The Deprogram Podcast

I'm a Westerner so I know that our politics are unpopular here. With this in mind I try to look for common ground on specific issues. Usually my red flags are when I detect a naive reactionary or anti-solidarity sentiment.

E.g. 1: one time I was on a second date with someone, and they started hating on homeless people towards the end. This led to me not dating them further.

E.g. 2: People who say racist things about South Asian people. This is very specific to my geographic context, but basically they're probably the most highly persecuted immigrant population within my slice of the world and face a fuckton of systemic racism. Obviously racism in general I find intolerable, it's just that due to South Asian immigrant vulnerability, this one stands out as very immediately and acutely harmful as well.

Honestly, I can create a flow chart with the red flags and their corresponding right-wingers and non–MLs.

Slandering AES is a certain way to find a non–ML. If they believe Atatürk was a leftist politician determines whether they're an ultra or a left anti–com.

Condemning the global north but using its talking points while talking about contemporary politics is a solid sign of a right-winger. I don't bother about finding their tendencies, but they tend to give it away with their rhetorics anyway.

For me, it is the following:

• They use US flags in their cloths or their profile picture in their social media even though they are Latin American compatriots

• They talk about the fascist Elon as if he was a genius or someone of high regard.

• They talk about Bukele(or worse Milei fan) as if his fascist police state was the answer to their country's problem.

Any of these are signs that they are fascist/imperialist sympathizers.

any utterance or sympathy towards the following:

"both sides"

Civility™

"marketplace of ideas"

any form of "i don't like people" - usually said after seeing bad news, wanting to get away from the badness and evility of the world. people who do this are either fascists, cowards, or selfish to an insane degree

Racism.

I was on a date with a lady from Hong Kong recently and she started complaining about how there was Muslims on the subway here.

I was like, what do you mean?

'Oh I was so scared!'

Like they wherent doing anything she just associated them with terrorism and crime.

Yeah they arent getting a 2nd date lol.

Racism or chauvinism toward people in the global south.

I can talk with a person who has misconceptions about socialist states due to anti-communist indoctrination. I can't do much to change someone's mind who just views non-Europeans as subhuman.

And the same goes for people who look at the poor as "lesser than" and blame their situation on "their own failures".

Disagreeing on politics, economics or history is one thing. A lot of people are ignorant, uneducated or miseducated. That's just something we have to learn to deal with. But when it enters the territory of dehumanization that's when it crosses a line.

For discussions "tankie". It suggests they have gone down that particular liberal anticommunism rabbit hole, they have people reinforcing these believes, and they aren't interested in genuine discussion beyond name calling. Very unlikely that you manage to change their mind or even just have an interesting or pleasant conversation.

In person, there might be enough common ground to do something. Online, stay clear.

1. Calls Khmer Rouge communists.

2. Thinks we need to disavow violence to do progressive politics.

3. Calls China State capitalist.

4. Believes former bourgeois diaspora from socialist countries were innocent victims affected by communist dictators.

5. Talks about ethnic 'homogeneity' as a characteristic for lower crime rates in a country.

6. Calls George Orwell a good writer.

7. Thinks 'lend-lease' defeated Nazism.

"I have decades of experience in X intensely-capitalized industry (like the pharmaceutical industry), and all other countries' successes in that field are because of the US"

Piggybacking of yours, when someone thinks that Russia is socialist.

Mine are "both sides are bad", "the Nordic countries are socialist", and the classic "better dead than red" rhetoric.

I'm autistic so if I talk to anyone more than a 2 minutes I've said "the billionaires are destroying the planet and will kill us all if we don't kill them first" If they don't run from that we are good. I'll push back on bigotry but If they want the billionaires dead I'll be willing to explain that all prejudice is a learned behavior that is fostered by the ruling class to keep us divided.

If I'm talking about China with someone and they call the CPC the CCP I know I'm in for a long winded rambling of liberal/fascist slop 9 times out of 10. Although it is kind of nice to have as an almost shibboleth that lets me know straight away where the bar is.

They're Americans

When a person commenting or replying to you on Youtube has no profile picture and their username contains a generic Western name.

I don't mind liberals equating USSR with Russia, not because it is factually accurate (it most certainly is not) but because they concede a common ground that western european aggression eastward precedes fall of the USSR and that current anglo-saxon geopolitics is an extension of nazism/lebensraum.

Saying Ew a lot, talking about iq