this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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chapotraphouse
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I feel like targeting politically active people who already have some allegiance is a waste of time when there are millions of people without a political allegiance who are much easier to sway (most of the time)
Unless you can easily infiltrate leadership, there's not much you can do. Libs generally aren't going to be swayed if their leadership isn't on board.
Imo the best adult targets for radicalization are people who haven't quite identified their own politics, but are in a position to benefit tremendously from socialism or even just progressive ideas. Everyone else is a waste of time, you'll often find them digging in deeper the more you try so it requires a lot of subtlety and time.
The libs who can be convinced will often convince themselves over time anyway. Sometimes you can speed it up, but again that can sometimes backfire. People will often regress into their comfort zone instead of confronting the levels of cognitive dissonance that can come with radicalization. I think that's probably why it's easier to get people who don't engage with politics/ideology much at all, but already think the US sucks. They don't have to undo an existing idea so much as process a new one, which is always easier.
In small orgs, this is easier than you probably expect. As soon as they use the word "socialism" (to mean Scandinavian social democracy) you're able to be the coolest and most knowledgeable socialist in the room cause you've read theory etc. The key is to be polite even if they're being annoyingly lib, but at that point you're golden.
Understanding class struggle tends to make excellent leaders and even liberals can see that if you take the opportunity to get results. At that point the goal is to educate your peers and build the org, eventually developing a relationship with our even cooler comrades over at PSL (or some such).
Remember these people aren't liberal establishment adherents or else they'd be Democrats. They're probably undereducated potential DemSocs (assuming they're privileged nerds who want to do non-duopoly electoral politics). If that's your style, go for it. If you're a direct action person or more outright revolutionary, obviously not the best fit.
If this group ever were to gain traction in CA I certainly HOPE to see a couple of Hexbearians in leadership.
yeah, this is kind of my thought. this is a group that has probably in the ballpark of 200 active members spread across the whole state. the people in it are at the very least friendly to the idea of socialism - they apparently have some overlap with the PSL or Peace and Freedom Party already, and those people are starting a group in their org that is based on CA independence. From what I heard from party leadership, they are basically berniecrats or to his left who feel deeply upset about how the national dems are handling trump and are aware of the fact that decades of dem rule at the state level hasn't really gotten us any of their goals (universal healthcare, etc) and hasn't protected us from trump.
but yeah they do seem undereducated, for example their manifesto/party charter repeatedly calls california a "nation state" which is an understandable mistake given how those words are used in the US and that even gavin has used such terms to refer to CA but it does show that they haven't really read much political theory at all, much less leftist theory.
they are focusing on organizing at the local level now and i would bet that even a half dozen or fewer comrades could make a local chapter, even for one of CA's big cities, much redder and more politically aware than the statewide org.
i guess the main holdup that i have with it is that i think independence should be for the whole west or west coast and we shouldn't focus just on california. i'd bet that there are a lot of comrades in the PNW that would be receptive to a left-wing independence movement but for obvious reasons someone in seattle or portland might not want to join an org that is just centered on CA.