Ended up in a long discussion one on one with a friend of a friend in a voice chat and what in the fuck. She seemed like a nice person, was fun to play games with, but the things she said made me sick.
The conversation started with some bs about Antifa. She was spouting the typical liberal bs, how they are terrorists, burning down buildings and killing people, etc. I said that it’s mostly anarchists burning stuff down(not wanting her to think I’m some sort of antifa terrorist by defending them directly), and she said she thought they were the same thing. I said most antifa people are liberals because most people in general are liberals, and antifa isn’t united by ideology, just opposition to Nazis, neo-confederates, racists in general. I was trying to glide over the more surface level stuff reactionaries like to scream about and get to talking about more important stuff people aren’t programmed to lash out at as much.
This worked, as this lead to a discussion of what exactly are liberals. I gave the classic definition of supporting free markets, supporting businesses and capitalism in general, believing in personal rights that are all just things that can’t be done to you by the government, and not guarantees. The act of defining it made her mad, I think because it implies people who aren’t liberals exist.
The conversation went all sorts of places, I mostly asked neutral questions and let her say what she thought. Eventually she said something about authoritarianism, I brought up that a corporation and a government restricting what you can do is equally harmful if they are restricting you in the same way, basically the common sense stuff that people somehow never think about but quickly leads to radicalization once they do. (I’ve gotten like six people to become socialists or anarchists just by bringing up that point lol). She rejected this saying actually it’s your choice to quit your job. Which lead to talking about healthcare being tied to your job. Which lead to saying people aren’t entitled to healthcare, a living wage, etc. People are only entitled to what they earn by what labor they are capable of. People who need can’t earn enough to pay for what they need to live are just liabilities anyway, if they really are worth keeping alive charities will take care of them.
She presented it like “you could just not pay for healthcare, after all how often do you use your health insurance? Like I go to the doctor once a year, maybe twice if I get hurt or sick”. When I told her I need prescription medication to stay alive, and that I have to go the the doctor four or more times a year for that, plus I wear glasses, plus anytime I get sick or injured on top of that, she said “it sounds like you are a liability”.
If I can’t get medication, I die within a few months most likely. I told her this, that she is telling me if I lose my job I deserve to die. She refused to say this directly, instead saying people who can’t afford to pay for what they need to live don’t deserve to be taken care of. In response to me asking if she thinks I deserve death because of being born with an easily treated medical condition that only requires medication to keep under control, she would just repeat this. Like she knew what she wanted was absolutely horrific and evil, to the point she refused to directly state it, yet she stood behind it anyways.
It has completely changed my perspective on her and now I’m feeling really depressed. Because I know a lot of people think that way. I know almost certainly that many people I know think that way, yet I’m afraid to talk about it with them because I know that knowing for certain these people who are almost friends want me die will make me feel like crap every time I see them. And I don’t wanna cut all these people out of my life, because they are friends of friends and cutting them out means cutting out other people I like. Yet if I know they want me dead, I won’t be able to handle pretending to be ok with that, and so be forced to cut them out anyways.
I’m afraid by having that conversation with her I may have ruined one of my friend groups for me because she’s usually there if everyone else is.
Why do people have to be so shitty? Like how can people who will literally tell someone to their face they deserve to die for the circumstances of their birth be this common? I don’t understand it.
This attitude is born out of privilege and material conditions. It is exactly what Marx is getting at when he says, firmly, that material conditions are the driver of the historical movements that lead to social change. This person only thinks this way because she is absolutely and totally removed from any concept of it affecting her.
When it does affect them due to changes in material conditions their views on this change very rapidly. Everything becomes “unfair” and they radicalise. This is obviously something that happens at an overall class level and not EVERY individual level, but you get the picture.
You can change these people if you’re actively around them every single day for months and months where you can slowly slowly work class struggle into their lives but the return is not worth the time when easier radicalisations exist all around us. Otherwise it takes humbling from a change in their material conditions, they think they’re better than those that don’t have means to survive, they like it that way, they’re above someone.