My mum makes similar complaints, but if I told her to read Lenin, she’d call me a crazy commie trying to radicalise her/recruit her to the local ML party. And don’t get me started on what she’d say and do if I recommended anything Stalin wrote. (Which, from a normie perspective, is fair. Lenin is more snappy and sassy. Can be a lot more fun to read.)
That’s… somehow both surprising, and not. But also explains a lot. If she hasn’t been poisoned about the USSR and about communism by the Red Scare, of course she’d be more willing than my yardstick for mums, that being my own mum and my friends’ mums when I was really little, to read communist theory once given an author’s name to look up.
My mother… lived through the Cold War, but says she didn’t pay much attention. She knows what the USSR was, from a typical imperial core perspective, vaguely. I don’t know if she knows who Lenin was. Talking politics with someone who can do the amount of damage to my life simply by socially withdrawing from me that she can, isn’t worth it for the extremely slight possibility that she might be convinced to read one of my favourite nonfiction books and discuss it with me.
Basically, trying to bring her around is likely to further put her off socialism rather than get her to read about it, and I can’t afford to piss her off by trying.
Yeah I’m not financialy reliant on my mom so I don’t need to worry about that. Once you are stable and on your own you could try to talk more openly with yours. But that’s up to you.
It’s not financial reliance, that would be a lot easier to create other pathways for and rely on a lot of people/groups/tools a little instead of on her a lot. It’s… I have disabilities that are difficult to explain and require a lot of very specific support that is far more difficult to describe and define, that no one else, no matter how passionate they are about helping people or how well paid they are to do it, has ever been able to get right and help me more than they hurt me in trying and failing and in the process viewing me as a small child. Mum is the only one who’s ever been able to usefully help without treating me like I’m three years old and walking all over me.
So yeah, I can’t afford her not wanting to be around me. And because it’s such a direct thing, the bar for how much is safe to irritate her is far, far lower than your typical “I can’t piss my mum off because she pays my rent/she’s my landlord and I can’t afford to rent a room elsewhere” situation.
Ah yeah that’s definitely more complicated. I’d say to just look at it like nobody is ever going to agree 100% with you on everything right? So try to focus on the areas where you do get along with her, and make the best of it.
Indeed. I don’t talk politics unless she brings it up, and truth be told, when it comes to day to day policy, electoralism, and reformist strategies that aren’t truly left but do reduce the harm that capitalism does to the worst off folks, we agree on a lot. And like… I don’t think she’d join a Bolshevik Party or go to that anti war protest that one February that got out of hand, but I also don’t think she’d run for the border when the tsar gets shot, y’know? She doesn’t hate communism to the point she’d flee if dropped into a socialist country or insulated from the full devastation of a civil war but then still in place as the work of rebuilding the nation begins, but she also wouldn’t actively work to bring it about. (My dad, though… if we were picked up from where we are and plopped down in a socialist country, I think he’d panic and flee, whether the rest of us went with him or not, if a revolution broke out here, I think he and Mum would argue a lot - he doesn’t want to live in a socialist country, she doesn’t want to lose me, and they both know damn well I’m either staying put quietly or joining the revolutionary army.) And really, that’s the best I could ask for in a parent, who was a child of the Cold War - that if a communist revolution took place tomorrow, she’d probably stay in the country along with me. Even if she wouldn’t come out with me to fight for it.
So yeah, she’s… I think if my dad was a communist too, I’d dislike her politics a lot more. But as it is? Dad’s an old Cold Warrior, brother’s a stereotypical teenage anarchist. Mum’s the least reactionary of the lot.
And when we don’t talk politics, we agree on almost everything. She’s my best friend. I wouldn’t want to potentially wreck that even if I wasn’t reliant on her for something extremely nonfungible that I can’t get any other way.
I’m not entirely certain mine wouldn’t report me to federal antiterrorism for telling her that.
My dad? He’d drag me into a city police station to ask the desk cop where he should report a Soviet spy. Generally act like a very confused old Cold Warrior. Just to terrorize me as much as possible, with no real intent to actually cause the government to waste any time on me.
