Submitted by Sunset_Peach in AskRaddle

I live in a rural place surrounded by republicans, one of my neighbors even flies that yellow "don't tread on me" flag. I can't drive (working on getting my license tho) and my job is part-time with my mom because she can drive me there with her.

It's really depressing me that I can't get anyone on my side and there's no big protests I can join because those all happen in cities.

Maybe I can do online stuff? But I'm not sure what, though. Suggestions?

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timefocus wrote

You can do whatever you wish. Fuck protests, keep your consumption to a minimum, get self-sufficient and read, comrade, read. And enjoy the rural life, never forget enjoying life.

Online projects are also a great idea, if you are into programming, go into open source. If you are not, learn programming. If you are into "facts", contribute to wiki, if you are into arts, do your arts. Help out your mother with daily home work (do your dishes ffs). World is your oyster, forget the my side their side bullshit, there are only degrees of escaping enslavement, and it sounds like you are at a pretty free place.

Remember that they want your world to be about the current politician on the top of the shit heap, and not letting your life revolve around that is in itself an act of revolution.

Or you can move into the beautiful decaying mountain of trash urban life and try that for a while. Your choice really.

Good luck.

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happy wrote

Sounds like you probably have already tried but I would try and slowly radicalize your friends, coworkers, family, neighbors. Ask them questions that their current ideology will be hard to answer and give them hints about anti-authoritarianism and egalitarianism.

Hitchhiking out of town into a bigger city is another possibility if you're up for it.

Armchair activism and hacking are the only things I can thing of online.

Make art, work on creating community outside of politics and collective hate, and now I'm running out of ideas.

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urg3t0ki11r151ng wrote (edited )

Manage your expectations. Converting someone over to your politics requires that the person has thought* of their own interests.

The problem I see often is that they have an ideological alarm system in their brains that prevent them from arguing in good faith. Antifascist, anarchism, socialism, capitalists, wealth-class, the rich, corporations are all tainted with right-wing propaganda.

You can navigate around that by talking directly to their problems without initially bringing up politics at all. Talk about their life, make friends, help them out directly and show them what mutual aid can do. Some people of course are too far down the rabbit hole and you have to use your best judgement. People who are neo-fascists (white-nationalist, ancap, proudboy-chauvinist, etc) I feel are suffering through mental illness and are not safe to engage, you can always bash them :^)

In my experience you have to be likeable. Once they are open to talking in good faith then you can discuss more and more how their situation is designed and enforced by the wealth class, how our planet is changing from habitat to hostile environment, how we have enough productive capability to end most forms of scarcity right now.

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