And I convinced at least 12 people to vote for us. I also managed to get several more people to get on the fence about voting for us.

Fun things I heard:

  • You guys are extremists! - To which I replied: extremist against which group? I also asked for an example of our extremist policies but nobody managed to name one. They just read we were in the media. I managed to explain that we are seen as extremisits by the rich people controlling our society.

  • You guys are on the side of Russia - This was funny because I guess you could see it that way but I gave a diplomatic answer about not being on the side of Russia but rather not wanting this war to escalate any further.

Other debates were about our plans and how we want to realize them.

It was fun doing this actually. Our group in our district managed to convince at least 100 people to vote for us on this day alone.

  • DankZedong @lemmygrad.mlOP
    18·
    6 months ago

    We started as a ML-maoist party decades ago and remained an active but niche communist party throughout the years. It was only since the 2010s that we started growing harder. In 2019 we managed to get some people elected and ever since the popularity is rising at a fast pace. We are nearing 30 thousand active members now and recent polls have us as the third or fourth biggest party in the country. Some of our politicians are the most popular politicians on social media. We are by far the most active party in the streets, with members at every social gathering, event, market, concert, etc. happening.

    Growing at that pace brings its own challenges. You don’t want to present yourself to the world as too radical as that might scare people that have been bombarded with anti communist propaganda away. You also don’t want to abandon your marxist principles. A big influx of new members makes it that not all of them are principles marxists yet and they need to be educated. And while electoral politics are not a goal and we need actual systematic change to happen, you need to find a way to be a part of it regardless. We do so by having actual workers on our lists. People that work the factories, do the cleaning at the airport, work at the supermarkets, combined with experienced marxists.

    All in all I think the party is managing to bring marxism to the general public in a way that is familiar for common people while also holding on to marxist thought. It is by far the most serious marxist party I have seen in Western Europe and I think we have a lot of potential.