Title basically. He has multiple times sent me anti-communist propaganda, hes leftist but he doesnt know enough about capitalism to hate it, nor marxism to understand it. He just goes with the western mainstream left of hoping things will change by voting, even living in one of the most corrupt western governments. And just like that he hates communism with the typical 8 morbillion dead argument. I think sending him any response about this is gonna make him mad. How do I deal with this situation?
Let him know that you think those anti-communist materials are wrong or misleading. Offer to explore some of these topics in depth with him in some format(s) that’s agreeable to both of you (video, books, podcasts, whatever). Let him pick some sources, and you pick some sources, and then you both discuss them together.
Most people who are anti-communist are reflexively so, and have simply never heard a lot of key history. Just studying/exploring/discussing communism and its history can undo a lot of that.
As tempting as it might be, you don’t have to go through everything in the propaganda they’ve sent you sentence by sentence and then debunk it. Just have a conversation with them about it and take a look at the real stuff together.
Yeah, this is a good way, lets hope he doesn’t get scared at the word communism.
To reinforce what redtea said, talk about ideas, concepts, try not to use communist jargon, just let the ideas speak for themselves. If your friend has heard any marxist terminology it has almost certainly been painted in a negative light, and they’ve probably been lied to about what it actually means.
Start by getting them onto the same page as you with caring about people and slowly but surely work with them to introduce ideas and terminology once they’re in a better position to just not reject it out of hand. Don’t ever try a “gotcha” moment where you reveal that you were secretly teaching them communist stuff, always stick to a “this is what I believe” or “don’t you think these ideas are useful ones?” always keep it personal.
They might be able to reject some abstract spooky scary communism that Ben Shapiro told them killed a million billion people, but they can’t reject their friends easily, especially if they agree with them, and if your friend has any empathy at all, they will agree with you, because communist ideas are about helping people.
You don’t have to use it for a long time. You can talk about Marx and Marxists and Marxist ideas. You don’t even have to mention Marx all that much. They’ll realise they’ve become a communist too late.
I was unaware that Marxists were communists. I mean, I knew that communists could be Marxists. But when I heard my friends talking about Marx, it never crossed my mind that they might be communists because that’s outrageous. By the time I realised, it didn’t matter. Marx was clearly right. Whatever follows from that conclusion, so be it.
The state of political education even among graduates is woeful. You can use the confusion to your advantage; and let your friends come to their own conclusions about their own politics. In the meantime, you can give them an accurate picture of the world to guide them along the right path.