• SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml
    25·
    4 days ago

    Entering the world of blue collar workers is ripping me out of my left wing marxist bubble I had in Belgium. All of my coworkers claim to be right wing. At our friday afternoon drink today several of them voiced their support for AFD winning in Germany saying they are glad they won and that the people have had enough.

    Now, at first you feel like you need to get out of the racist group. But marxist organising for years has prepared me for this. Deep down I believe people are left wing and that they are led on to become right wing by scapegoating of the oppressive bourgeoisie class. So, naturally, you try to engage in their visions and concerns. By asking them some simple questions I managed to get to the core of their problems which were almost all the same: cost of living increase, imaginary enemy created by the media, working too many hours for too long, etc.

    I managed to make a start in poking holes in the fabricated narrative they have inside their head. Too easy for left wingers it is to stick their heads in the sand thinking they just know better than all those racist blue collar workers who mostly vote right wing in this country. Which is a shame, as our very beliefs were founded by these same workers many years ago. The left managed to abandon the working class here resulting in them turning to racist parties.

    This will be a huge task to fullfill but I truly believe that by empathic towards their concerns and steering them in the right direction, I can get these people to change their views. Of course this is possible because of my privileged position of a white man. But someone has to turn the tide. A specter is haunting The Netherlands. It is me.

    • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
      18·
      3 days ago

      This is 100% the right approach. I always tell my German comrades the same thing. Chastising workers who vote AfD will not do anything to bring them over to our side. The AfD managed to do what the left could not, which is validate their real material concerns and offer a solution, however false. We have to engage with them on their level and offer them more than liberal moralism.

      • demeritum@lemmygrad.ml
        15·
        3 days ago

        I usually tell that the AFD will continue the same policies (see Meloni and immigration increasing under her) and that “reducing bureaucracy” is code for gutting welfare systems.

        Besides that foreign policy is the partly the cause for mass-immigration, supporting Israhell, bombing the near east, exporting weaponry, economical exploitating Africa and systematically enforcing underdevelopment.

        Since my family also votes that way I try to emphasize that they broke immigration law to get my stepmother (who is an immigrant) stay in the country, so literally aided in illegal immigration they hate so much.

    • Commiejones@lemmygrad.ml
      12·
      3 days ago

      I like to go off about how horrible immigration is… because western countries are stealing highly trained workers made by the global south to depress wages of western workers. “They out sourced education and having children to the 3rd world. I’d move if I thought I’d get a better life too. Can’t blame people for chasing that bag.”

    • Ember_NE@lemmygrad.ml
      15·
      4 days ago

      You are right comerade. Dismissing workers as “racist and uneducated” is for liberals. When “left” parties adhere to the smugness of liberals and the liberal policies which the workers know are failing them it is no wonder they will listen to the only (and often very well funded) people who claim to be able to help them. But ultimately the “right wing” parties offer no solutions, only more problems, and many I also believe would be open to another real alternative (which has the benefit of being right!). Even if not initially convinced a clear option, with open arms instead of smug elitism, lets them change their minds when they see what rightist policies do to their material conditions.