This could also be a guide for how to win elections. But it's a huge undertaking. Learning their mythology and being dispassionately conversant in it is not easy. To completely erase your ego and work only in pursuit of manipulation... Well, it's no surprise to me that it's a job, and that they aren't trying to do it on their own families. It's not clear you should try to do that to your own family.
But to win elections, we do have to reach across to people who are conditioned a certain way, and to do that you'll need to know yourself very well, especially your relationship to the forces that condition you
I would be curious how these conversations with maga families would go if one truly adopted the methodology of the men mentioned in the article.
I liked they philosophy of basically engaging in deep, true good faith understanding of the person's view and group, as well as for the deprogrammer, leaving as much of your personal beliefs at the door, and accepting that you can't really know truth, that truth is more a feeling.
For the MAGA folks, there are many things about their ideology that are easy to agree with in isolation, and easy to understand if you comprehend their misunderstanding of reality. Suspicion of government? Makes sense! Desire for greater affordability? Of course! Nationalism, anti-globalism? Once you strip away the antisemitic tropes of anti globalism and the racist tropes of nationalism, it's perfectly understandable to ask why billions of your tax dollars are being spent in other countries on things that don't affect you in the slightest.
What I wonder moreso though is the ability of the somewhat neutered American liberal to check their own beliefs at the door. American liberalism seems hyper focused on aesthetics and strongly opposed to practical leftism, or really anything that challenges neoliberal dogma around Statism or Capitalism. I see American liberals shoot themselves in the foot with this all the time, and I fear they don't have the strength to make it through the first five seconds of the weird bits of a Trump supporter's beliefs without immediately fighting on aesthetic grounds.
I'm by no means an expert in this and in fact I hunger for these conversations so I can learn more about how to bridge the gap, so I can dig to the material conditions issues underlying the vast majority of most Trump supporter's concerns. The whole "drain the swamp thing," I mean, was it wrong? The entire government seems to have been cozied up with Israel at best and Epstein at worst! So how do you get to talking about that with them to where you get them to understand that their favorite republican politicians fall right into that pool, without first acknowledging the reality that the same is true for politicians "on your side?" At least to some extent. I fear "vote blue no matter who" ideology has short circuited the ability of American liberals to have genuine conversations with oppositional points of view.
> I'm by no means an expert in this and in fact I hunger for these conversations so I can learn more about how to bridge the gap, so I can dig to the material conditions issues underlying the vast majority of most Trump supporter's concerns. The whole "drain the swamp thing," I mean, was it wrong? The entire government seems to have been cozied up with Israel at best and Epstein at worst! So how do you get to talking about that with them to where you get them to understand that their favorite republican politicians fall right into that pool, without first acknowledging the reality that the same is true for politicians "on your side?"
Something I've noticed is that a lot of conspiracy theory is "exactly wrong": people will identify something which does have a real true problem to it, usually to do with elite unaccountability or widespread public lying, and then - without evidence, or using one extremely flimsy link - attach it to someone who least represents that problem. Thereby effectively covering up for all the other crimes.
I don't really try with family Fidesz members (Hungarian MAGA). I know why my relative believes what he does and I can't change that. I'm there for him as a friend, will share my conflicting views carefully but avoid getting dragged into a full on argument with emotions.
Could you please help me understand where you're coming from by describing what cultural Marxism means to you, and which American politicians are Marxists?
What's crazy to me is people like blitz_skull exist, who think that excessive identity politics in the democratic party is worth literally destroying the country. They call identity politics, a small subset of the liberal coalition platform (alongside rule of law, climate change acknowledgement, sustainable energy and better social safety nets) a virus, and authoritarianism and the destruction of the rule of law in the United States as the cure.
Someone who is presumably not a bot, on a forum like this, thinks that. If only they would dive deeper so I could attempt to understand.
I'm not even left or right but just pointing out that MAGA, who worships hypermasculinity and claims to be the party of God, seems to rile some folks up who can't come to terms with reality.
They make a demigod out of a fat lifelong Democrat in makeup who wrote in a book that if he ever ran for office he'd run as a Republican because they lack independent thought and effectively fall in line. They literally worshipped and prayed to a golden statue of him, which makes the whole story about the golden calf somewhat ironic.
I've seen a lot of Antifa things. They're into anti-MAGA things, have some kind of uniforms and merch and are actually quite violent. In certain places they are very visible, and aggressive. They are a good fit for a discussion about cults. I agree with the authors of the article. By being nice to them I broke some of them a little bit out of their loop.
I'm anti-fascist. I have a sticker on my laptop, and have hosted a BLM protest. No flags, no hats, and maybe 1% of my friends are involved in the way I am. If there's an antifa cult, I want to know about it, bcause I wouldn't mind some more friends in the scene.
Again, can we please just be for real and stop playing a "both sides" game? There's a difference between dogmatism, and cultism.
