I know it's a gradual process for most people, but I assume most of you had a decisive moment of "yeah I am no longer a liberal, fuck liberals."
I'll share mine.
Occupy Wall Street. Yeah, I was idealistic enough to really believe in that movement, and more than that, in the idea that it was going somewhere, that there would be a Civil Rights Act style moment of legislative change that would make things seem (emphasis seem) sane again since post-9/11 madness. Again, like I said, liberal at that point.
Then I saw how many useless liberals nodded along to "too big to fail." I saw all the useless liberal comedians and other opinion leaders call for absolutely nothing but spectator smugness. I saw some of the key organizers sell out entirely to the suits, one in particular outright joining Google and then calling for Google's CEO to become an enlightened dictator for life of the United States.
Then I read this.
https://thebaffler.com/latest/mouthbreathing-machiavellis
I finally understood at a gut level how conveniently and easily liberals could become cryptofascists, a term that I didn't even know at the time. I started to see and understand how capitalism under pressure much prefers fascism to even a slight reduction in the rate of the rich becoming richer, no matter what. I learned that the Democratic Party, when it is not being paid opposition, really doesn't stand for anything different than the GOP at a material level except more performative inclusiveness in the corporate police state.
I stopped calling myself a liberal. You can call me a liberal especially if I have a bad take, but at least I stopped identifying with the label intentionally.
What's your story?
I think Standing Rock was the breaking point. Obama was president, and it was impossible to watch this struggle and not see that for him and the entirety of the capitalist class, accumulation and concentration of private capital was more important than anything sacred or even human life itself. It was the most appalling event I had ever (briefly) witnessed with my own eyes, and I saw so little that I'm embarrassed to even talk about it.
I went from "Obama is useless" to "Obama is a tool of the ruling class" during Standing Rock. :cursed:
The experience broke a rationalist streak I didn't even know I had. I learned (again, and hopefully for the last time) that your people, your ancestors, and the earth matter a lot. You don't need to justify your values, because they can't justify their's either. They can't refute what's in your heart.