the point isn’t to convert them to MLs instantly or even to show them ML spaces immediately, because even if they were to find them if they’re still in the mindset of “Tankies are evil genocidal bastards” they’ll just take it as further proof of that idea, instead you just have force a crack in the world view by showing that there are for instance nuanced takes that aren’t just “the USSR was either ontologically evil or good and there’s no inbetween” (and you’d be surprised how much you can get away with if you start with “As a disclaimer I’m under no illusion that the USSR was perfect but to claim that it had no benefit for the rights of workers / women / minorities [etcetera]” and then just list of loads and loads of positive things they did and then like two or three complaints from an actually socialist perspective - as long as you don’t say “overall the soviet union was a good thing” at the end and instead leave them to come to the conclusion that they were good for that issue on their own then they’ll think it’s a mostly unideological discussion and won’t dismiss you out of hand as a tankie).
Essentially, you can lead a liberal brainwormed anarchist to the trough of ML ideology but you can’t get them to eat out of it if they still think it’s poisonous
Sure but that’s what makes the spaces not quite what they need to be in order to create this pipe properly. They reach up to a certain point and then they abruptly stop, the hope is that somewhere outside of that space will pick up the slack but if millions of people are carrying off the anti-tankie culture into other spaces too then what you’re getting is a spread of the “don’t radicalise yourself any further” mindset.
The single most important part of the culture to create is to make radicalisation a virtue and to encourage people to radicalise more and more and more. That’s what is needed.
yeah I know, but for now any individual can only do so much and just keep picking away at slowly moving people away from the anti-tankie idea and maybe showing how it’s similar to how Orwell informed on communists in the cold war.
The only real alternative seems to be to start a coordinated astro-turfing project in 196 with alts and maybe bots to sway the conversation.
I do wonder if it might be feasible to become a famous and well-liked poweruser in the community and then reveal being a tankie without completely nuking reputation built up, thus creating a platform from which to be listened to and direct behaviour in the space. The idea is however extremely time consuming to the point of only being possible if unemployed or otherwise online 24/7.
