“They should know better.”
Well, they don’t. What now?
I see a lot of rhetoric these days about how certain people in certain political cults–oh, you know the ones–are beyond saving. This is often applied extremely broadly, to anyone who has voted a certain way or espoused certain beliefs, even if they also hold other contradictory beliefs (which, like it or not, most people do). They’re lumped together and called “they” with no room for complexity or exceptions. They are like this, they are like that, they won’t listen, they are bad people.
When we say that people can’t change, that is not leftism. It implies one of two things: 1) a carceral approach, or 2) a doomerist approach. Because it essentially means either 1) we have to lock those people up (or worse) because they’re unfixable–ironically, the exact same authoritarian dehumanizing rhetoric They use about Us, except it’s fine because we’re good and correct. Or 2) there’s nothing we can do and we should just give up.
When we don’t make any space to allow for people to change and reintegrate, then we are guaranteeing that they will choose the more viable option for their social survival, which is to continue on the fаscist path that they’re going on, surrounded by other people who are doing that shit. We are also playing right into the hands of capitalists, who fucking love it when we see each other as Democrats, Republicans, Liberals and Conservatives rather than working class people. They’re roaring with laughter at us inside their skull-lined caverns full of gold coins, while we stand outside the castle yelling at each other instead of turning to face them.
There’s a weird situation on the left where people believe a lifelong gang member can be reformed, but not a conservative. (It’s possible I’m overestimating how many people are abolitionists who even believe the first one, but I like to hope we’re further along than that.) The reality is that there’s plenty of evidence for both: people who have done harm or believed harmful things can and do change.
This is an essential subject to talk about, because we badly need information from those who escaped right wing cults so we can understand how they draw people in, and intervene in that process. We need stories of people who were raised conservative coming around to realize that they’ve been lied to. We need to practice talking to people who have contradictory, misguided, propagandized beliefs in order to build a viable working class movement. If you appreciate the political work of literally any person who is white or a man, you can thank the people who helped them deconstruct the beliefs and behaviours they grew up with. When we foster an environment in which people are shamed and shunned for being honest about their deprogramming journey, we are depriving ourselves of an incredibly important resource.
It’s emotionally easier to believe that other people can’t change, because changing them is exhausting work and most of our experience with that is with family members, strangers online and other people who are seemingly irredeemably stubborn. But it’s also exhausting partly because we’re using the wrong tools for the job. We’re wildly under-resourced, and that’s been done to us on purpose: centuries of domination, forced competition, trauma, traditional lifeways and practices stolen and coerced and beaten out of us. But we still want to try, because we’re desperate. So we use the tools we were given by the same shitty society we’re trying to change: shame, judgement, berating, dominance, arguing, dehumanization, bad faith interpretations. We don’t first put the work in to build a trusting, mutually respectful relationship. We don’t try to really understand where another person is coming from, see their pain and struggle, and meet them where they’re at. That’s an uphill battle when we’re so starved for recognition ourselves. It feels unfair to have to be the one to offer empathy first. So instead of trying to bridge the gap and connect, we non-consensually shove facts and logic at them, call them bad people, tell them they’re wrong and problematic, vent our anger and disgust. We expect that to work, because we’re exhausted and we want it to. Then we get mad at them when they’re defensive and repulsed. They then go back to the people they feel safe with, the people who don’t challenge them in any way and have politics that are ecocidal but who also make them feel accepted and cared for in some way, and we throw up our hands and say “see? These people refuse to change!”
Parenting has been the most shocking, revolutionary experience I’ve had in a lifetime of learning. It’s like seeing into the Matrix: everything adults do that is annoying and dangerous is just something that wasn’t intervened in with empathy in childhood. For example: my 4-year-old does not want to wash her hands. It is the hill she is determined to die on, every single day, and it’s not an optional part of life. I am absolutely sick of it. It feels like I’ve tried everything, and I can feel the exhaustion taking over when I am tempted to just grab her hands and wash them for her while she screams. But force does not create healthy development. Just because I think she should know better, doesn’t make it so. Just because it would be easier for me if she just did what I told her to do, doesn’t make that actually happen. We spend a lot of time wishing reality were different, which stops us from seeing things as they are, and working with them. This is a form of healing that I’ve learned from plant medicines and Buddhism, and it’s made me a better parent and a better organizer. Instead, I strive to understand my 4-year-old’s aversion. She is probably also exhausted from a day spent being told what to do at school. She has sensory sensitivities and the soap is slimy. She is wired for play and novelty, and washing your hands sucks and is boring. If I understand where she’s coming from, I can help meet both our needs by turning handwashing into a game, or . Do I want to make a goddamn game out of handwashing when it’s 9 pm and I just want her to go to bed? Fuck no. Is it still good practice to try, whenever I can? Yes! Because when I push myself to do things that are tiring but align with my values, all sorts of benefits arise that I otherwise am blocking myself from. It feels better in my soul. I’m connecting with my kid, I’m connecting with my own joy. I never regret at least trying.
