify where exactly you can intervene, and with whom, in such a way that it dovetails with existing tendencies, but always with an eye to revolution and the prize of a better future. Address yourself to reality in just this way, and you might just begin to change it.

Note: "insist on seeking the kernel of intelligence and truth and wisdom in everyone’s current actions".

It's not even something I necessarily disagree with as a practice when engaging with others, but it implies that there's no such thing as moments of behavior and thought that are simply misguided, impulsive, petty, habit-driven, mimicry-driven, or otherwise missing some kind of grounded thought process. In other words, in trying to do away with elitist views on human intelligence, it also tries to do away with human stumbles. The parts of us that don't necessarily make a whole lot of sense sometimes even to us. Because we don't exist in a perfectly logical, enclosed system. There's a lot of noise coming at us at any given moment, internally or externally, and we are capable of acting in ways that are, for lack of a better word, "stupid" ("senseless" might be a better word, since I think it comes back to doing things that don't really make a whole lot of sense, that are in some distinct way lacking in perspective, and which can have grave consequences).

Either way, it's not that this is a trait, or predisposition, or anything else like that. It's not a fixed behavioral thing. It's simply something that can occur under some circumstances. And to be fair, some actions can be sensible to one person but look senseless to another, due to a differing perspective. But this does not account for situations like when an action seems senseless even to the person doing it, yet they do it anyway (I have had internal tussle moments like these). Or when an action is done on impulse and then rationalized after the fact.

I realize this is a bit off the specific topic of the "how" that people get convinced, but I do feel it's worth going over. I believe it's important we account for the fact that people aren't always behaving in ways that they fully agree with internally, much less vocalize their own support for. That dissonance is worth better understanding and people's quiet discomfort with something they're going along with is, I think, one of the ways they fracture us; by getting people to view those things as irreconcilable, impossible to solve, and therefore a reason to distance ourselves from one another all the more. For our part, the dissonance can be a window into the contradictions people are navigating and a means of better understanding how to help people resolve them in a way that moves toward organized liberation.

edit: fixing typo

Someone start a TikTok trend to get Gen Alpha to read the Communist Manifesto.

Organizing is a skill in of itself. It must be learned and practiced until it becomes almost second nature. This is one of many reasons why labor unions serve as a "school for communism".

A big part of organizing is convincing people who are not already "on your side" so to speak. When a union campaign first begins, many workers are actually against the idea. Organizing is a process of convincing these workers to cast off their previous assumptions and recognizing their power as part of a larger union. They need an "aha" moment that often comes from some collective action taken together.

I recommend reading through No Shortcuts by Jane McAlevey. The author is not a Marxist, but organizing is not a skill exclusive to Marxism. ProleWiki also has resources on organizing that I'm sure are excellent.

Edit: As an aside, organizing is also hard, maybe the hardest thing you'll ever do. It takes listening, openness, and patience that will test your temperament. But remember that we're all workers, and we can find common ground through our common class interests. Our eventual succusses will materiallly improve people's lives, and they will build (despite setbacks) until we can ultimately institute a socialist society.

For me it was a combination of seeing the rise of Trump destroy my faith in liberalism, the direct exploitation I was faced with upon entering the workforce, my innate curiosity about the world & its history, and the inherent empathy I had for the oppressed & destitute that ultimately drove me down the road of socialism.

For me it was similar but more when I learned about the Palestine Israel conflict in like 2007 or something. I was shocked at how wrong I was about the whole thing, who the world powers were backing, how it was started and why, and the things that were currently happening as a result. I was a conservative at the time and wanted to learn more about political theory and history and economics and imperialism after that because I was so shocked that I could know so little and be so wrong about something like that for so long. I read a bunch of beginner stuff like mousolini and ayn rand and Adam Smith and Marx and Lenin along with some super easy shit like Chomsky and Perenti and to my liberal friends horror I drifted slowly but purposefully towards communism.

Most working class people are not at all happy with the status quo, if we can present them with answers and solutions, show them what capitalism and their government is (nationally and internationally), what their own position is within society, that can push them more and more left so to speak.

I don't think there is a straightforward broad strategy to make people aware like this, I think every communist needs to understand their own local people and plan in accordance to that, or in other words, the political conversion process is subjective not objective.

For me, the failure of Labour to do really anything to change the circumstances of living in the UK made me move away from the mainstream moderate left western views. In simple terms I just recognised, this is not working. I was never gonna go to the right or the enlightened centre and so it was either political nihilism or investigate more throughly 'this socialism stuff'.

Once I became some Green Party, tax the rich, SocDem type of guy, I recognised I could still remain open-minded rather than merely, naïvely assume this is what is needed to fix my country.

So I checked out anarchism and Marxism-Leninism - it's worth mentioning I had a lot of propaganda deprogramming to do, and that is hard to push through, I think it's a major barrier for many people who have been told all their life how supposedly evil these movements are - but here I am, now an M-L communist (I found it more logical, moral and factual than anarchism), still learning but knowing enough that I can't see myself committing to any other political movement. I wanted the truth, I wanted a solution, I wanted hope, and I believe I have found it.

Because people don’t work like that trust me Ive tried and I give up the only their minds change is if it’s splattered on the floor