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Suppose communism is bad (if you think it's good this isn't addressed to you but sure feel free to chime in). How do you teach normies this?
I mean the kind of normie who lives in a world where powers far beyond them do incomprehensible things like set the prices of stuff in the store, so that some of the stuff they really want is too expensive for them, but look, the store is full of that stuff, so somebody has all this stuff but they're not letting them have it except for way too high a price, those greedy assholes.
And then you try to explain to them how markets work and how prices come to be and it all just comes across to them as some weird bootlicking apologism because they're simply not on that level.
Is there a more "down to earth" approach that is needed? Normies who have deeply internalized rules of decency and ideas of "thou shalt not steal" (often normies with religious backgrounds) seem to naturally be anti-communist.
Now I'm sure some of y'all here (you know who you are) will say these people basically just need to be oppressed because if they have their way civilization is destroyed and everything is shitty for everybody, but if you oppress them then they complain but otherwise you have a civilization that hums along. But I hate this, I feel like there has to be a way to make society work that doesn't require telling a huge segment of the population "stfu and get in line or we're putting you in a cage". And I mean obviously violent (as needed) enforcement of civilized norms is necessary, but I notice there are a lot more people who are sympathetic to communist ideas than are actual active criminals. My point is more about these people, not the active criminals (who I support putting in cages)
Is there really no way to get through to people other than to just tell them shut up and take it because we're trying to run a civilization here
This has been a goal of the libertarian and classical liberal movements for the last century.
I'll try and create a basic walk-through of the general argument. Every single part of it has been greatly elaborated on.
Step 1: The golden rule. Treat others how you'd like to be treated. Establish this first to create some basic level of empathy, and to expand into the idea of rights.
Step 2: Self-Ownership. All humans own three things: their life, their actions, and their body. Taking control of these things from them without their consent is murder, slavery, or rape. Hopefully whoever you are talking with is on board with this.
Step 3: Property-ownership. Humans like to possess things. This is mostly a practical matter. Start small with something the person you know likes to possess, their phone, their car, their clothes, etc. Dyed in the wool communists will generally try to make a distinction between "possession" and "ownership". Don't let them, the distinction is mostly meaningless. Possession is just about how immediately visible your ownership is. Just slowly expand the physical distance between them and their possessions to help them get the point. "You dropped your phone, do you no longer possess it? You left your phone somewhere, should whoever finds it get to keep it?"
Step 4: Examples. You have enough at this point to tear down any communist system. (even just step 1 and 2 might be enough, but step 3 makes it easy). Ask them to provide examples of a communist system or setup, and then show how it violates one of the things they already agreed on. Be aware that communist systems lean heavily into slavery and forced work, so if they don't want to provide examples ask them how a communist system will deal with lazy people / bad jobs / difficult jobs.
And that approach is failing miserably before our eyes.
Despite the state of government I'm not that pessimistic about the results. I think without either movement we would be in a much worse spot.
Are they winning? No, of course not. But they do impact the discourse and the Overton window.
I consider the classical liberals a sort of permanent opposition elite. They are fully capable of using academia and the courts to fight their battles, and they are probably more represented in those institutions than run of the mill religious conservatives.
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