When we try using our same old tactics to change people, and fail, and decide that they must be unfixable, we are depriving ourselves of an opportunity to learn from the situation and better hone the most important tool of all—determining who is too far gone to be worth the energy vs. who can be brought around, and focusing on the latter group. We end up with a self-fulfilling prophesy of “nothing can be done,” retreating further and further into the safety of only engaging with people we deem to be Good who have our exact same politics. Which leaves everyone else, all the imperfect, lost, confused, lonely, well-meaning people who’ve been heavily propagandized and raised in a dysfunctional, racist and capitalist society, wide open to being scooped up by the people who are willing to or are paid to scoop them up.
It’s not working, fam. I want liberation and I’m willing to humble myself and try any tactic. I don’t want to look my kids in the eye as the ecosystem collapses and say “sorry, I was going to do everything I could but emotionally regulating myself enough to have frustrating conversations and choosing where to spend my energy wisely was too far.”
One of the problems, and it’s one I am complicit in, is that rather than focusing on fаscіst dogwhistles or racist microaggressions or sexist tropes or people who voted for X politician–specific behaviours that people engage in–we frequently use terms like right-winger or racist or misogynist. People are always more complex than whatever label we give them. This entire project becomes much easier if we see our fellow working-class people as people rather than as identities or labels. Labels can be useful as shorthand, and I’m certainly not against calling the most obvious and dangerous cases what they are–for example, JK Rowling is a transphobe. But labels are inherently flattening and dehumanizing, and dependence on them is dangerous. We risk eventually believing through repetition that the labels are reflective of objective reality, where reality is always more complex than any label can describe.
As always, by communicating all of this, I am not saying you personally have to do anything. You don’t have to personally fix your MAGA uncle or coddle Yahtzees. If that’s what you think I’m saying, then there’s a fundamental communication disconnect, so please feel free to go do whatever aligns with your values. What I am doing here is offering information and suggestions to better inform and hone our tactics on the left. This is for people who are committed to movement-building praxis and are interested in challenging themselves. Building a working-class movement requires us to engage with people who have all sorts of weird and incongruous beliefs; any seasoned organizer can tell you this. 100% of the people we need to talk to in order to grow the movement are not yet radicalized into liberationist politics. Most people are not hardcore white supremacists with a coherent worldview. They don’t realize that their weird misgivings about trans people or their reflexive defenses of Taylor Swift are a result of a colonial/capitalist project designed to turn them against their own interests. And personally, I don’t ever want to have so much confidence that I’m one of the Good and Correct ones that I support a system in which we have to lock the Bad and Wrong people up (or worse). The leopards will always come to eat our faces too.
So, what can we do?
If you do feel ready to do this deep, difficult, rewarding work, here are my suggestions. But first, I want to express my gratitude to you, because it’s honestly REALLY fucking hard to push past the anger enough to do this. Most people are not resourced enough for it. I struggle with it all the time!
Identify which of your identities makes you best suited to talk to other people with that same identity. As much as it sucks, I have to talk to white people because they are more likely to listen to me than the Black and Indigenous people I have learned from. It’s a responsibility, but also an opportunity. Men, talk to other men. Straight people, talk to other heteros. Religious people, talk to others in your faith. Non-Indigenous people, talk to other settlers. Most of all, working class people, talk to each other about class issues! (Class is generally the most productive place to focus your efforts in my opinion, because it’s the great uniter, and the reason we were divided against each other by capitalists in the first place.)
Here are five resources I suggest to start with to build these communication and organizing skills. None are perfect, all are just tools in a toolbox. Pick whichever interests you, leave anything you don’t feel aligned with.
1) Nonviolent communication training: an incredibly resource for learning how to talk to and connect with people using a non-authoritarian approach. (This is where I learned to identify how often people interpret suggestions and requests as demands, a quick way to see how unresolved trauma functions to hamstring our movements.)
2) Let This Radicalize You by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba: practical advice for organizing and activism, and how to make hope something that you build with others.
3) Maybe I’m cheating by calling this one a single resource, but it’s just too good! Interrupting Criminalization has got so much! Use it all, share it all! They are amazing!
4) Shaun does amazing work speaking to and about young white men from a critical but also humanizing perspective. Here’s another of his videos, and more resources I’ve compiled for fostering positive masculinity.
5) This one is a bit of a spicier recommendation, but if you’re ready to go even deeper and see how spirituality is an essential component we need to integrate in order to combat the appeal of fundamentalist cults, then listen to The Emerald podcast. “Oh Justice” is a relevant episode, but listen to any that pique your interest. My favourite is “Snail Juice.”
Be well, keep up the good work, rest and find joy. I love you, we’re all in this together.
If you appreciate the labour that went into this article, please share it with others! Here are three ways to say thank you, and support me doing more of it:
💲 Send me some cash I can use to pay rent
👧 Buy my kids supplies like toothpaste and sunscreen!
Dr. Hilary Agro is an anthropologist, community organizer and mother of two young children.
Dr. Hilary Agro, PhD 