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Honestly this brings up the fact that for a lot of CHUD conservatives and right-libertarians their ideology really does boil down to “I just want to be left alone to do what I want”. This is really the root of the instinctive “anti-government” and by extension “anti-socialist” ideology of a lot of working people. This is primarily because in the post-Reagan era the material relations of the average (primarily white) American to the government is as an impediment or annoyance. It’s annoying to have to do your taxes. It’s annoying when a cop tickets you for going 13 over the speed limit on an empty road. It’s annoying when a city official tells you zoning regulations means you can’t have both a small shed and a wood shop in the backyard (literally my dad). It’s annoying when you get a tax bill for your fucking car from the city every six months (literally me). It’s annoying to wait in line at the DMV
The primary interaction the vast majority of Americans have with the government is the government telling you you HAVE to do something or you CAN’T do something. Small fucking wonder people hate the government.
And it’s essentially why CHUDs are arguably MORE receptive to Marxist rhetoric than liberals. Liberals have an inherent faith in the ability of good governance. But CHUDs are instinctively hostile to existing authority. And a significant aspect to cure chuddery is telling them that combating this annoying authority requires individual participation in collective organization, participation, and mobilization rather than retreat into atomized individual isolation.
I am literally surrounded by these people (working people who are instinctively conservative but alienated and atomized by neoliberalism), I talk to them in explicitly Marxist rhetoric all the time, they are instinctively receptive to it. It directly appeals to their lived experience - that’s literally the power of Marxism. They certainly don’t instantly convert to the world view, but that’s because they continue to be immersed in neoliberal and reactionary cultural stimuli, and I’m only one man.
But they’re receptive to it. And noticeably more so than liberals. It’s why you often get weird alliances where CHUDs agree with your Marxist criticisms of the Democrats. The reason they have such racist and reactionary responses is because they are fucking immersed in a massive, all-encompassing propaganda apparatus that is effective. You have to expose these people to views they have never experienced before. That’s the whole point of agitating!
completely agree, ive had the easiest time talking sense into libertarians
i really think this has to be because libertarians are one of the only times Americans have to deliberately develop a political identity for themselves, since it’s simply not one of the default outlooks that has been beaten into us yet (yet).
thus they’re already familiar with having to overcome certain aspects of basic American propaganda, but which aspects they’ve been able to overcome is where I guess they end up. Libertarians also easily become nazis if given enough time to themselves.
for a lot of CHUD conservatives and right-libertarians their ideology really does boil down to “I just want to be left alone to do what I want”.
More “I want to so whatever I want while enjoying the fruits of a society I contribute nothing to and actively antagonize.”
The conservatives and right-libertarians who fuck off to the woods somewhere aren’t the ones complaining.
first of all, you have one of the finest descriptions of the American reactionary mindset in that first paragraph that I’ve ever read, however
they are absolutely not receptive to Marxism or any form of class analysis beyond the normal sort of individual incoherence that the average American has.
You talk to them about fighting authority and organizing and they will instantaneously subvert it to be about some nebulous, non-bourgeoisie elite or just Jews. They’re chuds precisely because they can’t or won’t identify class interests. Chuds are hostile to existing authority because they believe it is the incorrect authority. They don’t like existing American authority because they believe it’s full of Jews or it’s too gay or that it’s globalist. Even then, they’d only want to collectively mobilize in the goofy American consumerist way of boycotting or buying certain t-shirts.
