Social media is flooded with people celebrating the events in Venezuela and it is not abnormal to feel frustrated or even confused by this. This is part of the plan to legitimize these events. This is how consent is manufactured.
You are fighting the CIA and multibillion dollar tech companies shaping these narratives. We as communists are simply outnumbered in this, so it is normal to not reach the crowds they do.
Practice marxist discipline, read theory regarding these subjects. Books like the Jakarta Method or Manufacturing Consent are good starts. Read in on Venezuela. Head over to prolewiki to see what’s available, and don’t lose hope.
Edit: or, as comrades here said, read Inventing Reality instead of MC
The comments on social media everywhere made it shockingly clear that a lot of people have no historical knowledge whatsoever. They are unaware that the US has been doing this shit for decades now. The only difference is that they are now really, really open about it. No CIA cleverness to be found in Venezuela.
History is far too dangerous to the empire to let people learn it.
I was talking to some mid-20s white suburban american kids that we invited over to our home a few months ago. It was bleak. We came away from the experience thinking of them as slack-jawed tiktok-brained zombies that were barely able to make eye contact or communicate at even a basic level. They were borderline illiterate. We tried to cover a lot of history to find something they knew anything about, which was almost nothing at all (which for a ML, can be a moment of great opportunity). But it was just a couple of dead neurons staring at their feet who didn’t show even a modicum of interest or belief, nor would they accept any primary sources of any kind; not books, videos, documentaries, declassified CIA documents. Nothing. We gave them copies of Marx, Lenin and a book about Uncle Ho. We know they will never read them, but fuck it, you have to try, right?
Couple things I found interesting:
It reminds me of Allende in that regard. Open imperialist thuggery and they just rely on the empire drones to be too racist to care.
Speaking about politics, especially foreign policy, for a lot of Americans is considered a bit of a social taboo, at least among white suburbanites in my experience. I’ve one person in my family from this group, and though I do care for them on the basis of the fact they are family, it’s very clear they are uncomfortable with interrogating uncomfortable realities or personal held beliefs. They’ll immediately say it’s rude to speak about politics or religion at a family gathering, but the rest of us non-whites have no issue with arguing on the topic, even when people fundamentally disagree. However the older white suburbanite just refuses to apply their, some times genuinely abundant knowledge, into something actually coherent. In the case of my family again, it’s someone who could legitimately speak to you for over an hour on the abuses of white settlers against the native people, bringing up information that they clearly investigated before hand. Yet if you talk about the politics of today, suddenly your being unpolite. It’s a really baffling experience for me, as I’ve just never struggled with the same lack of curiosity.
The American suburbs are the most damaging part to any Marxist-Leninist movement. A suburban house is essentially a little isolation box where class struggle is far away and U.S. propaganda is up close working its magic. Usually the life in the 'burbs would be:
Anything connecting people to real, material struggle comes like an unwelcome guest. This is the America so many people want to preserve against all odds.
There’s a somewhat explicit connection between the creation of suburbia in the US and anti-communism too.
(This is attributed to William Levitt, who is credited as the father of USian suburbia.
https://time.com/archive/6598189/suburban-legend-william-levitt/
In this case, replace the 2 & 4 with TikTok and instagram. At some point 3 transitions into selling your labour to someone who constantly threatens you with unemployment and homelessness. I get it.
They’re definitely not happy or functional people in my experience. The impression (maybe even analysis) I keep returning to is the Infinite Slop Machine they’re chained to has left them so intellectually and socially underdeveloped – coupled with no desire to address those deficiencies, gives me no hope at all. If anything, they’re closer to become better slaves than revolutionaries. Not even a western thing, It’s becoming like that here too.