You disrespect the person you're responding to with your sarcasm, ignoring their points in order to make your own. You try to recover further down, which is nice, but please try to debate in good faith.
Maybe you got some things about me wrong. I'm very much anti-fascist, but around here anything labelled antifa is quite fascist. I don't care about anything Trump.
The only connection I have to Trump is that I sometimes heard old grumpy Nazis from the German military complain that he doesn't support them enough in attacking Russia. But trusting him to be a man of peace is most likely a mistake.
At the moment I'm neutral and observe the situation. I sometimes hang out with guys from peace movements, and also go to some events of the guys they protest against.
Antifa never shows up when there's a protest against real bad guys (politics, weapon industry, human rights...). And they're far more likely to harass the people of peace and human rights movements. There have been events of actual violence in the past, but most harassment nowadays is online.
For the cult:
- they label others as fascists a lot (even if it makes no sense in that context) so their brain has a short and allows violence.
- there are uniforms. They wear black with mask. Masking is still a thing today - it's a solid cargo-cult.
I don't often hear trans people say cis people literally shouldn't exist. I don't often see them celebrating official public corruption and the destruction of our country. I don't see them deliberately trolling and lying to themselves and the world for the purpose of facilitating hypocrisy and lawbreaking daily.
"Having a flag" is the only common theme they share, any other comparison is a stretch.
I just recently happened to attend a community meeting which took place in a room of a trans-centric housing project. Several of the houses residents also attended. I was schocked to witness a casual chat escalating to a point where several people agreed that they should forcefully storm the parliament building of the capital, if politicians can not be made to fullfil their wishes. So there you have your Jan6 story, from the other side. I decided to distance myself from these people. I know, its just an anecdote, and therefore, according to HN, not worth a dime. But it showed to me that there is really no difference between the sides. If frustrated enough, they end up going for, or at least playing with the thought of, violence. Remember RAF? But I digress...
I've thought about J6 a lot, and what bothers me isn't so much the violence, but the lies and pathetic worldview that drove it.
The idea that violence is necessary if an election is stolen - if political forces actually manipulated the results of the democratic process - is not absurd to me, and is not inherently immoral.
What made J6 wrong was not that it was violent, but that it was based on the obvious lies of a narcissistic compulsive gaslighter with no evidence, so they could further destroy the government and take rights away from people.
I guess my point is, values matter.
---
edit, since I hit the "dang" limit on discussing things with people:
Violence has always been part of societies, when rights are taken away violently by the ruling class or when nonviolent protest fails to secure fundamental rights.
Violence because an election was lost isn't just. Violence because the government is committing genocide is just. Violence because a stupid man told me to go attack the capitol because, against all evidence, he says the election was rigged is wrong. Violence because there is massive evidence of a rigged election (Tanzania, Russia) is not wrong.
Of course, all of this is a distraction from thrust of your argument "MAGA and Trans people are equal because they both have flags and I heard someone say something violent once".
MAGA is more violent, anti-democratic and oppressive than anything you can ever say about any left-wing identity political movement, period.
---
edit2: If one is willing to ignore the history of the world and the conditions I set for when violence seems just (while we diverge from the core discussion around the false equivalence between a gender rights movement and an anti-democracy movement) then I agree, we don't have a lot to talk through.
If you are willing to support--or at least not be bothered by--violence in a democratic process, I guess we can not find any common ground to talk about.
Some commentary added in my prior comment due to HN throttling.
In short, equating a minority group that has a flag and some banter spoken on private, to a massive ongoing movement-in-power in the US to literally destroy the federal government and erode civil liberties... Is a wild take.
This is confusing because transgenderism describes a psychological reality - you are born trans or not, the same as if you're born straight or not - whereas cult membership or political ideology aren't inherent, unchangeable parts of your self.
How are you managing to compare these unrelated things?
Evidence shows that it is not as inherent and built-in from birth as many people think, but is better characterised as a self-belief that can change over time.
Detransitioners are probably the best-known example. There are others, like males with autogynephilia who eventually end up believing they are women, sometimes even in middle-age or later. Also, there are medical case reports about transsexuals with dementia forgetting they identify as the opposite sex, and being shocked and horrified at what has been done to their body. As well as that, there are the "gender-fluid" people whose identity fluctuates rapidly rather than being fixed.
> Evidence shows that it is not as inherent and built-in from birth as many people think, but is better characterised as a self-belief that can change over time.
I have a lot of evidence in front of me that shows the opposite. What are you reading to lead you to the opposite conclusion?
> Detransitioners are probably the best-known example.
Transgenderism is incredibly rare in populations: .1% to .6% of the population. Of that, detransitioners are also incredibly rare: about 1%, and it's not clear yet what percentage of those stop taking puberty blockers or hormones because of financial reasons. Doesn't exactly make the case...
> As well as that, there are the "gender-fluid" people whose identity fluctuates rapidly rather than being fixed.
Correct, because gender is indeed a spectrum. Again that just seems to be making my case for me...
