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Daniel Baryon

This is your regular reminder that, if you are a radical, you are in fact responsible for educating others. And this is especially true if you are an anarchist or a libertarian socialist of some kind. A bottom-up movement requires us all to act as catalysts for radicalization.

And this should not be a hot take. This should be the coldest of all takes on the left. People are not going to educate themselves because you snark at them on the internet that they should read a book. No matter how exhausting it is, it absolutely is our responsibility to educate. You know how most people "educate themselves" if left to their own devices? They search for articles and studies that support their already existing ideas, ignoring ones that contradict them. And all those right-wing talking heads will happily reinforce that ignorance.

When you see people who are wrong about something, who hold harmful ideas, etc... your first instinct needs to be to meet them where they are at and engage in a civil fashion, explaining your perspective; not denying responsibility, dunking, or wannabe grade school bully tactics.

Obviously for fascists and their ilk, they don't care about education. Discourse is just a big power play. But most people are not such True Believers. They regurgitate harmful things because they picked them up through cultural osmosis, not through some reasoned framework.

Though a bit tangential to the thread, the insights in this essay inform a healthier approach on the topic. I highly recommend it. zabalazabooks.net/2014/03/05/t

zabalazabooks.netThoughts on Commitment, Responsibility and Self-disciplineBy Zabalaza Books