This has been a concern of mine for awhile now, and it’s finally happening. My only close friends are people I have grown up my whole life with. We’re all suburbanite cishet crackermen who were well-off enough to never have to struggle with potentially starving or becoming homeless; predictably, this has fostered some garbage politics, mainly trumpanzees and blue MAGA. With Cheeto Hitler removing whatever shreds of a mask of humanity the Great Satan had left, I now have my blue MAGA friends calling out my trumpanzee friends for their support of Drumpf. The trumpanzees have been silent since the inauguration, and today the group chat has been split.
It was already a terrible form of liberalism for me to have let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship with people who, if I wasn’t already close to, would throw in the removed pit. There is still a major issue in that the most vocal of the friends I’m still in touch with are blue MAGA to the point that, if I’m to grow a spine and actually stop letting things slide, I’m worried that I’ll be smeared as fascist myself and lose the close friends I have because pushing back against great man theory takes that make Orange Satan out to be a uniquely evil force instead of recognizing the evil of the system that produced him will invariably come across as defending Trump. I’m bad at making myself go outside, let alone making friends, that I’ll have very few IRL people in my actual life.
Edit: The issue seems to have been deeper than politics, and the sides reconciled. However, the baseline seems to be “no outright evil political beliefs”, and Marxism Leninism is considered evil by most burgers.
I’m curious, have you ever discussed your beliefs with any of them? Could even be one on one with whoever you think is most reasonable if you’re afraid of them ganging up on you about it. Some of them might be more open to hearing you out than you assume. Doesn’t mean they’ll 180 their views, but if there’s one thing liberals tend to be good at, it’s putting on a dinner party face when they drastically disagree. So as long as you aren’t coming out of the gate singing the Soviet National Anthem and saying “Stalin and Mao did nothing wrong, landlords get rekt,” it may not be as bad a reaction as you’d think. You could start with softer anti-imperialist views, like discussing US history of coups or how many military bases it has across the world or it having the highest incarceration rate in the world or its history of deception with MKUltra or the John Stockwell interview. Putting into perspective first what kind of source country is informing them on other countries. Could see if they are willing to take facts like that in stride or if they’re going to go full denial, in which case, you may not get much of anywhere.
Also it will probably go better if you’re able to approach it gradually on your own terms, rather than going off after letting your frustration build.
Beyond the occasional Marxist dogwhistle, no.
To the rest of your comment, that does sound like a good way to go about it. I bring up easier to broach anti-imperialist topics when something relevant comes up. Some stuff would be a bit more random to broach, like Operation Gladio or something. You’re definitely right that I should do this gradually, because if I get too frustrated I might end up hastily burning bridges I’d rather keep intact.