By Mack K., Birmingham DSA
If you’re reading this, then you’re probably worried about how the next four years will go. The good news is there’s still hope. Fascism’s greatest tool may be to seed fear and mistrust among the people and weaponize us against each other. But every single one of us has the most powerful weapon in our arsenal to fight it off – radical empathy – and it’s important now more than ever.
Many people are saying it’s time to cut off and go no-contact with Trump supporters. I don’t entirely disagree with that sentiment. There is some value in shaming those who won’t listen to logic, empathy, or reason – but only when efforts of logic, empathy, and reason have been exhausted.
In the article A Time for Radical Empathy - Transforming Society, Terri E. Givens says radical empathy is “moving beyond walking in someone else’s shoes and requires taking actions that will not only help that person but will also improve our society.” He goes on to emphasize the importance of practicing empathy, not merely having it, and breaks down the path to gaining radical empathy into six steps:
- Willingness to be vulnerable.
- Becoming grounded in who you are.
- Opening yourself to the experiences of others.
- Practicing empathy.
- Taking action.
- Creating change and building trust.
I find implementing these steps incredibly useful when engaging with people across the political aisle, because building a mass movement and changing hearts and minds will require talking to the people you disagree with. The goal of the capitalist machine is to divide us and pit us against each other – so to fight it, we must strive to do the opposite. We have to bring people in and create the community we want not only with people who already think like us but with people who are already right next to us.
Meeting People Where They’re At
It is important to meet people where they are at; In Alabama, a lot of times that means Trump supporters. I believe those of us who were raised conservative but have already begun our journey of deconstructing the propaganda, patriarchy, and white supremacy are in a unique position to help others do the same.
Speaking from experience, it takes effort for someone who grew up in a majority-conservative environment to not end up the same way. In the South, Republican is the default, and I imagine many rural areas across the US are similar. In my family, conservative talk and culture was encouraged while anything outside of that was decidedly… not. For me, it was having queer and POC family members, and being bisexual myself, that stopped the conservative mindset from ever truly setting in for me.
But for a lot of the people I grew up around, they didn’t have personal connections to marginalized groups that pushed them to challenge those views in any way. For example, I was 18 the first time I brought up communism to my stepdad. At the time, I didn’t know enough about anything to truly have that discussion how I would now and have since, and at one point, I asked him to define communism for me. He responded, “communism is when the state is holding a gun to your head.”
But I believe that most people, at the root of it, just want to feel safe and feel like they have autonomy over their lives. I try to go into conversations with conservatives with this mindset instead of one that views the person as someone whose values wish harm on others, and allow it to inform my perspective on why they may have formed the beliefs they did. A lot of right-wing extremist views are born out of fear, and holding space and empathizing with that fear is the key to building trust and showing them a path towards meaningful, positive change.
Meeting people where they’re at is the only way to change people’s minds, and we owe it to each other to make sure that we are all working off of the same set of facts and information when discussing critical issues in urgent times like these. If you do have the opportunity to have a civil discussion about politics with a conservative or centrist who’s ready to talk, keep in mind that both sides of the conversation are likely going into this with opposing narratives. Your goal going into the conversation shouldn’t be convincing: It should be understanding, with both sides explaining what they believe and why without turning it into a debate, no matter how much we may feel like our side is the right one. Even if you still disagree at the end, you’ve gained a perspective you otherwise wouldn’t have known.
Avoiding Jargon
It is a known fact that there is a literacy problem in America, and with that comes a research problem. Not knowing how to properly research a topic or find credible sources leads people to fall down the alt-right pipeline. Sometimes teaching people how to do that is where the deconstruction work starts. This can range from showing people how to properly fact-check and spot AI-generated propaganda, to informing them of what an oligarchy in America looks like and the dangers of monopolization, to helping them find and discern reputable sources with something like a media bias chart.
Not everyone is tuned into the same conversations we are – A lot of people are too busy to even be tuned into any conversation – and when we on the left use theory or academic words as shorthand for our ideas, the other person often has their own connotations surrounding those words. Using jargon around those who aren’t as tuned into our ideas often leads us to have to take time from the conversation to break down their misconceptions and lay out what we actually mean. Remember: we’re fighting against allegations of elitism on the left (that have a semblance of truth), as well as the effects of the 20th century communist/ socialist red scare and right wing propaganda against left wing ideals.
