This is a nice reading list that I bookmarked a while back, you might find it helpful: https://lemmy.ml/post/22417306

I’m honestly so excited for this course on Imperialism by the Critical Theory Workshop.

Edit: website source for the image: https://criticaltheoryworkshop.com/upcoming-events/

Yeah I feel that way sometimes too. The western liberal status quo can be really frustrating, especially their stubborn resistance to new perspectives. Arrogance about having ML views probably feels better than that frustration.

When I notice arrogance in myself, I try to remember that everyone has to start somewhere - that there was a time before I became an ML, when I was an ignorant radlib westerner lost in a sea of propaganda. It’s humbling (even somewhat embarrassing in hindsight), and it helps me to be a more effective educator when I can have empathy and understand where people are at. Not trying to give any unsolicited advice, just sharing my own experience.

This discussion makes me think of a concept from Mao’s On Contradiction,

Changes in society are due chiefly to the development of the internal contradictions in society, that is, the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, the contradiction between classes and the contradiction between the old and the new; it is the development of these contradictions that pushes society forward and gives the impetus for the supersession of the old society by the new. Does materialist dialectics exclude external causes? Not at all. It holds that external causes are the condition of change and internal causes are the basis of change, and that external causes become operative through internal causes. In a suitable temperature an egg changes into a chicken, but no temperature can change a stone into a chicken, because each has a different basis.

Mao is talking about changes in society more broadly, but I think this idea can be applied on an individual level as well. A person’s internal state needs to be such that they are open to new information, in order for that information to meaningfully shift their perspective.

So my hypothesis is that you were able to change your mind when you learned more about the Iraq War because, for whatever reasons, your internal state was receptive to new ideas. Some other people may be presented with that same information, but then just mentally discard it if they aren’t in a place where they’re ready to hear it. So essentially I’m agreeing with what some other commenters have already said, that organizing is most effective when it’s focused on people who are sufficiently agitated and open to hearing what we have to say.