I’m meant to be going to sleep, but I remembered a time when I saw someone use the scary words in a masterfully executed piece of rhetoric.
She acted like she agreed with the word vomit of red-scare propaganda that was coming out of this dude’s mouth, but redirected the topic to how companies like Walmart have effectively lobbied for socialism, but only for them. This confused him and set him off guard, especially because he had coded her as someone who believes “socialism bad” and so had his guard relatively low already.
She explained that because Walmart pays their employees so low that many of them are reliant on social security benefits, this meant that Walmart was effectively receiving taxpayer subsidies from the government. She seeded the idea that part of why there’s so much red-scare propaganda is because the capitalist class want us rallying against socialism, but she framed it like “companies like Walmart are being deceptive because they perpetuate anti-socialist messaging to detract that they are the main beneficiaries of socialism”. She said it much better though.
It helps that the dude already had pretty strong views in favour of the state doing stuff to look after its people, but had just drank the koolaid about the terms. She facilitated him refining his views on that matter until he was vehemently arguing in favour of socialist policies to all his mates in the pub — he just didn’t know that was what he was arguing. She even managed to link up those views to the anti-corporate angle, so that when he was talking about Walmart being a beneficiary of socialism, it didn’t sound like he was being anti-socialist.
I remember watching in awe of how gracefully she manoeuvred through the conversation. The subtle manipulation she deployed was so skillful that I even wondered whether this was unethical. I concluded it wasn’t though, because ultimately she hadn’t got him saying anything he didn’t already believe. I low-key wish I had a recording of that conversation, because I felt like I learned a lot about how to do guerilla class consciousness building.
I’m meant to be going to sleep, but I remembered a time when I saw someone use the scary words in a masterfully executed piece of rhetoric.
She acted like she agreed with the word vomit of red-scare propaganda that was coming out of this dude’s mouth, but redirected the topic to how companies like Walmart have effectively lobbied for socialism, but only for them. This confused him and set him off guard, especially because he had coded her as someone who believes “socialism bad” and so had his guard relatively low already.
She explained that because Walmart pays their employees so low that many of them are reliant on social security benefits, this meant that Walmart was effectively receiving taxpayer subsidies from the government. She seeded the idea that part of why there’s so much red-scare propaganda is because the capitalist class want us rallying against socialism, but she framed it like “companies like Walmart are being deceptive because they perpetuate anti-socialist messaging to detract that they are the main beneficiaries of socialism”. She said it much better though.
It helps that the dude already had pretty strong views in favour of the state doing stuff to look after its people, but had just drank the koolaid about the terms. She facilitated him refining his views on that matter until he was vehemently arguing in favour of socialist policies to all his mates in the pub — he just didn’t know that was what he was arguing. She even managed to link up those views to the anti-corporate angle, so that when he was talking about Walmart being a beneficiary of socialism, it didn’t sound like he was being anti-socialist.
I remember watching in awe of how gracefully she manoeuvred through the conversation. The subtle manipulation she deployed was so skillful that I even wondered whether this was unethical. I concluded it wasn’t though, because ultimately she hadn’t got him saying anything he didn’t already believe. I low-key wish I had a recording of that conversation, because I felt like I learned a lot about how to do guerilla class consciousness building.
Okay, bed time now — for realsies.
“Guerilla class consciousness building”
As a resident of the American rural south, this is the way.
What a great person! I wish I have awesome social skills like her.
Awesome socialism skills