@toilet_wolf
@lemmygrad.mlwhen I was a lib I used to like The Daily Show because it was kinda cathartic to watch them mock conservatives.
However I remember one episode where they were covering a story about students at Berkeley protesting the marines opening up a recruiting office on campus, and basically the entire segment was them shitting on these kids. The students were anti-war and didn't want the US military recruiting future killers on their campus. The Daily Show even had their news correspondent Rob Riggle (retired marine) interviewing students and trapping them in ridiculous "gotchas" to make them look dumb. It was one of the first moments as a baby leftist where I was like "wait... why are they doing this? those kids are right to not want the military at their school." And watching this thickneck piece of shit Riggle bully young people who obviously don't know enough to "debate" him while a camera is shoved in their face was infuriating.
Then later I watched Stewart perform at USO shows in Iraq and Afghanistan (among other places) to entertain these imperialist tools and I just lost any shred of respect I still had for him. He even had that awful "Rally to Restore Sanity" event in D.C. which was effectively a giant centrist circlejerk that accomplished absolutely nothing. I haven't even paid attention to anything he's done since but I'm not the least bit surprised that he's still a dipshit.
It's genuinely terrifying seeing how easily people accepted Israel's bullshit. It feels like everyone just turned off the critical thinking part of their brains
I've been seeing a lot of "It was a failed strike by Hamas and the reason it did so much damage was because they were storing ammo in the hospital" or similar dumb shit on social media. I swear these people would believe "Aliens did it" before they would entertain the thought of Israel intentionally dropping a bomb on a hospital
Like another comment here touched on, if I'm not totally sure of the person's politics I'll usually just criticize the US/west from an anti-imperialist angle. It's useful because actual comrades will quickly pick up on what type of person I am (and maybe agree or make similar comments themselves) while other people will usually either politely nod or change the subject.
If it's a situation where I really don't want the people within earshot to know about my politics then I keep to uncontroversial statements. Like when the Ukraine conflict kicked off last year my coworkers were talking about it and while I wanted to say something about liquidating Nazis, I just said I felt bad for the innocents caught up in it and I hope it ends soon. Most people aren't gonna give you shit for saying "I don't want innocent people to die" lol.
Shortly after 9/11 I was seeing bumper stickers on cars that said "MUSLIM HUNTING PERMIT" with a picture of crosshairs over a brown guy wearing a turban. I also remember watching the news in 2003 which had a live feed from a US tank invading Iraq in real-time, and the news anchors were excitedly talking about how cool it was and how brave our soldiers were. Even at the time I was thinking "this is fucked"
man I had to take a bit of break from social media over the last few days because seeing the horrid takes about Palestine has my blood pressure rising