We had some concerning conversations - they explicitly declared they wouldn’t commit theft to save anyone’s life, and intimated that fascism is just like socialism, “they’re both bad extremes”. We’ve always disagreed on politics and they’ve always had some common lib views, but they’ve always (at least 'til now) claimed to be vaguely leftist and understanding of my commie stance.
This has somewhat thrown me, honestly. I’m always open about my disagreements, but don’t pursue argument (if anything, they do more than I), but these opinions just came out unprompted.
I fully accept that partners may have different politics (not directly harmful/malicious obviously), the world is complicated. My partner has always been a very kind, intelligent and thoughtful person who has helped me through tough times.
But there are a couple points that really do worry me:
- Either they’ve taken an unstated swing to the right in their politics or been hiding these scary views a long time.
- I know it’s a hypothetical, which are often stupid for relationships, but fucking really? They wouldn’t commit petty theft to save my life because the rules are important? They very explicitly clarified that, and this genuinely does make me feel kind of unsafe/uncared for.
I dunno. I dunno what my deal is or what I’m aiming for, I could be overreacting. I’m just venting my concerned thoughts at this stage. Mightily frustrated.
I’ll hand in my propagandist license for a start.
The antidote is –
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The person needs to understand that status quo bias is a thing. What is ‘extremism’? It’s basically just ‘that which differs from the status quo’. If you’re in a certain period of history and you say “gladiatorial games should be outlawed” or “it’s ok to touch dalits”, those are extreme views. We now live in a day and age where “it’s ok to kill 100,000 Palestinians using thirst, hunger, bombs, and disease” is a moderate, centrist view.
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Then the idea that “communism killed 100 million people” or whatever, which is what makes communism seem extremist. A) you can chip away at the truth of it, because it’s not true, but more important is B) there is no alternative which hasn’t killed tens of millions of people. Economic systems kill to protect their existence. The British Empire killed 100 million in just one country (India) in just 40 years (1880 to 1920)
