As someone who has actually studied political science, they absolutely do not know their history well lmao. They are (shitty) Orthodox Marxists and react quite strongly to being shown anything outside of that 150 year old bubble.
They know a few core historical anecdotes that MLs cling to. But their knowledge breaks down extremely quickly when you try to reduce political science and statecraft to academic first principles, even when those principles intersect strongly with their ML orthodoxy.
They are campists. They form their philosophy around relitigating cold war drama more than anything to do with actual socialism.
What would you have them read to remedy this?
And to take a current event as a litmus test since I don’t know you or your bias, do you condemn Israel’s racism, zionist ideology and their war crimes etc?
So many things. But I’d start with The Ethics of Ambiguity to temper the autocratic revolution fetish.
