Chat is a text only community for casual conversation, please keep shitposting to the absolute minimum. This is intended to be a separate space from c/chapotraphouse or the daily megathread. Chat does this by being a long-form community where topics will remain from day to day unlike the megathread, and it is distinct from c/chapotraphouse in that we ask you to engage in this community in a genuine way. Please keep shitposting, bits, and irony to a minimum.
As with all communities posts need to abide by the code of conduct, additionally moderators will remove any posts or comments deemed to be inappropriate.
Thank you and happy chatting!
I recently caught my chud family member watching some dumb youtube video about "experts lying about COVID" (yes, chuds are still malding), and like, what's the fucking point anymore?
You can be as gracious, understanding and in good faith as possible, but people will believe whatever nonsense some idiot influencer says is the truth. It makes me so mad, and unable to argue with these people, because their irrationality makes me irrational. Fuck.
Anyway, how are y'all doing? 
Sometimes you gotta connect with someone on a personal and cultural level before they'll listen to you. People believe what their group believes, because 1) it helps them fit in, and 2) they trust the collective wisdom and values of their group more than they trust their own limited personal judgment and life experience. If you threaten the beliefs that help them get along with their peers, they're gonna shut down to protect themselves before you even get to the logical part of their brain. The best way to get past this is to connect with them first over shared values and life experiences, because it kinda legitimizes what you're saying and gives them permission to think about it.
Just my 2 cents, not aimed at OP or anyone in particular
"I'm starting to understand why Lenin and Stalin just shot some people."
~ Terrance Ray
I don't think most people really believe this stuff. It's more like a social signalling thing and a sort of reality TV fix.
Most of the dangers in our lives (speaking as a westerner in a wealthy and politically stable country) are systemic, like climate change for example. If shit really starts to happen in these people's own lives and they need to personally fight to survive I think most of them will snap out of it pretty quickly.
they absolutely do... i mean most of all people have started believing COVID denialism on some level, stopped masking, etc. because their govt told them to in the name of continued economic growth.
Covid denialism is a low stakes luxury for most people. I bet you anything that these people would lock themselves away if they were dropped into an Ebola outbreak.
Yeah they would, but because power has the ability to redefine reality it would only take a few months of Ebola halfway lockdown for people to beg to go back to Applebee's. The state would just tell them the virus is not as bad anymore, stop gathering statistics to make that real, and stop promoting precautions. That's exactly what happened with COVID: check https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/rv/COVID19-nationaltrend.html and compare the current year to previous years. It's pretty much the same! But even in one of the only places where you can get access to the data that shows that COVID has not gone away at all, the CDC still arbitrarily puts categories of "low," "moderate," "high," and "very high." These categories suggest that if the chart is currently in a low point, there's not much to worry about. The catch is, though, that the lowest it's ever been since 2022 is still higher than corresponding points in 2021, when everyone could readily recognize that — vaccinated or not — it would be insane to throw caution to the wind and go back to normal. This entire abandonment of COVID precautions has been a top-down process, a full display of power inventing reality in front of our eyes.
I don't think most people really believe this stuff
lol
You give a thirsty man water. You can't reason a person out of a position they didn't reason into. So you keep explaining it to them. However you have to explain it in terms they understand. My late father was a china fan because, "at least they kept thr globalists out" and you know what? Being right for the wrong reason is close enough for most people.
You can't reason a person out of a position they didn't reason into
you can, a lot of people leave religion because they start thinking about beliefs they just uncritically accepted their whole lives. what you can't do is force someone to actually confront cognitive dissonance.
you can
no you can't and you just agreed with him while claiming not to
In that way I don't thinknreason carries the day. You are finding a person who already had doubts and told them about options. Which is the story I hear most is that they had already not been emotionally fulfilled and then when a better path opened up they tried it.
Yea this phrase always bugs me, I did exactly what you described.
Labor aristocrats and petit bourgeois intuitively know where their bread is buttered. They don't want to hear the truth. Our only hope with those is when they lose their privilege and become proletarian.
This is the most important thing, I think. OP, you are trying to explain things to the wrong people. 90% of the white people, or just the $50k+ annual salary holder of any kind, they can't hear it. 90% of the Latin american immigrants I talk to, they lap it up and give it right back. I've had random plumbers come by to fix a toilet end up talking with me about how American imperialism destroyed their country which is why they had to leave and come here, instead of being at home where they would rather be. The most marginalized and oppressed people are the most receptive, they will also hold reactionary positions by default but through organizing and mutual aid, trust can be built and those things can be educated away with time.
I live in such a white state, that even most of the 3D jobs are done by white people. Get any group of these white men together, and it’s a matter of minutes, maybe an hour or two at most, before someone says something racist or sexist or transphobic or whatever, with no pushback, although I certainly pay attention to the guys who at least don’t play along with this. A lot of these guys are either living in vans or are on the edge of homelessness, but whiteness is the glue that holds it all together.
As revolutionaries, we don’t have the right to say we are tired of explaining. We must never stop explaining. We know that when the people understand, they cannot help but follow us. 
“No altar, no belief, no holy book... have ever been able to reconcile the rich and the poor, the exploiter and the exploited. And if Jesus himself had to take the whip to chase them from his temple, it is indeed because that is the only language they hear.” - Thomas Sankara
Sankara was a real one.
