https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/w79pr1/what_deradicalized_you/
I was a pretty hard leftist but I'm also a Zionist
so you were never a leftist then lol
So much of the shit is just "I didn't support the status quo, but than my material conditions improved to the point where I benefited from the empire, so I support it now"
I actually hate those fucks more than any other type
Me too. Good riddance to them. For people like that, it was never about empathy or solidarity, it's pure self-centeredness.
People like this often weren't all that left to begin with. They were just liberals that liked the far-left aesthetic because it was edgy to them. Chances are that they probably agreed with US foreign policy and saw TYT, Vaush, or Bernie as being the farthest left you could be.
sometimes they are
it's why pretty much every leftist org is a small group of people in their 30s-60s with an endless revolving door of uni kids
Law school did a lot to bring me back down to earth.
It did to me as well. I realised that the very serious people who occupy very serious positions in society are either a bunch of borderline alcoholic nerds with deeply problematic views or vacuous careerists. The first thing they teach you in law school is how the majestic justice of the law is a fucking joke and the more questionable shit you can get away with the more they respect you.
No judge or lawyer or prosecutor or bureaucrat seriously believes that the legal system is a mechanism for achieving justice.
Business college does the same, it just teaches you that knowing things doesn't matter vis a vis making money or improving your own status; it's about knowing people and being willing to use them to your advantage at every opportunity.
So you either go left, disgusted by that, or you become some bloodsucker keen on exploiting as much as possible.
Most of the 'soft' classes impart that knowledge through materials (Managerial Behavior, anyone?), but we also had a guest speaker come in one day in one of my courses. He droned on about how he graduated with like a 2.7 GPA, but because he played golf with some of his dad's buddies (and daddy was a bigshot), one of them got him a start as a middle manager at some firm; this dude was an Executive Vice President™ at some overgrown firm when they brought him in for that lecture.
Corporate curated training for a retail management position was what did it for me.
Like cool you just want me to be a cop with extra steps? Shit on my fellow workers and lick boots for $2.50/hour more than a senior clerk position? Fuck this shit.
Well that and growing up dirt poor of course.
Yup. Seeing more and more injustice has shockingly done that
Even just as a matter of personal material conditions, I get wealthier but I don't get any more fiscally secure. Like one of those disaster movies where the ground under your feet falls away as you race forward, I feel more precarious than I have in my life no matter how ostensibly "well-off" I am on paper.
Now I've got a baby girl in my care, and all I can think is the increasing horror she's going to live through as she grows up.
They don't even really need Socialism. They just needed an LBJ Great Society or an FDR New Deal that was still in tact.
Enough so that the vaunted middle class was still a thing a plurality of people could easily reach. That, plus a bit of long term economic and ecological planning, and they could keep the gravy train rolling for centuries.
But there's no reasoning with greed. Ayn Rand's Objectivism killed Western Liberal Democracy.
Destiny’s stream. Sort of lame but it worked
Would that be the one where Destiny advocated going Sharpeville on BLM protestors
I’m as far left as you can get
Why the fuck do so many people say this when they're anything but
i'm as far left as you can get because i can't imagine anything further left, like the end of capitalism.
I’m as far left as you can get, but…
The next time a radlib says this to you, start asking them how they feel about Bordiga’s concept of organic centralism as a method for organizing the proletarian dictatorship
idk what any of this means cuz i dont read but i’m gonna ask these dorks anyway
:bordiga-despair:
Lenin and Stalin weren’t authoritarian enough and cared too much about bourgeois concepts like ‘democracy’
But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
I thought I was a radical then when I saw other people protesting Israel for being a fascist apartheid state, I realized I was a fascist that supported an apartheid state
This sub isn't deradicalized, its differently radicalized.
:data-laughing:
:miyazaki-laugh:
I used to blame capitalism for everything now I realized all along zoning laws is what I hated
"I bought into the system and am now only annoyed by some of it's more apparent symptoms which inconvenience me"
Spending more time outside of America, and realizing that my anti-capitalist friends who trash-talked America on social media all day were talking out of their asses & had no idea how good we have it here.
:yes-honey-left: Healthcare please
Talking to tankies and maga people
:both-sides: People who want better things and people who want everyone with too much melanin to be put in camps are the same.
I basically turned 18 and got out of the alt-right pipeline. Never really was into it but many things were appealing, since then I’m very left leaning socially. A fella really tried to radicalise me into communism but the stories of my parents in communist Albania were really eye-opening, when it comes to worker’s rights tho i go full commie mode as a son of immigrant workers that have been exploited. Tbh, i don’t like any ideology, I see many flaws plus I think ideologies are what keeps many people from being objective.
