I’m dumbstruck as to what to do. The US is building literal concentration camps, and none of my co-workers care at all.
In fairness, I work in healthcare with an almost exclusively cishet white population who are financially well off.
Many of them espouse to be Christians, and no one cares at all that the American government is following the exact playbook from Nazi Germany.
What do you do? How do you make people care before it’s too late?
If the concentration camps were started during the Obama administration and (nobody cared), then were operated during the first Trump admin and (the only caring-concern was performative) then they continued to operate under the Biden admin (while still nobody cared) then why would people suddenly start caring now?
BTW I’m referring to the immigrant concentration camps near the border. What ones are you referring to?
You don’t.
A large swath of Americans have made it clear they don’t care to pay attention and won’t care until it personally affects them.
So we’re simply going to have to watch our nation decline until the majority of Americans have personally been affected. Then we’ll begin a long, difficult path to gaining back what we lost, just to get back to where we were before the decline happened. Then we’ll be happy to be back in the same shitty situation we were before and probably let things slide back into a decline again.
Americans are stupid. And there’s nothing you can do to change that.
I sometimes wonder is Trump does a lot of crazy sounding shit to make people who speak against him sound insane.
Have you ever wondered how people reacted to the original Nazis in the 1930s? Well… now you know. If can feel proud of something, it is at least I am extremely against it and the whole ‘what would you have done?’ is basically answered definitively for me.
My (great)-grandparents were part of the Dutch resistance during WW2. Along with a full 1.5% of the population.
Most people will not do anything, even if they are literally rounding up people for a genocide.
On the more positive side, a lot of people will support the resistance in small ways.
The number of people who actually, whole heartedly collaborated with the Nazi’s was quite small.
Even some of the German soldiers stationed in their village would turn a blind eye. Some of them realized they were on the wrong side and they just did the bare minimum of what they needed to do to not get in trouble and not get killed.
Something I’ve had to accept over the course of my life is that the vast majority of humans will passively accept anything as long as they feel like there’s something they can do to not be killed. Only when it feels out of control whether they might be killed will the majority of people feel the need to act and no sooner. There has never been any changing this. Fortunately the vast majority of people are not needed to affect positive change. People who care need to set the tone and followers will follow as they do. Your efforts would be better served among people actively resisting or building structures that benefit people.
Perhaps you can find inspiration from Daryl Davis, who convinced 200 Klansmen to give up their robes.
I don’t do anything particular, I guess
Not everything works out in life.
You could start by engaging and reaching out. For example, assuming someone doesn’t care because of their race, gender identity and job is kinda shitty. Maybe look into those internal biases.
The next part would be finding out how they are and will be effected by this new presidency. Sometimes people have a hard time caring about a problem if it doesn’t affect them directly. You might have to get to know your coworkers rather than make assumptions about them to learn this.
Being polite and nice to them also helps, no one wants to hear from someone who’s screaming at them.
I had a conversation with my second grade teacher on Instagram the other day. I posted Matthew 25:35-40 on my story with the comment “I can’t believe so many Christians I know support a president and a government that would willingly and forcefully kick Jesus himself out of the country thousands of times.”
She replied saying that this verse doesn’t apply for the same reason that I don’t allow just anyone into my house: because there are people who shouldn’t be there. There’s just so many things wrong with her logic AND her premises that I barely knew where to start, and that’s part of the problem. Fascism works by sowing doubt in the fabric of credibility. All she really knows is that her idea of Jesus comforts her, and so finding comfort somewhere probably means she can find Jesus and righteousness there too. You can’t really teach someone to care because they probably already do care, but you have to teach them to see the things that are actually happening, to trust the real experts, and to see the connections between themselves and the people who need care.
A good Christian would let people stay in their house, though. If they were robbed, they would still have treasure in heaven.
More Christians faith is paper thin at best.
In Luke, when Jesus says (again) to love thy neighbor literally the next question someone poses to him is “but who is my neighbor?” Jesus responds with the tale of the Good Samaritan. In this story there is a man, a traveler from a foreign land, who was robbed and beaten and left on the roadside, suffering and ignored by passing strangers (including a priest). The Good Samaritan feeds him, fixes him up, and puts him up at an inn.
There’s two laws… two. The first is to love God, the second is to “go and do likewise” as the Good Samaritan did. I’m a godless commie and I know this shit.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+10%3A25-37&version=NIV
I would say that the initial problem here, is that people give a single shit what a 2000+ year old, bronze-age sex manual, has to say about literally fucking anything.
If they claim to care about it then it can be used to point out their hypocrisy.
Sure, but part of the problem then is that you have to convince them of that, and that’s even harder than arguing and using the Bible as at least part of your premise
People talking about people about concentration camps after Democrats have supported a genocide campaign in a concentration camp for more than a year.
You can tell OP does not believe any person outside of America is human.
I have just creeped this womans ENTIRE POST HISTORY back to the beginning and there is not SHIT to support this narrative you awful fucking little goblin. She has posted NOTHING that I saw even vaguely political (at a skim) to suggest she vocally supported the excesses of the IDF, sick inadequacy of the Biden administration, or anything except generic girl stuff. What the FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU. I am more of a regime whore than she is. Get a fucking grip .mls.
The fucks that left unity you assholes use to browbeat anarchists with?
To be frank I know this is a bad faith poster so I don’t value them or anything they have to say in response. This is what blocklists are for. I am pointing this dog shit out for the rest of you. WHAT IS THIS? Because it looks purposelessly cynical and divisive for the sake of keeping people down and tired. Almost state-actor like, if I may be so bold.