My mum makes similar complaints, but if I told her to read Lenin, she’d call me a crazy commie trying to radicalise her/recruit her to the local ML party. And don’t get me started on what she’d say and do if I recommended anything Stalin wrote. (Which, from a normie perspective, is fair. Lenin is more snappy and sassy. Can be a lot more fun to read.)
Well before i mentioned him my mom didnt know who lenin was. I dont think she even knows what the USSR was.
Oh wow… happy reading to your mom!
That’s… somehow both surprising, and not. But also explains a lot. If she hasn’t been poisoned about the USSR and about communism by the Red Scare, of course she’d be more willing than my yardstick for mums, that being my own mum and my friends’ mums when I was really little, to read communist theory once given an author’s name to look up.
My mother… lived through the Cold War, but says she didn’t pay much attention. She knows what the USSR was, from a typical imperial core perspective, vaguely. I don’t know if she knows who Lenin was. Talking politics with someone who can do the amount of damage to my life simply by socially withdrawing from me that she can, isn’t worth it for the extremely slight possibility that she might be convinced to read one of my favourite nonfiction books and discuss it with me.
Basically, trying to bring her around is likely to further put her off socialism rather than get her to read about it, and I can’t afford to piss her off by trying.
Yeah I’m not financialy reliant on my mom so I don’t need to worry about that. Once you are stable and on your own you could try to talk more openly with yours. But that’s up to you.
It’s not financial reliance, that would be a lot easier to create other pathways for and rely on a lot of people/groups/tools a little instead of on her a lot. It’s… I have disabilities that are difficult to explain and require a lot of very specific support that is far more difficult to describe and define, that no one else, no matter how passionate they are about helping people or how well paid they are to do it, has ever been able to get right and help me more than they hurt me in trying and failing and in the process viewing me as a small child. Mum is the only one who’s ever been able to usefully help without treating me like I’m three years old and walking all over me.
So yeah, I can’t afford her not wanting to be around me. And because it’s such a direct thing, the bar for how much is safe to irritate her is far, far lower than your typical “I can’t piss my mum off because she pays my rent/she’s my landlord and I can’t afford to rent a room elsewhere” situation.
Ah yeah that’s definitely more complicated. I’d say to just look at it like nobody is ever going to agree 100% with you on everything right? So try to focus on the areas where you do get along with her, and make the best of it.
Indeed. I don’t talk politics unless she brings it up, and truth be told, when it comes to day to day policy, electoralism, and reformist strategies that aren’t truly left but do reduce the harm that capitalism does to the worst off folks, we agree on a lot. And like… I don’t think she’d join a Bolshevik Party or go to that anti war protest that one February that got out of hand, but I also don’t think she’d run for the border when the tsar gets shot, y’know? She doesn’t hate communism to the point she’d flee if dropped into a socialist country or insulated from the full devastation of a civil war but then still in place as the work of rebuilding the nation begins, but she also wouldn’t actively work to bring it about. (My dad, though… if we were picked up from where we are and plopped down in a socialist country, I think he’d panic and flee, whether the rest of us went with him or not, if a revolution broke out here, I think he and Mum would argue a lot - he doesn’t want to live in a socialist country, she doesn’t want to lose me, and they both know damn well I’m either staying put quietly or joining the revolutionary army.) And really, that’s the best I could ask for in a parent, who was a child of the Cold War - that if a communist revolution took place tomorrow, she’d probably stay in the country along with me. Even if she wouldn’t come out with me to fight for it.
So yeah, she’s… I think if my dad was a communist too, I’d dislike her politics a lot more. But as it is? Dad’s an old Cold Warrior, brother’s a stereotypical teenage anarchist. Mum’s the least reactionary of the lot.
And when we don’t talk politics, we agree on almost everything. She’s my best friend. I wouldn’t want to potentially wreck that even if I wasn’t reliant on her for something extremely nonfungible that I can’t get any other way.
my mom would probably report me to the fbi or something if i told her to read Lenin
I’m not entirely certain mine wouldn’t report me to federal antiterrorism for telling her that.
My dad? He’d drag me into a city police station to ask the desk cop where he should report a Soviet spy. Generally act like a very confused old Cold Warrior. Just to terrorize me as much as possible, with no real intent to actually cause the government to waste any time on me.