Personally, I was a left liberal for all my life, but had kinda looked into the abyss of anti-sjw and gamergate stuff, like watching Sargon and Bearing, but hadn't really subscribed to their beliefs, more putting them on as background chatter.

Things changed when I read manufacturing consent, listened to Chomsky and found Chapo at around the end of 2018, at which point I found myself as more an ancom, but Chomsky's talking points on Leninism and the USSR was never as cogent and didn't make as much sense as his other points, so I held skepticism about my beliefs then.

Reading more on theory and history, and looking more into different left tendencies via channels like Rev Left moved me over to be a Marxist, as it made the most sense to me in explaining the current and historical situation. Currently making my way through Lenin and looking more into historical ML states and I've found that I'm pretty comfortable as just a Marxist with ML tendencies rn.

  • cadence [they/them,she/her]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Reposting from another comment.

    In the beginning, I was a liberal. I'm from New Zealand so I didn't get too much exposure to US politics until I sought it out.

    Around 2017 I tried interacting with the_donald to see what the hell was going on there and I was basically told to fuck off but with slurs. I was really nice, too.

    My first interaction with slash chapo was in early 2019 as a politics baby asking sincerely what the difference between a liberal and a leftist is in reply to somebody else's comment. Amazingly, instead of posting PPB, people actually took me seriously, upvoted my question, and provided well-thought-out answers that, at the time, I didn’t understand, but my curiosity about this political sect was piqued, so I subscribed. I didn’t understand anything that happened at first, but over time I became accustomed to how people interacted, started to learn the basis of what they believed — USA bad, question western narratives, liberals do not seek progressive change, helping poor people good — which as it turned out, I agreed with a lot. Now I’m a leftist of some sort. I’m not particularly a fan of either anarchy or authoritarian beliefs, so I just post about killing billionaires. :af-heart:

    Being open and helpful to new people really does work.