More seriously though, cognitive behavioural theory argues that thoughts, feelings, and behaviours reinforce one another. You may have heard the term “cognitive dissonance” when it had its time in the limelight as the buzzword du jour; that’s the discomfort that happens when two of those things aren’t in alignment. Changing behaviour is hard, so most folks will naturally take the path of least resistance and just begin to believe differently.

We exist in an alienating system that requires unnatural behaviour in order to survive it (e.g., working a meaningless job for a wage). This is where we get the “you claim to hate capitalism, yet you participate in it- curious…” bullshit. It comes from people who can’t stand that dissonance and so have defaulted to convincing themselves that capitalism must be good. The majority of people, however, don’t even get that far. Even the idea of changing one’s behaviour - especially behaviours practically required to survive an inherently fucked system - is off-putting. “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.”

Like others described, it’s a combination of factors like learned helplessness, self-delusion, willful ignorance, and of course the systems of propaganda/indoctrination that reinforce it. And of course, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” Yet the folks responsible for defining pathology are entrenched in the system(s) responsible in the first place.

Side note, psychopathology is largely a weapon wielded against the proletariat, and I think we should consider not legitimizing the tools of our oppressors

Bigotry, supporting movements that go against your interests and cause violence aren’t necessarily personal failings, it’s the result of bourgeois society and our capitalist superstructure and them instilling these values through education, media, communities and so on.

This doesn’t apply only to reactionary thought, but also to “”“truths”“” we happen to take for granted like current political economy and mode of production (nobody talks about it anymore and just accepts capitalism as granted, and anti-capitalists are closer to anti-consumerists and reformists), nationalism, electorialism, morality and so on.

Despite how horrible they can be, they’re as much of a victim of the system as anyone, and the only way to make them see the truth is to have them experience it for themselves. Same applies to delusional progressives.

My 5c:

We are not all the same and our priorities very quite strongly depending on our experiences, character (scale between fearful and curious), current state of mind etc. Most of the people are not particularly interested in freedom or justice and prefer illusion of stability, as they have no confidence, that they can function without hierarchical structures. In order to defend that illusion (of stability), they are ready to lie or do unspeakable things, because without the illusion they would be forced to confront their deepest fears of inadequacy and fear of death, as the root of all fears. Our capability to lie to others and to ourself is arguably one of the main engines of civilization (we call it “Abstract Thinking”) and for the masters of lies it is simply too easy to rationalize actions, situations and atrocities and construct imaginary worlds, where every convenient shit is justified.

As long as that fearful majority thinks that it has something to lose (status, comfort, future…), they will defend status quo (hierarchical, boot-licking structures) with tooth and nail.

We all have some of it inside, to different degree.

It’s probably dangerous to think this is just any one thing. For the vast majority of people it’s likely just a form of normalization. If you’ve been involved with anarchism (or other radical politics) for a while it can be hard to remember just how normalized state repression or even state violence is. Similar to “capitalist realism” people just aren’t used to imagining that things could be differently. Addressing that would involve both arguing that certain things (such as police defaulting to violence) shouldn’t be considered as normal, while also presenting viable alternatives that we could be doing right now. For that last part I think the concept of prefigurative politics plays a big role.

I’d perhaps cautiously suggest that some sort of “learned helplessness” or a variation thereof could also be at play. When you lack agency and bad outcomes seem to happen regardless of what you do, many people will just passively accept the bad outcomes. Here I think people should be shown that through community and agency you can create positive outcomes. Getting people even tangentially involved in any form of direct action has been (in my experience) a good way to make that happen. It is, however, rather challenging to get people to take that step. Telling them about (successful) forms of direct action will be necessary here. Someone I know recently had the realization that direct action can have a much bigger impact than they thought after watching the documentary “To Kill A War Machine.”

Most people also just don’t have the necessary handholds to think about all of this. The necessity of a government or the continued existence of capitalism is taken as a given, the same as gravity or magnetism. A lot of effort gets put into making sure this is the case and most people don’t have the time, energy, or inclination to look into it much deeper.