So, in my circles of friends, I am the most terminally online person. I remember being a soc-demmy kinda person (who called themselves socialist) when I joined r/cth when it hit 69,420 members.
Now here I am with opinions like "Stalin and the USSR weren't so bad" and "The tanks rolling into Hungary in 1956 were correct, actually". I feel like the community here on hexbear has kinda shifted in the same way. That said, we've steered clear of the patsoc menace, who aesthetically venerate AES while following the most regressive social/nationalist opinions of what they think of as the working class.
This has somewhat put me at odds with a lot of my RL friends, who are anarchists or trots of varying degrees. I'm generally not down with getting into spats with said RL friends, so I keep a lot of my opinions to myself. This is especially onerous with opinions about the Ukraine war.
How did I end up here? How did we..? I remember back on r/cth the line "This is enough to turn me into a tankie", or some such thing, as though being a tankie was just socialism + willingness to use violence to achieve it.
I can remember online anarchists posting fairly high profile Ls that I think split actual anarchists and left-liberals who just liked to call themselves anarchists (and now online anarchists who really like NATO? idk). But those events had a lot of people shy away from the anarchist label and kinda mull about their own beliefs. The main ones off the top of my head were CHAZ, Vaush audience watchers, and the anti-work breakdown. Certainly, I remember r/cth being a lot more awash with anarchist rhetoric and population (claimed or otherwise) than hexbear currently is.
I don't want this to be a sectarian rant session, but more a reflection of political journeys from r/cth's medicare for all socdem position to the current vibes of hexbear, both personal and pontifications of why this shift occurred.
This isn't the be-all and end-all of my thoughts of my own political evolution. I'll comment some more as I think of them (in between cleaning for rent inspection)
2020 was a wake up call for me, revitalizing. I first got involved in leftism in 2014 in the original BLM uprising. After about a half a decade of street politics it was taking its toll on me, I was just trying to survive, not doing much activism.
I'm much more militant and driven. I don't really care about having an org behind my back if none of the orgs in the area are doing the Actual Work. I'm educating and feeding people with a crew of homies. I don't really care about holding down a job or going to jail anymore.
It was really just anarchist ~> more extreme anarchist. 10 years might be a more interesting/narrative story
I was "apolitical", but a lot of people cared about Hillary v Trump in 2016 and I got caught up in that. After that, I rode the Bernie train; being in a country with welfare and healthcare meant that those seemed like an obvious good, and it was wild to me how obstinate Americans were against either. Like, did anyone enjoy American healthcare? What even is a "deductible"? I think at some point or another watching youtube video essayists, I got recommended a chapo podcast (I think it was the conservative comics one), and I was kinda sucked in to the irreverence. I think I'd been hanging around a lot of hippies and well-meaning civility libs, always taking the high road and admonishing everyone who doesn't. Being able to let loose, sneer, and be sarcastic was extremely refreshing. After that, it was a bunch of listening and eventually joining the subreddit.
I was a libertarian (by default) when I started university back in 2006. Incel adjacent around 2012. So, you know, progress.
Kinda similar. I was basically just a succdem who voted for Bernie in the 2016 primary, Hillary in the 2020 general. I was on some lib forums, and started getting annoyed by the vitriol that Hillary supporters were giving towards Bernie and his supporters, for ridiculous reasons (like he "poisoned the well" for Hillary, or he basically did anything other than say "you should vote for her, not me".) I found r/cth, never looked back.
So thanks libs, if you didn't misdirect your anger, I might still be on your side.