:centrist: "I want drastic change but am unwilling to ascribe to any system which would permit them"
So many just...AWFUL takes lmao
And they're EVERYWHERE
So much "Centrism is obviously the best" out of morons who espouse that they want change, but are just supporting the status quo
This sub isn’t deradicalized, its differently radicalized.
Well indeed, they are fans of a bloodthirst system
Spending more time outside of America, and realizing that my anti-capitalist friends who trash-talked America on social media all day were talking out of their asses & had no idea how good we have it here.
100% chance they went to Mexico. Buddy, neoliberalism rules almost everywhere, you just saw the flipcoin of the disgusting empire you live in.
Talking to tankies
We should be patient with silly people, but murica brainmaggots are hard to deal with
It’s finny to me bc spending more time outside of america made me realize how fucked and unremarkable it is in most every way. Even in much poorer countries my family and I have had as good as or even better health care experiences than in the states. (Which I’m poor so I’m sure there’s better care than what I get in the us but I’d have to bankrupt myself to get it).
ideologies are what keeps many people from being objective
Tell me you're blind to your own ideology without telling me you're blind to your own ideology
"The status quo doesn't materially affect me" and other jokes to tell at parties
That whole sub and reddit for the most part Is op for propaganda, its pretty clever people don't even see it as that which is why its so successful at keeping hogs locked in. Now to add some qualifiers my brain isn't broken not everyone is sus on reddit their is some organic stuff sure. But its a curated garden for the most part. I ask my self how sustainable neoliberalism is with out an empire, I think ideology and propaganda is heavily treat supported. The bet they will call on us is, are people so treat addicted they will defend the system even if it can't give them stuff anymore.
I've seen people from my country in that sub and they whine about how people "blame America." I pried them a bit and found out they live in the Capitol and have never even stepped foot in my department. Shocker.
That's how they call States/Provinces in some LATAM countries like Paraguay and Colombia :unsus:
That makes more sense. I thought they were saying they lived in DC and these people hadn’t been in the federal office 😂
It does kind of look like that after a reread 😅 I go on and off with saying what country I live in. Sometimes I try to keep it vague and other times I just say it.
90% of Gusanos living in Latin America have never left the big cities where they spend most of their lives. The other 10% are just self-hating idiots who wish they were born in the US.
Having simple conversations and open discussions with people who held views I thought were similar to mine.
In my teens I was a big philosophy reader and this turned into economic and political philosophy. And after I read and learned enough I did what any young informed man would do, which is go onto the internet and debate randoms online. I think I would have considered myself a Marxist, and a lot of that background was informed by my readings and own personal experiences of growing up in poverty and working what felt like endless and unfulfilling jobs. It seemed like the morally correct position to take and it seemed like it had a lot of philosophical backing to not be wrong.
But then as I talked to more people I started to just run into... weird stuff. A lot of my philosophical underpinnings were based on things I viewed to be right or wrong. And on some of these debate forums (just here on reddit) I'd run into people who were heavily stalinist or leninist with a large radical anti-capitalist component in their rhetoric. But an objective historical lens shows us the outcome of these specific camps and ideologies which were literally paved by blood and starvation. I think the breaking point for me was when I encountered someone saying that North Korea was better and more ethical than the USA. I had just watched a documentary or read a news article or something detailing that some North Koreans had to eat fucking tree bark soup just to not starve. And here we have some guy typing freely from his computer in an air conditioned room not starving trying to sell this line that there was nothing wrong with literally one of the worse regimes that currently exist. I couldn't break through to him and it slowly occurred to me that radical ideologies can consume even the most well intentioned people.
Material conditions: :sleepi:
People on the internet challenging my "objective" blind trust in the news: :frothingfash:
I would have considered myself a Marxist except I consumed all the trash from the garbage can of western ideology and believe their anti-communist lies.
Ah yes the normal way of becoming a Marxist, read philosophy and then let encounters with anti-capitalist ideology along the way with Stalinists de-radicalize you. Most people I've met or know online would say on their shift leftwards they had their critiques of capitalism long before they started reading leftist theory. It's a pretty fundamental aspect of leftism you'd figure, not considering the weird market communist types or whatever the hell flavor of post-left twitter is on.
I just like the implication that supporting an apartheid regime isn't considered extremist.
Or supporting a death cult that pretends everything is just fine as it nears the cliff.
A cult of calm, self-assured nerds is still a cult if their views are completely disconnected from reality.
Not to mention the fact that every single person on that sub implicitely endorses things like unemployment, homelessness, and massive exploitation of the global south.
To name a few famously "non extremist" positions.
“I was pretty far left, but i kept thinking having a country all to yourself and filled with reactionaries was actually GOOD!”
