this post was submitted on 08 May 2024
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[–] UnderpantsWeevil 17 points 6 months ago (2 children)

The MAGA folks really can be comrades if we just reach out to them

Just be straight, Christian, and white.

[–] problematicPanther 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

The hard part will be convincing them that people they don’t like deserve basic human rights. The right wing religious propaganda has really taken hold of them in that regard.

remember when mandela actually became president of south africa after spending 27 years in prison, he made a speech and said something like "the boers are no longer our enemy, they are our countrymen." Basically, they are our enemy now, because they've fallen victim to the propaganda that's been fed to them by the television they watch, the online communities they frequent, the churches they go to and the radio personalities they listen to. But if one can reach out to them, talk to them and get them to listen and hear, then it might be possible to deprogram them from those hateful stances they hold against people who are not like them.

For example, one can try to talk to them about immigration by asking why they don't like immigration. they might respond like "the immigrants take our jobs", which is the lie that is told to them so that they want to fight other working class people instead of focusing that fight on the people who actually are responsible for their suffering: the wealthy.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

remember when mandela actually became president of south africa after spending 27 years in prison, he made a speech and said something like “the boers are no longer our enemy, they are our countrymen.”

And then what happened?

But if one can reach out to them, talk to them and get them to listen and hear

Facts Don’t Change Minds – Social Networks, Group Dialogue, and Stories Do

The best way to break someone out of a partisan media death spiral is to cut the power cord to their television.

I absolutely agree that there are a host of people in a gray zone of misinformation who can be pulled back from the brink. But I'm not multi-billion dollar media mogul capable of saturating their every waking hour with counter-programming. And I'd be foolish to assert I could undo in a few short dialogues what they've ingested after decades.

If you look at what the Feds did with TikTok, that's the real working strategy. Cut people off from a contrary media diet. Shut down radio stations. Starve out newspapers. De-tenure professors with unorthodox historical bias. K-Street Project any lobbyist who won't exclusively back your people. Purge political parties of anyone sympathetic to rival views. Blacklist the Dixie Chicks and get Donahue fired.

That's how you shape the public discourse.

Not by politely asking your 60-year-old uncle to turn down the Michael Savage Radio Hour for a minute and reconsider his white nationalist views.

[–] masquenox 4 points 6 months ago

“the boers are no longer our enemy, they are our countrymen.”

South African here... a disturbingly large proportion of the "boers" don't see it that way - and it's been more than thirty years.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

When I was a lad we used to say

the only reason to be Christian is to be in the closet with a priest

The other two were definitely musts though you would see “n-words beware” “no n-words allowed” graffiti on signs and others of that ilk. Even today you will find Swastika drawn on things around town