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.
I tend to answer the Russia/Ukraine question as such:
Support Russia? No, we’d rather see Ukraine remain independent of foreign interference. We don’t support the military occupation of Ukraine by Russia, and neither do we want to see Ukraine become a US puppet and end up an eternal battering ram to be used against Russia. We don’t want to see the sacrifice in lives of many more tens of thousands of people that is happening now. This conflict won’t get solved with more bullets, only with more talks, just as every other modern conflict. We want to see deescalation, and to stop fueling the oligarch that rake in the mega profits from the ever growing war machine on both sides of this conflict.
The question that stumps me with Westerners is: do you denounce Hamas?
Taking the Geneva Convention route or using the ICJ answer, or even talking about the history, just end up with them screaming at me.