Howdy.
So this week my girlfriend, who I had been getting very close with and we were beginning to long term plan together, had a moment of deep realization about the kind of blowback possible being openly communist, in favor of direct action, and pro-palestine can be. I've not hid any of this over the last several years of dating, but there's a difference between understanding and understanding, you know? She's thinking about calling it quits because she doesn't want to risk her own career which she has worked very hard to develop in a very competitive and innately unstable industry (performance art). She's dealing with some self admitted cognitive dissonance over the matter because she agrees with me politically, but can't bring herself to committing to resistance and solidarity in the face of blowback.
In a certain sense I understand. It's the same discomfort I first felt when I realized how fucked we were with climate change and rising fascism to begin with. How was I supposed to live a normal happy life with that? Well, obviously I wasn't, not unless I wanted to be complicit--by inaction if nothing else--in the self-annihilation of the biosphere and the genocide of people in the global South that would be necessary to enforce borders in the face of climate catastrophe and migration. It seems like she's choosing to try and live out her fantasy over solidarity or just confronting the material reality that is worsening conditions for all of us, even in the imperial core, so in another sense I just want to shrug at this and call it the same moral cowardice that most labor aristocrats have chosen in the core.
My family is not taking the news well, and thinks I'm throwing away my one shot at love because I can't compromise on my extreme politics. This is an absurd framing of events to me. I've been nothing but forthright about my commitments and beliefs this entire time. My parents clam up and get resistant with even milk toast hypotheticals like, "would you personally kill Hitler if given the chance?" So it feels impossible to have a sensible political discussion with them. They're that squeamish and averse to any and all violence that they can't imagine resisting genocide or fascism. So to a certain extent it feels impossible to make headway on any kind of informative discussion. But they continuously weaponize pity as shame it feels like, and say things about how sad and lonely life is going to be if I don't compromise on politics for relationships. It almost reads as a veiled threat at cutting me off too, sadly enough.
I guess I'm just looking for feedback and an opportunity to externalize my thoughts. I am a fairly gregarious and well liked person. I have a good social life, I've dated successfully before this and I'm sure I will again, but dang. It sucks having my parents harangue me for genocide being a hard line in the sand. I'm the beneficiary of a great many privileges that make it seem all the more imperative that I take a stand on these kinds of issues. I find myself feeling closer to people than ever when I'm involved in organizing work or political work, so their doom and gloom about how lonely my life will be I'm tempted to read as ignorance only a liberal mind is capable of. But like, am I actually the asshole? Do I need to check my power level? I guess I'm just baffled at how anyone thinks they're going to live a "normal" life, much less WANT to, when the West's rapid decline into the third reich is in full swing. Do they all imagine themselves as good little Germans, showing up to work and paying taxes, while tut tutting at the news? As far as I'm concerned the only good Germans under Nazi Germany were partisans.
I don't want to get too ranty here. I'll likely delete this post after a few days. Just wanted to hear some other perspective, maybe from people who have been through similar, or maybe just some commiseration. Whether I'm right or not it still sucks, you know?
This is a really tough thing to be going through. Very reasonable on your part all things considered. I hope what I'm going to reply with isn't too hard nosed for where you're at in figuring things out.
Your parents have probably lived a lifetime of compromises and see your unwillingness to compromise as a sign of immaturity.
You mentioned power level concealment elsewhere and I would suggest based on your description of your parents and your dynamic that yes, you probably should start tamping way the fuck down on what you share around and say to your parents.
Not just to smooth the road in future as far as your relationship with them, but as a basic matter of discipline and opsec. You shouldn't cut them off and isolate yourself, but you don't have to give them insight into the extent of your convictions if you plan to do dangerous illegal shit at any point which obviously it sounds like you very much intend to stay open to.
(Otherwise all of this is moot and you could even reconsider compromise with your beau.)
Its okay to love a liberal but you can't trust them not to rat you out or otherwise betray you even by accident, or with naive good will and ignorance of real consequences.
Parents often do irrational destructive things to their children to retain a sense of control (not over their child per se but in general) especially when they think their children are making self destructive choices. Genuine love can motivate real violence by way of liberal ignorance.
Don't let your love for them be the reason you get locked up or killed.
I think it was really important for me to hear. Thanks for the reminder, this is an opsec issue/self protection. Even if they profess socialist sympathies, if the only appropriate resistance to fascism that they can imagine is laying down and waiting to be exterminated peacefully then I can't at all divulge to them what direct action I'm involved in looks like.