It sounds like you're just doing "tolerate people's insane right-wing delusions and be civil above all else, never imposing negative social consequences for people spreading fascist beliefs" but obscured with lots of fancy words.

Propaganda has a very real effect on material circumstances anyway. To suggest otherwise in 2025 is wild.

[–] An_ominous_mist@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

What is an “aesthetic compromise” in this context? Do you have an example?

sure, I'll use a personal example. I was talking with a relative of mine who hates rich people but loves elon musk because he owns the libs or whatever. instead of beginning the interaction by disagreeing about elon musk being a super cool guy who's smart and awesome, I started the conversation from the perspective of agreeing with her about how much the rich suck and libs suck and yada-yada-yada but the place it ended at was that elon also sucks and that they should value less the performative aspect of our modern political climate more the substantive. so not an aesthetic compromise in the scene of a middle ground between aesthetics but the aesthetic of compromise itself. basically what I'm saying is just chill the fuck out and talk to people who you have a long relationship with instead of cutting them out in some sort of purity testing way.

tolerate people’s insane right-wing delusions and be civil above all else, never imposing negative social consequences for people spreading fascist beliefs

that's not at ALL what I'm saying. I'm saying challenge those beliefs in a way the is effective. thinking about social interactions in a punishment/reward way isn't very effective in my experience. Also some family systems are much worse then others and some ARE in fact good and something to be protected, specifically indigenous family systems should be protected as they are to a large extent inherently anti-colonial/anti-imperialist.

sorry if this still doesn't make scene I'm not really used to having a conversation in this format so I might not be representing my point of view in the best way. please try to be charitable when interpreting what I'm saying.

[–] aelixnt@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 6 days ago

I see. That's good propaganda strategy, and I agree that cutting people who have potential out in "some sort of purity testing way" is bad. That's the sort of thing insufferable shitlibs do and is a big reason why people all across the political spectrum despise them so much.

... although the "who have potential" part there is important. Fascists, famously, don't care about the norms of polite conversation or the marketplace of ideas or any of that, debating with them only legitimizes their ideas and is a serious mistake. The modern-day full-blown MAGA chud is the same way, even though they may not be a self-aware fascist. Unfortunately, many of our families are full of these people. They don't respect this nuanced discussion and compromise stuff at all. Quite the opposite, they think it's weak and gay or whatever and will use it as a weapon against you. These are people who literally don't respect facts or material reality itself.

Your relative, for example, hates rich people. Assuming this is actually true (a sort of faux-populist hatred of "elites" is an integral part of far-right propaganda and doesn't count), that's already much more potential then some of the absolutely hopeless bootlicking trash that many of us have to deal with. Even so, you said earlier (and I agree) that if something is never going to make any material difference, then it's pointless, so... have you convinced this relative to significantly change their political alignment? Did you get them to stop prioritizing triggering the libs (i.e., bigotry), over everything else? If not, then nothing was achieved, because that's the main mechanism that the fascists use to mobilize the right.

Sometimes, open hostility, ostracism, and other things that aren't nice are actually the most effective strategy. I've spent plenty of time doing exactly what you suggest, and in retrospect, in most cases I should have simply told them to go fuck themselves and seriously rethink their entire world view if they ever want to talk to me again. Personal consequences are the only thing that these people understand.