this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
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I recently made the observation that my friends all seem to have fewer
takes. Like, “blue no matter who” people are coming around to materialism.
I'm noticing the same thing. I'm used to getting huge pushback when I'm fully honest with the people around me about what I think and What Is To Be Done. Since the last year, though, people just nod along mostly (maybe it's just that my kind of rhetoric has lost its novelty as more people become aware of the 'tankie' phenomenon). Honestly, it makes me a bit concerned because I feel like people are at the point where they understand the power that capital has, its intentions, and what's necessary to overcome it; those things actually are fairly clear just from looking around. But they are missing something that those of us who read a bunch of theory got: they don't know that capitalism is guaranteed to create the conditions for its own destruction, so in their minds the seemingly insurmountable odds of the working class seizing power are not just seemingly insurmountable, but really impossible.
The beauty of declining living standards
Of course it would take them watching Kamala Harris spend their donation money on a $100,000 set for "Call her Daddy" and lose the election to Donald Trump.
They keep telling me accelerationism is bad, but how did they expect to deworm the Western brain without it?
I don't think acceleration got us here. Palestine as a wedge issue is forcing the entire right wing to stand together. That's useful and has radicalized the masses. It pushes people to develop class consciousness. Worsening conditions doesn't automatically deworm people, the information environment also has to prime them to question the fascistic world order that underpins their society.
Besides we can already count on the fash to do right acceleration, that's just their playbook. You have more options if you let your opponent throw the first punch.
anecdotally i feel like i experienced the same thing during trump 1 because he heightens the contradictions so much by saying the quiet part out loud all day every day. but a lot of the new class consciousness i thought was forming disappeared overnight once brandon got in and let the libs go back to brunch
this is exactly what i noticed with western libs.
and its not even like their conditions improve with democrats, it seems they just 'feel' like it is. propaganda is a hell of a drug.
it really does come down to "the news is telling me to be mad" vs "the news is telling me everything is fine" for the vast majority of people
I too have noticed that the normie vibes are in perfect lock step with what the MSM says. My dad for example didn’t seem to think anything questionable was happening in Palestine until the day that 60 minutes did a special on Hind Rajib. Then, suddenly, maybe those activists were onto something.
I had a discussion at work the other day where I floated a very material analysis of a situation and my lib co-workers very much agreed with me and commended me for my great insights. It was weird but welcome.
Have also noticed this in my family libs. Still lots of brainworms, but views on for example China are very different from something like 5 years ago.