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?
This thread makes me feel very old, but it's also really nice reading people's transformational moments even, and perhaps especially, when they're recent. This is kind of long, sorry...
For me I remember Labour winning in '97. I was still living at home in a soc-dem to dem-soc household that was honestly just ecstatic that the Tory rule they'd hated, suffered under, and fought all through the 80s especially (mining strikes, CND, poll tax) was done. I remember everyone in street coming outside their houses with drinks in the middle of the night and talking excitedly about the future. Some things got better, or at least less worse, but I was also confronted by the a bunch of barely-cryptofash people in that very government using genocidal logic about immigrants and refugees, gay friends being targeted and scapegoated whenever it was convienient, and authoritarian projects like ID cards that were trialled uniquely in poor areas like my own simply as an excuse for police to hassle, send home, and arrest teenagers and kids, younger than myself, for doing nothing more than existing outside of their homes. I worked shit jobs for shit bosses and got screwed by a major business going bankrupt weeks after they'd assured us, the press, and politicians they were secure and our jobs were safe.
I still considered myself some sort of soc-dem in the way a lot of people were around me, although started reading more about anarchism.
The build up to Afghanistan and Iraq were the end of any sort of electoral or soft-left allusions I had. Even mostly relying on British mainstream media and the ability to Google things like UN reports in the library it was obvious the rationale was total bollocks. I was part of some of the biggest modern protests in history against the invasion of Iraq and it simply did not matter, even when polls showed the majority of ordinary people opposed it in wobbles between propaganda campaigns.
At one, we managed to slip out of a police kettle only to get trapped down some side streets between two police lines. All the shops had shut and there was no where to duck inside and chill so we went down an alley only to land right in another kettle with a bunch of anarchists. I was sure we weren't getting out of there until we joined the black bloc (covering our faces and still in our nice stop the war tees as best we could) and they actually fucking pushed back a police line several streets, held them at a distance, and then dispersed as we made a dash for the train station. I was like, damn, maybe Anarchists get the goods.
I started volunteering and doing a lot more local activism. There was some good mutual aid stuff in nearby cities, but most of the groups near me were socialist or even communist. So I started considering myself an Anarchist in the streets and a Communist in the (sign-up) sheets.
A lot of underemployed friends and neighbours teenage kids that had joined the military started dying abroad, one was killed by his own squad in a vaguely suspicious friendly fire incident, and at least one fucking ditched and hid on my couch before heading up to Scotland after going AWOL totally disillusioned after his first tour. But the media and political class were now fully on board either out of fear or motive and actually more ordinary people around me seemed to support it than before the invasion of Iraq.
The media was bullshit. Electorialism and ideas of democracy were simply overruled when it wasn't in line with the security state. Even enormous popular protest didn't work. And just about everyone who's lives were supposed to be getting better were getting worse, assuming they didn't go off and die in a desert somewhere for oil and family vendettas. I was fucking done and explicitly identified as an anarchist.
Over time I've read more and more theory, history, and focused as much on the type of society I would like to build instead of just tearing down the current one and I grew to consider myself a communist for a variety of reasons. I still think that when it comes to clashes in the streets or agile opposition to the current state though, that Anarchists get the goods.
what was that?
The government wanted to introduce mandatory identity cards. I know lots of places in Europe have these, a bit like a passport, but the way they were being pitched and implementation was the biggest issue.
It was deeply unpopular because since WW2 people hadn't had to carry any kind of identifying papers. It was seen as a relic of an imposing wartime measure. A feeling that was amplified by the fact that Labour's original excuse for the scene was to do with combatting terrorism post-9/11.
They soon pivoted to the real reason, exclusion from public services and police targeting of minorities. The idea is you wouldn't be able to claim any benefits, use public services, or things like the NHS without showing your identity card. This like everything else was focused specifically on so called benefits cheats and immigrants.
That would make it extremely difficult for so called 'illegal immigrants' (although mostly people awaiting asylum decisions, on expired student visas etc) from renting homes, using services, accessing grants, or even going to the doctor. That last one in particular angered even some anti-immigrant people as it would be the end of the NHS being free and open to all. Perhaps the deepest held and only real public institution almost everyone is proud of.
It was also tied to the push for increased policing and Labour's ASBO (anti-social behavior order) scheme which basically allowed fines, house arrest, and other punishments without legal due process or the need to establish a crime had been committed. They also included banning orders for certain areas. They trialled both these and ID cards in mostly poor areas like mine along with increased policing. While the press pointed out lots of ridiculous uses like people being given fines for singing in the bath or issuing the penalties to historic trees as an excuse to cut them done when they were otherwise protected, the most common use was simply to ban people from being in public...
Near us police demanded ID cards - which no one had because it was a trial and you had to pay £35+ for them out of your own pocket - combined vague non-crimes like loitering to target teenagers, kids, and homeless people in order to move them on or even ban them from certain areas (parks, near businesses etc) as a form of 'social cleansing'.
Plus because of the terrorism and immigrarion focus it was another way to target an harass minorities especially, with cops regularly implying that anyone non-white might not be a citizen because they didn't have their papers (ID card) on them as an intimidation tactic.
The fact that white middle class people were never going to be asked for them really, while minorities, the working class, teenagers, and the homeless were constantly targeted meant that making people pay for them was essentially a tax on the poorest / most vulnerable / least represented in society.