The only time in the bible that Jesus genuinely lost his shit with people.
If I were taught this version of Jesus, I would likely be religious. Also, did Sankara write any books?
Also, did Sankara write any books?
Some of his speeches and interviews have been released in book form, Thomas Sankara Speaks.
(https://library.agnescameron.info/revolutionary%20history/Thomas%20Sankara%20Speaks.pdf)
Thanks!
i can't help but feel like this quote doesn't really apply in the same way to america in 2025. nobody in sankara's burkina faso benefitted from the status quo the way the typical white dipshit in the imperial core does and therefore actually had a reason to listen to communist arguments.
some people are just never going to listen to reason because of their material conditions and need to be reeducated or shot, and a lot of those people are white americans
I don't think Trump gets elected if the white dipshits are content with their material conditions, though?
I think there's real discontent in America in 2025, even with how privileged Americans are globally. I think that discontent is ultimately a result of getting squeezed by capitalism, and that most folks aren't aware of that. Trump won by acknowledging that "the system" is broken, which most people know- he just pointed them to bigotry instead to protect capitalism.
That's not to say that American's material struggles are comparable to Burkina Faso's - I think white folks in America are soft as shit - but I don't think people feel like they're doing well, and that's ultimately what drives their actions.
They're not content not because they're exploited. They're not content because they're not as privileged anymore. Treats are more expensive and they can't call Blake people the n-word anymore.
Exactly!! People are exploited and they know it, they're just often ignorant of the cause.
America is deeply racist, and fascists stoke those flames to explain why people are exploited.
I think the quote is still relevant because a ton of our work is explaining to people "no, treats aren't more expensive because woke, it's because capitalism."
yes the millions of mcmansion owners in flyover suburbia are just exploited and ignorant
I did a bit of a dive into race and wealth in the other reply here. Yeah, white people as a whole are extremely well off. The surprising take aways for me is that 1. there's so, so many white people and 2. that most of the poorest folks are white.
And re ignorance: kinda yeah - I think most people just kinda believe what they're told, right? Humans are social more than rational.
My parents were Republican and Christian, so I was Republican and Christian. As I got older, I believed what my friends believed. It wasn't until I had a partner specifically, persistently ask me what I believed that I started to develop my own independent value system.
Everyone should decide what they believe for themselves, but I think tons of people live their whole lives just based on the vibe of their social circle. That goes double for white folks, who the system works great for and who would rather not even think about race (see: "I'm not racist, I don't see color!").
I also think our perceptions of the world are shaped by the media we consume. Capitalists own the majority of that media, and they have a vested interest in people not coming to the conclusion that they are suffering under capitalism.
Imo, ignorance is much more likely than malice for white folks, and so yeah I think that requires education and explanation (like the quote says).
Oh, but it should def be white folks teaching white folks. I don't mean to put that on other groups.
White American by and large aren't exploited, fascist propaganda speaks to them because it takes advantage of their fears of losing their privileged status.
Oh sorry I just reread your post and I missed the second "not" in you first sentence, which really changes the meaning haha
I definitely had a different view: that white folks were also exploited under capitalism, just to a lesser degree. I looked up a few stats and I still think that generally, but the gap is way bigger than I thought.
63% of America is white, 12% black, 11% multiracial, 6% Asian
59% of Americans in 2025 don't have enough savings to cover an unexpected $1,000 emergency expense
It's not a perfect measure, but I'm comfortable saying "most Americans are living on the edge." Even if we round down to 50% and assume every single non-white person is below that line, that would still leave 13% of America white folks living on the edge.
Which is more than the entire population of black Americans (12%), which tbh I did not expect. (Note: I'm kinda suspect of the 'multiracial' bucket as it applies to how folks experience systemic racism, since iiuc that tends to be more like the family guy skin color ok/not ok meme. i.e. I assume that there are a decent number of folks in the 11% 'multiracial' bucket that experience anti-black racism)
I really like this article, too, specifically median wealth by race and the households by "teirs" of wealth.
Because holy shit there are so many well-off white folks and yeah, as a whole they're rolling in it.
"Households with no wealth or in debt" (poorest 11% of the overall population) shows 9% of white households have zero or negative wealth, compared to 24% of black households. Applied to the overall population, that's 6% and 3%, respectively. Which... challenges my intuition. I would not expect white folks to make up the majority of the poorest group of Americans.
Honestly, I think the biggest takeaway for me is that there's an absolute shitload of white people. As a group they're incredibly well off, but there's also a huge number of struggling white folks.
What I'd really like to see is the racial makeup of each wealth percentile, something like this graph, but scaled by the absolute number of folks in each category, not by the percentage of a given race that falls in each bucket. Looks like the underlying data is published by the government, so I might try to do it myself sometime.
Read Settlers
We really need to stop doing this thing here where we post quotes from leftists living in totally different times and material circumstance and act like it's applicable to people trying to organize in the modern imperial core.
I understand that, but for those who refuse to listen? What then?
It's not like there are other ways to make people support us, so we have to just keep chipping at granite edifice of capitalism.
I'm in the same situation. I just don't talk to these people anymore and tell them to shut up if I can't get away. I've spent years like you probably trying to carefully explain things and they just revert to saying heinous shit about women, immigrants, tree-hugging liberals, etc. the second I'm not around.
