Asklemmy

I've never done something on the scale I'm describing, so this is mostly just speculation, but I hope it could be useful.

First of all, find the people who do care. Talk with them. Make a local antifascist group in a secure messenger (Matrix/XMPP, or at the very least Signal), or join an existing org that you disagree with the least (don't be afraid of the word "socialist" if you stumble upon them). Do not discuss anything illegal, as it could spell trouble for everyone - you live in an (increasingly) authoritarian country with a wide range of tools to repress you. Keeping it legal at least makes it less likely.

Now that you have a support network, you can start reaching out. Until/unless your organization gains serious traction, unite over common goals instead of squabbling over your differences. DO NOT guilt anyone for being financially well off, voting for the wrong candidate, believing in stupid things, etc. Find people who are somewhat unhappy or unsure about concentration camps. Try convincing them that concentration camps are bad - it probably would be easier if they are on the fence already or if they are being unjustly treated themselves. Show compassion. Do not be condescending or use the words that may trigger them (Nazism, etc), instead appeal to humanity and empathy to specific people who are being repressed. Bring some examples of unjust repression with you. Do not overdo it - you don't (yet) have to agree on anything except that these concentration camps are bad. Propose to do something together - it can be small at first, like calling your representative or organizing a picket - common action builds connections and mutual understanding.

Have you ever wondered how people reacted to the original Nazis in the 1930s? Well... now you know. If can feel proud of something, it is at least I am extremely against it and the whole 'what would you have done?' is basically answered definitively for me.

call them american

You don't.

A large swath of Americans have made it clear they don't care to pay attention and won't care until it personally affects them.

So we're simply going to have to watch our nation decline until the majority of Americans have personally been affected. Then we'll begin a long, difficult path to gaining back what we lost, just to get back to where we were before the decline happened. Then we'll be happy to be back in the same shitty situation we were before and probably let things slide back into a decline again.

Americans are stupid. And there's nothing you can do to change that.

If the concentration camps were started during the Obama administration and (nobody cared), then were operated during the first Trump admin and (the only caring-concern was performative) then they continued to operate under the Biden admin (while still nobody cared) then why would people suddenly start caring now?

BTW I'm referring to the immigrant concentration camps near the border. What ones are you referring to?

I heard something on a radio show during Covid on how to talk to people who have "gone down the rabbit hole". It was discussing MAGA as a cult. The guest on the show was a woman who was raised in a cult in the 70's and she "got out" and spent her time talking with others in the cult to help them to break free. I can't find a reference to the show, but I think it was Carrie Miller hosting.

My takeaway was that you can't come at people and tell them that everything they know is wrong and you will show them the way. They'll fight you. You need to deprogram them similarly to how they were programmed into the cult. Small bits, here and there to slowly guide them to questioning their beliefs. Once that happens, show them how to research and seek out information and let them know that they will be safe.

If someone found a link to the podcast/radio show, I'd be super happy.

Don't waste your energy on people who won't listen.

Look for people, places and groups that support your own beliefs.

If you can't find those people at work, then just be nice to them but not too close. Them in your free time, use your energy to support those people and groups you believe in.

Don't waste your time on those who won't listen.

I sometimes wonder is Trump does a lot of crazy sounding shit to make people who speak against him sound insane.

My (great)-grandparents were part of the Dutch resistance during WW2. Along with a full 1.5% of the population.

Most people will not do anything, even if they are literally rounding up people for a genocide.

On the more positive side, a lot of people will support the resistance in small ways.

The number of people who actually, whole heartedly collaborated with the Nazi's was quite small.

Even some of the German soldiers stationed in their village would turn a blind eye. Some of them realized they were on the wrong side and they just did the bare minimum of what they needed to do to not get in trouble and not get killed.

Perhaps you can find inspiration from Daryl Davis, who convinced 200 Klansmen to give up their robes.

https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinced-200-ku-klux-klan-members-to-give-up-their-robes

I had a conversation with my second grade teacher on Instagram the other day. I posted Matthew 25:35-40 on my story with the comment “I can’t believe so many Christians I know support a president and a government that would willingly and forcefully kick Jesus himself out of the country thousands of times.”

She replied saying that this verse doesn’t apply for the same reason that I don’t allow just anyone into my house: because there are people who shouldn’t be there. There’s just so many things wrong with her logic AND her premises that I barely knew where to start, and that’s part of the problem. Fascism works by sowing doubt in the fabric of credibility. All she really knows is that her idea of Jesus comforts her, and so finding comfort somewhere probably means she can find Jesus and righteousness there too. You can’t really teach someone to care because they probably already do care, but you have to teach them to see the things that are actually happening, to trust the real experts, and to see the connections between themselves and the people who need care.

