Okay, what about …

Look, I know you’re in your young 20’s, almost definitely white, definitely a man, and I was once each of those things, too.

You’ve gone down the Right-wing pipeline, you’ve nodded along, you’ve downed the kool-aid. From the sounds of it a light sprinkling of an extremely flawed, right-wing education system.

You are not experiencing your own thoughts. You’re regurgitating arguments you’ve heard online; over and over again, you say the same things, respond in the same way, make the same mistakes. You hamfistedly wave at anyone who ever called themselves socialist and go ‘see! look at these mistakes! They’re all the same!’ When in reality:

Although the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world’s first nominally socialist state led to widespread association of socialism with the Soviet economic model, it has since shifted in favour of democratic socialism. Academics recognised the mixed economies of several Western European and Nordic countries as “democratic socialist”.[34][35] Following the revolutions of 1989, many of these countries moved away from socialism as a neoliberal consensus replaced the social democratic consensus in the advanced capitalist world.[36] In parallel, many former socialist politicians and political parties embraced “Third Way” politics, remaining committed to equality and welfare while abandoning public ownership and class-based politics.[37] Socialism experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 2010s.

Let’s look at Pol Pot, to go back to your whataboutism:

Ideologically a Maoist and a Khmer ethnonationalist…

Seriously, it’s on his goddamn wikipedia page, dude. This, what you’re doing here? It’s embarrassing. You think you’re standing up to those meany evil ‘left-wingers’ when in reality you’re a Toy Poodle for fascism, yapping at what you’re told to, always waiting for another head pat from your online friends that never quite comes, never quite seems to make you feel like you feel it should.

Conservative parties began because aristocrats felt they had lost too much power, and wanted into the parliamentary system. It’s oligarchs now. Is that really who has your best interest? Do you think Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Trump care about you? That they will ever do something for you, at the expense of themselves?

Because over on the socialist side we’re at the protests, we’re at the strikes, we’re demanding change, we’re helping the poor, we’re punching up at authority. You’re ideologically marching alongside cops, brown shirts, Nazi’s, and you what, think they’ll spare you? At best you’re meat for the grinder when the fighting starts.

Look into all of this. Really dive into what Conservatism is, why it was created, how it’s been opposed to every advancement in society that you enjoy: shorter work weeks, shorter work days, actual safety for workers, workers compensation, paternity leave, health care, freedom to strike, etc. All of those are socialist-won, often through literal bloodshed.

What have wealthy billionaires done to make your life better? Why do you think they’re so invested in keeping you angry at visible minorities, women, ‘the left’, the 2% of the planet who are transgendered, the 2SLGBTQIA+ community? Why is it your enemies are all exactly strong enough to scare you, yet so weak you can insult them for it? Why do you have to punch down to hit these terrifying enemies of whatever it is you hold dear?

That woman on the far right is amazing, I love her entire outfit, her stare, the whole… thing.

What’s it like having even /c/conservative think you’re a right-wing nutjob? Do you think the entire world is a leftist conspiracy out to get you, personally?

Mao is a Maoist, and the CCP claim to be ‘the sole heir and successor to Joseph Stalin concerning the correct interpretation of Marxism–Leninism and the ideological leader of world communism,’ and I think (hope?) we can agree that Stalinism is not communism.

I want to include how she died, as it showed just how courageous she really was:

Two months later, on 17 January 1944, Oktyabrskaya fought in another night attack. The battle would prove to be her last. The attack took place at the village of Krynki near Vitebsk. During the battle, she drove her T-34 about the German defenses, and destroyed resistance in trenches and machine-gun nests. The tank crew also destroyed a German self-propelled gun. Subsequently, the tank was hit by a German anti-tank shell, again in the tracks, and was immobilized. Oktyabrskaya immediately got out of the tank and began to repair the track, amid fierce small arms and artillery fire. She managed to repair the track, but she was hit in the head by shell fragments and lost consciousness. After the battle, she was transported to a Soviet military field hospital at Fastiv, near Kiev, and then to a military hospital in Smolensk, Russia. She remained in a coma for two months before finally dying on 15 March. She was buried with military honors at the Heroes Remembrance Gardens in Smolensk.

As well as this gem:

In 2014 US National Public Radio featured a cartoon of Oktyabrskaya to headline a story about “rejected princesses” that Disney and other storytellers had hitherto ignored.