What I’ve found to be more useful to bring non-socialists into our discussion is to explain topics and policies as I talk about them. I find it best to leave charged words out of the conversation in favor of breaking down academic language into colloquial terms through a perspective that meets them where they are at. Talking about Socialism to a heavily propagandized American is scary. But talking labor rights to a blue-collar worker? Not as big of a minefield. Taking a more indirect route to explaining theory allows non-socialists to get an understanding of your beliefs without feeling like they need to refute you on principle and be on the defensive for the rest of the conversation — which substantially limits how productive any conversation can be.
Because of these factors, building a mass movement towards socialism might feel like a slow process. If the person you are talking to has similar ideas about socialism and communism to my stepdad all those years ago, then expecting them to become a socialist after one or two conversations isn’t a reasonable expectation. It will require multiple conversations to build trust and bridge understanding. It’s important to create an open dialogue where they can feel free to ask questions and be exposed to our true goals without fear of judgement for them to see that we aren’t the evil boogeyman republicans make us out to be.
Class consciousness is the ultimate goal, and using the language of the working class is your friend when it comes to connecting with people of any political background. We’re all living through the problems caused by the ruling class, so pointing out the problems shouldn’t be an issue. But endless propaganda from the right has people coming to ignorant conclusions about why those problems are occurring.
However, through all these suggestions, I think it’s important to note: Be mindful of who you spend your energy on. If nothing you’ve said over the past decade has made a difference to your MAGA-crazed relative, then maybe your energy is better spent on other people, and cutting them out of your life might be the answer to your sanity.
Breaking the Floodgates
We need to get comfortable working with difficult people and people who don’t perfectly match our personal revolutionary standards and politic— That isn’t to say we should sacrifice our ideals and continue along the “lesser of two evils” track dominating establishment politics in America; it’s been established that that approach does not work.
I say this as a reminder that in the river running towards freedom, we’re all swimming towards the same ocean. No one part of the current will flow at the same pace as the rest; even those right beside each other won’t completely be in sync. But that doesn’t change the fact that we’re all trying to somehow find sea level, pushing against the barriers between us and freedom however we can.
For a dam to hold, it needs floodgates to release enough pressure so it doesn’t crack under the weight. All it takes is enough water moving in the same direction to cause fission. The dam, in this scenario, represents capitalism, and I want to discuss a few of the many different floodgates used to regulate the pressure.
The first floodgate is an old one, one I’ve related back to a quote from Juvenal, a poet in Ancient Rome: “Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt.” Keeping the masses entertained and fed has been a strategy of the owning class for centuries to keep the populace complacent so they’ll turn a blind eye to what is being done to them.
In recent years the cost of living has skyrocketed while the minimum wage has been left untouched. No one can afford to buy groceries anymore, much less a house, and the subscription model is trying its best to squeeze every last nickel and dime out of us. In other words, the bread and circuses have been shrinking.
The second floodgate is the implementation and enforcement of market regulations and social welfare services. The shift at the end of the 20th century towards neoliberalism, trickle-down economics, and deregulation was, I believe, the start of capitalism’s final chapter. Pure capitalism incentivizes the accumulation of resources for personal gain, ultimately leading to the monopolization of industry and oligarchy in its final stages through deterioration of these social welfare services and regulation of corporations. It’s only been the implementation of the regulatory market and social programs that’s mitigated the cannibalistic nature of capitalism and allowed it to survive this long. Yet, the average American today has been conditioned through negative stereotypes to view these programs as an unnecessary use of funds against the backdrop of democratic capitalism, where the idea sold is that anyone can buy their way to a better life.
Which leads me to the third floodgate: the American dream itself. It’s a dream that’s presented as achievable for everyone (though that has never been true). But the fact that even a handful can realize the “white picket fence” dream is enough to convince everyone else who can’t make it that they just aren’t working hard enough. The bootstraps mentality is a lot harder when you don’t have any boots or money to buy boots, or a store close enough to buy the boots even if you did have the money. Many people forget that the so-called “Golden Age”of the American middle class in the 1950’s occurred during a time when market regulations were strict and the wealth tax was high. However, doing those same things today is now considered radical.
When the gates of opportunity shrink down to the eye of a needle, the people are no longer complacent. We need to utilize this energy as an opportunity to bring people into the anti capitalist movement through radical empathy. The cracks in the dam’s foundation formed years ago; it’s only a matter of time before it breaks. We all just have to push.
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