You can stop using stupid shit like "cishet white" for starters. Statistically, most people who do not care will be cishet white. Those who care, will also mostly be cishet white. With this type of exclusionary discourse bordering on racism, no one will ever listen to you because from the start, you already sound like you have nothing important to say. There's three types of people in the US: Slaves working 2 and 3 jobs to make ends meet, middle class being pit against the slaves by the third group, the capital. By using exclusionary discourse, assimilated from bougie fake activism, you're promoting infighting within the classes that should be hunting the capital like animals, the French way!

Edit: your country has sacrificed countless children to never eschew the right to bear arms. Well, stop bitching online to make yourself feel good and use them.

I spend a good amount of energy trying to explain the merits of Marxism-Leninism and Leftism in general on Lemmy (and IRL, though that's much trickier). Ultimately, you can't make someone care. You can't convince people of something they choose not to want to believe, either, no matter how much evidence you throw at them. Roderic Day wrote a great article titled Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of "Brainwashing" that perfectly encapsulates this process. People license themselves to believe whatever it is that they believe benefits themselves, regardless of evidence or empathy.

What you can do, however, is explain the merits of that which you believe in, and this is far more effective with people already targeted by the current system. Those closest to the edge, those radicalized by their conditions but not yet organized or versed in theory, are the perfect people to talk to. The effort required to gain an ally in that sense is far less than someone who is convinced that the system is fine, but just needs a little tweaking. Building strength through organization helps legitimize your positions and expands the circle, so to speak, by moving the "line of radicalization" further. Person A, who believes the system is fine but needs tweaks, goes from comfortably mainstream into the new line of radicalization, one step away from working to supplant the system, when those who were radicalized near them organize.

Further still, as conditions deteriorate, more people are impacted and more people are radicalized. This is both good and bad, bad in the sense that more are affected by the evils in society to a greater degree, but with the good being further chance of organization.

Just my 2 cents as someone who has spoken with many different people about Marxism.

Do you want people to care or do you want to lecture people who don't agree with you. People like to give lectures on politics, but no one listens to them. If you want people to care you have to care about them.

The first thing I would ask is, have you made any attempts to really understand what motivates them and why they believe as they do? Given your flippant dismissal of their belief systems, I suspect you have just mentally bucketed them and, instead of really trying to understand them, you fall back on your per-conceived notions of what you think they believe. Without that understanding, you will never be able to "make people care", because you are not treating them as fully formed people with their own beliefs and priorities. You expect that, if you just yell at them loudly enough, they will come around. They won't and, if anything, they will just dig their heels in further. To them, you're this guy:

Not everyone has the same priorities you do. What you see as "the most important thing in the world" may fall much further down the list for someone else. They may not even see it in the same framing you do. Maybe they do care about your thing, but they have their own "most important thing" and if your thing and their thing are in contention, they are going to pick their thing. This is part of the reason we have politics in the first place, once you start dealing with other people and trying to decide what and how things should be prioritized and run, you are going to run into differing beliefs and priorities. It's why most government polices generally suck and don't get everything done. Because those policies are the result of compromise between people with different and often competing priorities. And yes, it may be that some of those other priorities come from bad information, though more often they will come from radically different base beliefs. And not understanding what those beliefs actually are means that you will not have any sort of basis for convincing them of anything.

Changing peoples' minds is hard. But, it starts from a place of understanding people and not dismissing their beliefs. Step back from your outrage for a moment and try to really get in their heads. You may not agree with their position, but you need to understand how they got there before you have any chance of getting them out of it. And, maybe you can't. It may just be that they have some foundational beliefs which are completely at odds with what you want to convince them of. But, if you know and understand that, it becomes much easier to walk away from the situation and not waste time and energy on a hopeless fight. And while it feels good to yell at people, that basically never works and only serves to push them further away.

Lots of good answers here already. I'll just add that Jon Stewart recently did a great segment that touches on this. Basically, he says if everything the government does is "OmG nAzIz FaScIsTz TrAiToRz!!!" then people who aren't already paying attention will continue tuning it out. I forget at which time in the video he gets to this point, but honestly the whole 20-minute video is worth a watch.

Not everything works out in life.

exclusively cishet white population who are financially well off.

...there's your problem.

Why would they care? At worst they're unaffected. At best they're benefitting. What is their impetus for change?

People won't care until negative things start effecting them. Even at that point, many will still deny negative things are happening or they will put the blame somewhere else. This is why I believe things are going to have to get bad, really bad, before they can turn around. The biggest thing to go bad would be the economy. An economy so bad would be hard to deny and live with. Unfortunately, the more money you have, the longer you can "deal with" a bad economy, and still think everything is okay.

What would you like for them to do? Have they discussed how they vote with you? Or how they spend their money? Maybe they just don't want to talk about it at work?