How open are you about your political beliefs? What do your family and friends know about your beliefs?

How open are you about your political beliefs? What do your family and friends know about your beliefs?

I tend to keep it quiet. Not because I'm ashamed, most of my family are left wing anyway, just that I have a tendency to rant and get carried away with it. Politics is draining.

I would challenge people more but I'm a bit of a sperg.

At work I haven't told anyone that I'm a communist, just in case it gets me extra work or prevents me from receiving some nice benefits because of ideological bias. I haven't told my family and won't for as long as I am near them: they are god-fearing, gun-toting, US Air Force veterans. As for school, everyone knows that I'm a communist, even my teachers. School isn't just a place to learn, it's a place to teach.

Most of my friends and some of my family members know I'm leaning more to the left. My parents don't know it, because they don't fucking care

My family doesn't give a shit, so do my friends, but they tend not to take it seriously when I'm telling them I'm a Marxist-Leninist because hurr durr communism won't work and killed 300 gazillion people.

So I've shifted towards not using Marxist slang when criticizing capitalism; one can not deny that most people hate communism due to decades of propaganda and will not listen to you unless you wrap it differently.

At least people are less openly hostile to you as they are when you tell them that you are a unironically a Nazi, poor Holla Forums, no wonder they have a persecution complex.

My parents have a vague idea that I'm a socialist but they don't understand that it's not the same as Keynesianism. They also don't understand that capitalism =/= markets and think Randism-Reaganism is the best ideology. They are resistant to being corrected on any of these points (even basic shit like "no, I don't believe that") to such a degree that they are an anthropological curiosity.

Oh and my friends are apolitical because they have too much other shit in their lives to deal with.

I hide my powerlevel.

I tend to try and "present" as a leftist as much as possible, but rather than go around saying "I would describe myself as a communist" I just try and make it pretty clear that my way of looking at things is incompatible with practically all existing institutions. To be honest I believe getting people to think about exploitation in a certain way is more important than using all the buzzwords and hammer-and-sickle iconography. It's generally best to treat Marxist concepts as theoretically obscure, something you need to elaborate, rather than as something scandalous you have to confess to or hide: terms like constant capital and formal subsumption or w/e are more often alienating and unfamiliar than infuriating to non-communists. The whole "debating society" crap – throwing in a symbolically significant term like "communist", and "debating" it: "that's not what communism is", "communism would work because" &c. – I think really obscures a theory of exploitation and a practical attitude which are actually very compelling. This doesn't work so smoothly with hardened dogmatists, but in my experience more often than not people are just bored shitless by playing around with formal definitions and distant or imaginary scenarios, ie. what we usually mean by our "beliefs", and when they aren't they're usually hardened dogmatists. It's more important to talk and think like a communist about what comes up in everyday life than to use these conversations as a springboard to make people adopt the symbolism and imaginary of the communist tradition.

And lo I looked upon thee and knew you was my nigga. Too many leftists treat theory as a dick measurement. Leftism is not that complicated at a fundamental level, so much as it requires a shift in the basic way we think.

Not even always a 'shift'. I often find people have basic attitudes with really radical implications while accepting that they're 'not supposed to be a communist'; usually resulting in a sense of distance from formal politics or self-identification with a more moderate stance justified by that radical attitude. Case in point, all those left-liberals who rail against exploitation and the paradoxical coexistence of massive abundance with general insecurity/poverty, only to propose slightly higher taxes and public healthcare.

I'm gonna be honest, I'm embarrassingly open about it. I'm annoying as fuck and I own the fact I'm a commie so much. I have an IWW phone case. I have hammer and sickle stickers I keep in my wallet. There are two on my laptop. I considered getting a custom license plate that said "COMM1E". I am sure I will regret acting like this later but I don't care now, it makes me happy.

Open as fuck

Yeah that was me for a long time. I was basically always an anarchist, and I shifted toward socialism over the years. By the time I got around to reading leftist lit I was like "shit I already agree with all this." There are probably millions of people like that.

open, people know what i believe in
when i get drunk even more
maybe too open since i keep getting into shit but eh

I'm not open at all, because I'm older than 18 but younger than 25, which means that my opinions will be brushed off as immature and angsty etc.

This is why I like anonymous imageboards. I'm only open about it here. Almost all my friends are pro-capitalism, but that's unavoidable.

I only somewhat conceal them. Although I will be honest about socialism, I am not so straight forward about my belief in the necessity of violent revolution and a vanguard party to steer humanity out of the dangerous waters of capitalism. I also conceal my hostility toward identity politics, because it's so easily mistaken for hostility toward rights for certain identity groups.

I can state my opinions openly and nobody gives a shit because I do not give them a name kek

lel

Wow, you're right, it's even embarrassing to read

People who know me know, I've got some CCCP t shirts too.

My close friends know, some of them even agree with me, but for the most part I don't say anything because I'm an American in a Red state whose relatives are all conservative.

If I went about sharing my beliefs I'd just get alienated more than I already am.

My mom accepts it even though she's slowly turning alt-right. My dad knows and we've fought about it before and he nearly disowned me. I don't like to bring it up but they ask me about my opinion on a certain subject and it's either not engage it and they still argue with me about it or I engage it and it splits the family in half.

They know I like to talk shit about capitalism, and that I hate big corporations

But then again, they're also poor as fuck so it doesn't bother them

It must suck for those of you whose family is on the right. My family has been on the left for a long time. My grandfather was an admirer of Mao and a member of a paramilitary organization.

My dad is a conspiracy theorist and flat earther. Weirdly enough he describes himself as an "anarchist", but a weird right wing one without theory. He and I don't get along when it comes to politics, we both just try to convert each other. Other than that our relationship is fine

my family was polish and hated the soviets. Plus we're basically petty bourg. I probably won't tell them. I'll just keep reading, keep looking for shit to do to help move things along. They might find out someday.

I've only really told my sister about my political beliefs.

Great grand father was a communist.
Grand father was a socialist and later an anarchist.
Parent are both fascist.
Yes, we have been prole for a long time.

Everything I touch turns red.

I actually started to talk a lot less about politics than i used to before coming here because i realized i knew very little about both economics and politics.

How can one generation fail so hard?

call them out for being clueless

Their ideology is packed tighter than a can of sardines in a gnat's pussy at the bottom of the sea. When they get home from their wagecuck jobs they basically do nothing but watch Fox News until it's time to sleep. If I point out a flaw they completely ignore it and brush it off with "when I was your age I thought I knew everything too." They're massive cowards who can't bear to think of questioning the beliefs bestowed upon them by authority figures, lest they too be labeled dirty commies. And they think McCarthy did nothing wrong of course.

My parents are commie tankies, members of the communist party. They believe in leaders, heroes, proletariat dictatorship, taxes, money, banks, insurance companies as long as everything is nationalized.
So yeah…i don't talk too much about politcs with them. It's pointless.

I don't have any friends.

as a general rule i avoid talking about politics with my fam and friends, it usually end up in unnecessary tensions

How do you bear living being such a huge faggot?

weed

I am as open as I think necessary. My housemates pretty much know how radical I am, but I'm careful never to use any labels people are reactionary against, like communist or even anarchist. They kinda suspect I'm an anarchist at this point even tho I'm not an anarchist.

You'd actually be very surprised with how much you can get away with saying as long as you don't use the words:

1. communist
2. state
3. socialist
4. anarchist
5. marxist
6. Anything else like that

Friends think I am contrarian

Parents think I am communist

Both are incorrect

sadly this is so true. the cold war propaganda is still unbelievably strong in so many