I keep trying to find some kind of leftist who claims to have antisocial personality disorder, and the only person I have found so far was on a random leftist discord who acknowledged they might instead be an egregiously misdiagnosed autistic person. I have checked the words "antisocial" and "ASPD" through search on this site, and nobody has ever mentioned personally having ASPD.

Google is unusually useless at the task, too. The most relevant things are articles pertaining to the Soviet and Cuban practices of detaining and imprisoning people who are deemed to be "antisocial." After some digging, I found the usual anticommunist talking point about Stalin and Mao being worse than Hitler or something, tacking on a baseless claim that Stalin and Mao may have been antisocial. No meaningful info.

There's no difficulty at all in finding antisocial fascists, cops, chefs, capitalists, or CEOs. Why can't I find an antisocial comrade? Is there some part about leftism that is inherently exclusionary towards antisocial people? Is it a problem to be exclusionary towards antisocial people?

If any comrade here has ASPD I would really appreciate hearing your experience.

  • Melon [she/her,they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I want to believe there is an unempathetic way to arrive at leftism. It's not a good model for people who obsess over maximizing personal gratification, but it's the only way to guarantee some level of gratification. Surely there's some antisocial person out there who sees communism as the best ticket they have for a good life.

    • ElGosso [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      There absolutely is. I was leftist before I was really empathetic - what did it was my material conditions. The core of my radicalization was being too broke to afford a pack of smokes while working shit McJobs that made a ton of money for the corporation. The thing that led me to leftism specifically was hearing about some dude in Berkeley who got arrested for hitting Nazis with a bike lock and I said to myself "that owns, actually, let's see what else these Antifa believe in" and having every single one of my workplace experiences validated by Marx. I had to have the empathy bullied into me by the old subreddit, honestly, and it's still something I still struggle with. I don't think I'm ASPD, though, just a :le-pol-face: pmc dork failson with maybe a little more self-awareness than most of my ilk.

        • ElGosso [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Antisocial behavior is not the only facet to ASPD, in the same way that sneezing does not automatically mean you have a cold; you're conflating a single symptom with an entire disease. There are plenty of symptoms I don't exhibit, like conduct disorder, aggressiveness, or impulsiveness - in fact I'm about as far from impulsive as you can get. Even if ASPD was a spectrum I would barely be a blip on the radar at all. I was just a sheltered, alienated manchild who couldn't really understand what it meant to be exploited or marginalized until I got just the absolute tiniest taste of it and then had someone else painstakingly explain how that applies a billion times more to a lot of other people.

    • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      the inherent problem is that most people prefer to gamble that they can beat you to the top rather than secure a medium for both of you. Remember, they have acquired the guiding ideology as a pathogen, and capitalism is inherently self-destructive.

    • Omega_Haxors [they/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Seen it first hand. Those who only want leftism for a better life fall into liberalism quickly. It's extremely easy to get ahead under liberalism as long as you're willing to put your boot on the neck of someone else, and that's a way more positive outlook for someone who only cares about themselves than to spend your entire life fighting for something you'll never personally benefit from. They live in a nice house and receive funding from fascists. As soon as the material conditions require it, I fully expect that they'll abandon all of their progressive values and transition into a full blown white supremacist. Dreading the day that happens.