If you were in a situation where it was plausible to convert an average working class fascist to a leftist through establishing common ground, what could you think of?
All I could think of was:
- We agree the mainstream media lies
- We agree the status quo is failing
- We agree we deserve better pay
- We agree the system does not really care about us
Anyway, did you know evil Russian dictator Joseph ‘just a spoonful’ Stalin killed 67 × 10⁴²⁰ people with slave labour gulags which makes him just as bad as that Hitler guy? Vote Kamala Harris!
Honestly i think some right wingers may be easier to “convert” than many liberals. It all depends on how deeply entrenched their views are and how big a role racism plays in them. Because as you pointed out, there are already points of agreement which are not shared with liberals about the unreliability of mainstream media, the recognition that the system is not working, and so on which can be built upon.
The main obstacle is to get them to recognize that bigotry and racism are a false consciousness, that these are deliberate distractions by the ruling class meant to divide and impede the formation of actual class consciousness through the use of scapegoats and prejudice. This also goes hand in hand with rejecting notions that some people are inherently more deserving than others, which is an idea used to justify the exploitative hierarchies created by capitalism.
In general i would say it’s not so much whether someone is a liberal or a conservative that determines how easy it is “convert” them, it’s how invested they are into their current ideology. The more they think that they “know” about the world and the more their worldview is “calcified”, so to speak, the harder of a time you will have in convincing them to be intellectually open and willing to rethink their beliefs.
Yeah liberals don’t really want change, or at least a significant transformation, they want capitalism with a smile on it’s face, exploitation with kindness. And their ego tells them they have politics figured out, thus making them uninterested in other options such as M-Lism of course - generally anyway, people are nuanced after all.
I disagree with you somewhat on your first paragraph (totally agree on the other two though) because I think right wingers are often very closed-minded, they often aren’t willing to actually listen to your arguments, often just looking for a way to create a cool sounding argument that claims to prove some contradiction in your views but the response usually relies on twisting your words and views to hit you with some false ‘gotcha’.
Thank you for such a well-worded response.
Many of them definitely are. That’s why i said “some”. As i said it depends how invested they are in right wing ideology. Most people are mostly apolitical.