My Fox News in-laws “revealed” to my wife that I have evil books (I don’t hide them, they’re on the bookshelf) and that I’m probably a communist. She asked “what even is that?” and they didn’t know how to answer.
Does your wife know you’re a communist? No judgement, I only ask because my wife knows I’m vaguely leftist because that’s what I was when we first met (I was a socdem), we never talk politics beyond single issues in the news sometimes because she’s very apolitical, and I’ve only considered myself a commie the last year and a half or so. But I’ve never brought it up to her or anything, and it’s starting to feel weird to me.
Not sure if it helps, but I personally don't think labels matter much unless you are actively organizing. I even have a hot take that one can only be a "communist" if they are a member of an org, otherwise they're functionally a liberal with better than average political views (perhaps they are a Marxist, or align heavily with the views of communist parties idk...).
I just say that to mean that it might not matter in your case, and you can keep talking to your wife about single issues to whatever level she's interested in that conversation. You can just tee it up so that if you ever got involved with an org (where labels start to matter) and she's like "communism? Socialism? What?" You just respond with "yeah they literally agree with all that shit weve talked about over the years". At that point it's just a tap-in instead of a "grand reveal".
I don't care if this doxes me, it's still wild. One of my prominent, public facing social media accounts used to have a profile picture of me laying flowers at Marx and Jenny's grave. It's very obvious from the picture what I'm doing and who's grave I'm at since the tombstone is shaped like Marx's head and there's a big engraving saying "Workers of all lands unite." Family members used to come to my account too to reminisce or catch up or whatever.
This was my picture for years. I've also been pretty vocal for over a decade now. My own mother didn't realize I'm a communist until this last Christmas where I said hope the next time Jeff Bezos gets in a rocketship that it blows up on the launch pad. Like she audibly gasped and I guess the two cogs in her head finally turned. Straight up, "Wait, are you a communist?!" in a shocked voice
I had sort of the reverse with a co-worker recently where I told him he sounded like a communist because all his beliefs were basically that and he was shocked to find that out
How do people live without being political? Everything is political. How do you live with someone who doesn't in fact know much about you if they don't know this?
A lot of people are weirdly comfortable with their lives and don't feel like anything is structurally wrong. If they have issues they blame themselves or fate. You'll hear a common refrain from them like, "I just want to focus on my own life." They're completely atomized and yet prefer it that way.
This is the majority of white Americans, by the way.
Not being political just means that the status quo works well enough for an individual that they will respond with immediate anger if you are so gauche as to mention something like LGBT people existing
Okay so don't take this in any way than me just relating my personal experience, but while I agree with what you are saying from the position of someone who sees the depoliticization of the working class as disastrous and idealistic, and who does organizing in their community with other commies and socialists, I can't stand politics. I organize with people who are good at it, and several people who like it and went to school for it; but while I can "play the game" as a matter of pure necessity, it is such a source of burn out and negativity. And I honestly don't know what to do about it anymore, because powering through it has stopped working
I get it. But at the same time I don't. I'll try to explain.
I don't know if it's my neurodiversity or what, but I have never been able to separate my personality from politics in any way or politics from everyday life for that matter. Might also be cultural, I don't think these are separated as strongly where I live. I visited the US once and had a partner there for a short while and the difference in this was a revelation to me and I didn't like it. This was the one time I tried to pair up with my literal political opposite and it was a bad time, those shitty politics show up in everyday life: in the way people treat others, think about things, relate to the world, talk about other people, see history, see current affairs etc. I didn't feel we could have a lot in common when this was a guy who started forming an aneurysm if you said "Obama".
I can small talk and work with people who have bad politics (to me), but I won't seek co-operation or closeness with them because I see life as political and don't think the relationship can really be all that great with anyone who for example is very neolib in their thinking. I mean my grocery store choices are political and I will make choices based on that all the time. If that makes sense.
Pretty sure my profession highlights this too as working in welfare is always political, the decisions made always have room for consideration and the direction those decisions go tends to be dictated by the politics of the worker.
It might be that defining politics as a profession, as something external with some special sort of expertise and separating it from the people is actually the issue? The professional politician is definitely a disgusting representation of representative capitalist politics, but to me that isn't what being political means, it's a bastardization of it.
My wife's a hopeless radlib, maybe demsoc. I am very open about my politics and she doesn't care for the most part. I have tried to convert her but she's got somelib hangups and can't accept the historical necessity of violence. so we mostly agree until i say some shit, then she just sighs and calls me crazy. love her
I lean more syndicalist than traditional commie but the hubs is a demsoc and yeah, that's pretty much how our political conversations go when I get "too feisty" lol
The concept both of social violence and violent maintainance of the status quo through cops, imperialism, etc. are helpful. So is a simple trolley-problem framing. The revolutionary socialist does not like violence (or in any case shouldn't), but they see it as necessary for the purpose of stopping the violence that is continuously enacted by the ruling class. If cops were beating someone to death for shits and giggles, would it be wrong to brick them or wrong to not brick them and let their victim suffer and die?
My first long term gf was/is a proud lib. I think we were watching Saving Private Ryan and somehow the conversation got to her asking if I'd have volunteered to serve in Vietnam. I think everyone knows my answer. She goes on this diatribe about the horror of the Soviet Union and communism, the KGB, and the dominoe theory. I pointed out that Vietnam won, and that was the last time we watched a war movie together.
When you say liberal i at least assume democrat. Which democrat thinks about volunteering for Vietnam, thats insane.
There are even republicans who are against that war since the only "reedeming Quality" of that war makes sense If you are a rabid dog that still believes the Red scare.
Idk im european so maybe im overreacting but isnt the Vietnam unpopular for the majority in the US?
It's kind of a mix. The Vietnam War is mostly unpopular now, but at the time there were plenty of liberals foaming at the mouth to "stop communism". They may dislike the conservatives, but they're still nationalists, and being called communists by the republicans all the time has put a chip on their shoulder where they want to prove that they're both patriotic and smarter than them. The Iraq War is a good example: the liberals saw the massive genocidal war crime unfolding in front of them, and their response was "this is so awful and sloppy and senseless, Bush is uniquely stupid, vote for us and we'll do this war of occupation in a smart, sensible way."
They're mostly just as bloodthirsty as the overt right wingers, but they have some kind of decorum/denial fetish that compels them to do little procedural, bureaucratic and semantic dances around their bigotries and libidinal urges, rather than just admit them, even to themselves
My wife gets simultaneously bored and depressed talking about any sort of high level politics. She fully agrees on down to earth concepts and is mad at all the right things in the right way, but if you start categorizing political beliefs and getting into political history she glazes over. I'm the same way when she talks about horses, so we just don't talk about those things much. And since I don't go around saying "I'm a Marxist-Leninist-Hoaxist-Poseidonist" in real life, she probably wouldn't call me anything other than anti establishment, or a socialist maybe
I've had (liberal) coworkers clock me as a commie after a couple months, I have no idea how someone could go years without knowing (or caring?) about your romantic partner's political views
i hope nobody's taking serious this observation from twitter user 'robloxraceplay'. Signaling you are a communist is far far less important than treating people right. If you treat people like people, and your communist beliefs only come up when it becomes salient, your past actions are far more likely to give people pause for thought than any sort of signalling or sloganeering.
He could have just recently woken up from liberalism. “Hey honey I’ve been reading online about communism, capitalism is a crooked system enforced in blood and exploitation.”
Only to be shattered by an unfixable liberal woman. another one down 🪦