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I did not check their post history.
I simply read the post and concluded if this is the point OP starts caring about concentration camps they have either been tuned out for the past 1.5 years or they need to rethink a lot of things.
You do understand that it’s possible to oppose genocide on principle wherever it happens and to still be able think it’s alarming when it escalates further, right?
You are entirely missing the point.
Being surprised the average American is fully on board with concentration camps and genocide should not come as a surprise anymore.
Yeah okay, I get that.
Amen.
You can tell OP does not believe any person outside of America is human.
You did a lot more than conclude they have either been tuned out or need to re-think some things, and you know it.
Get out of here with that "If you’re not vocally against every evil at all times… " bullshit. It’s got the same energy as injecting “but what about men?” into every conversation about women’s problems.
No. This is pointing out that there have been concentration camps and extermination for a year and a half and people have not cared for a year and a half.
Weird point to start noticing that people do not care.
I heard something on a radio show during Covid on how to talk to people who have “gone down the rabbit hole”. It was discussing MAGA as a cult. The guest on the show was a woman who was raised in a cult in the 70’s and she “got out” and spent her time talking with others in the cult to help them to break free. I can’t find a reference to the show, but I think it was Carrie Miller hosting.
My takeaway was that you can’t come at people and tell them that everything they know is wrong and you will show them the way. They’ll fight you. You need to deprogram them similarly to how they were programmed into the cult. Small bits, here and there to slowly guide them to questioning their beliefs. Once that happens, show them how to research and seek out information and let them know that they will be safe.
If someone found a link to the podcast/radio show, I’d be super happy.
Great comment. Trump won and the amount of people here throwing the Nazi word around still don’t realise how self defeating they are.
You can’t tell someone their an idiot or evil and then expect them to try seeing things your way, you’re much more likely to end up entrenching their beliefs. The goal should be to win them over, that won’t be accomplished by telling them how wrong and stupid they are.
Engage, don’t alienate, no matter how hard that feels at times.
Trump won and the amount of people here throwing the Nazi word around still don’t realise how self defeating they are.
Sometimes you have to call Nazis Nazis. And people who support Nazis are Nazis. And sometimes you can’t deprogram a Nazi.
These aren’t victims. They’re intentionally malicious people.
I have the urge to help victims. I have another urge entirely in regards to Nazis.
They’re*
The thing is, a lot of these people are literally Nazis, and I’m starting to wonder if it was “people saying Nazi too much” or it was actually “there was a fuckton of Nazis and no one took people saying that seriously and now there’s Nazis around and people are blaming the folks who were warning others about the Nazis for not seeing Nazis soon enough”
Since we’re not in a .world comm, there were just a lot of fucking Nazis. The US has always been significantly further right wing than it’s contemporary nations, at least since the 1800s, but since the 1920s it basically accelerated to light speed. Every minor progressive victory was a half century or more after other countries, and immediately hated by more than half the country; hence why so many rights in the US are tenuous scotus decisions and not laws.
The rest of the world after the 1950s has viewed you guys as the next Nazis. Hell even in WW2 you were only the good guys by comparison, and even then the Soviets were the protagonists of that era with all their flaws.
Only very recently and only in aesthetics has the US really made any strides, and because you chose aesthetics over legislation that progress was easy to destroy. You had a far right wing black president people called progressive because of the color of his skin, you ‘legalized’ gay marriage without legislation, you had all other companies doing rainbow capitalism to show how open and progressive your society was, despite having the highest wealth inequality in the world – and that’s no easy feat, North Korea exists.
The fall of the US to fascism was inevitable, because both the ruling class and the majority populous has always fully supported fascism, they just hate the aesthetics.
This is as inspiring as it is terrifying.
You can stop using stupid shit like “cishet white” for starters. Statistically, most people who do not care will be cishet white. Those who care, will also mostly be cishet white. With this type of exclusionary discourse bordering on racism, no one will ever listen to you because from the start, you already sound like you have nothing important to say. There’s three types of people in the US: Slaves working 2 and 3 jobs to make ends meet, middle class being pit against the slaves by the third group, the capital. By using exclusionary discourse, assimilated from bougie fake activism, you’re promoting infighting within the classes that should be hunting the capital like animals, the French way!
Edit: your country has sacrificed countless children to never eschew the right to bear arms. Well, stop bitching online to make yourself feel good and use them.
By using exclusionary discourse, assimilated from bougie fake activism
This is a totally normal, relatable sentence
I’ve seen some leftist arguments that were denser than lead, this ain’t that. Let me rephrase for them, though:
Stop allowing social media fart sniffing contests control how you do activism. There’s mastodon, and then there’s real life.
Stop allowing social media fart sniffing contests control how you do activism
I’m onboard with this sentence. I’m sorry, but if you’re going to preface an argument on the premise of kneeling to another’s level, then actually commit to the kneel.
I used that term to show that they are privileged folks who likely won’t be directly targeted by the administration, at least at first.
Ah yes, mob “justice” always works so well.
Nobody is advocating for cross burning. People need to rise against the first steps of a totalitarian government that only serves the oligarchy.
Don’t waste your energy on people who won’t listen.
Look for people, places and groups that support your own beliefs.
If you can’t find those people at work, then just be nice to them but not too close. Them in your free time, use your energy to support those people and groups you believe in.
Don’t waste your time on those who won’t listen.
Look for the helpers.
What do you do when those people are your family?
Easier said than done (though recent events have made it a little easier).
