In all honesty, though, stumbling across Chapo in the second half of 2019 really helped get me out of my libness, and I'm genuinely grateful for that.
I came in as a full-on liberal who had positive opinions of people like Adam Schiff and Maxine Waters lmao. When I saw users posting about Evo, Castro, Lenin, and Chavez, I was super confused. I didn't understand any of the inside jokes, but I was intrigued enough to hang around and lurk. I was a huge Bernie guy, but I didn't realize there were unironic communists out there. At the time, I was a progressive dork who legitimately thought democratic socialism was like what Scandinavia had, and that "communist-style socialism" was only done by evil authoritarian countries like Cuba and China. :cringe:
I really didn't understand or particularly put great importance into what the US has gotten up to in Latin America. I didn't know about the Tulsa bombings, the Battle of Blair Mountain, Cointelpro, Eugene Debs, Fred Hampton and other black revolutionaries, or a whole lot else about US imperialism and violent anticommunism. But over the next 6 months, I learned a lot through osmosis and eventually began participating in the sub. Shortly thereafter, the sub got shut down and I ended up here, because I didn't get this kind of exposure to leftist thought anywhere else in my life.
I've since learned about trans issues, a lot about breaking down my own toxic masculinity, recognizing fascism, seeing through the bullshit of US exceptionalism, and about the struggles of the Global South against Western aggression. I know we all like to joke about how posting isn't praxis, but if a liberal white schmuck like me can be redeemed by memes, I feel like it can help other people, too.
The CTH subreddit was pretty crucial for me. I'm such a nerd who loves arguing that I just worked myself into being a Marxist because they always had the most coherent analysis.
The sheer quantity of learning you just listed in order to solidify your movement from liberal to communist is honestly why this is all so difficult.
And it's only made harder by the liberals thinking they're so well educated and informed.
There's a lot of truth to that. I was in a particularly low point in my life when I started absorbing a lot of this stuff. My mom had just died and I got fired from my job from not being able to show up every day because of grief and depression. So I had a lot of free time to dive into the topics that were being discussed, and had almost a whole year to read theory and engage in posts.
The time element is such a huge barrier.
People in a good place economically can afford entertainment that takes up their time. People in a bad place economically are working too hard to have the time or energy to learn. The exception to this tends to be people in a bad place emotionally, which seems to be something that makes a person seek something other than entertainment.
Just anecdotal thoughts.
Absolutely. I've often thought that it's frustrating that to become a communist who can defend your arguments, you have to put in a ton of time reading and breaking down the programming that's been shoved into your brain your whole life. Whereas you only have to live your normal life and consume what's being handed out to live as a lib or a chud.
And you're right about both well-off people and those living in poverty. People who are in a good place economically have benefitted from the way things are, and there's really no reason to seek outside information to change things for you and those around you, because the system works. And if you're already working 40-60 hours and unable to make ends meet, reading about economics and history are the last thing you want to do with your free time.
And unlike the liberals, we don't get the guise of "good intentions" to cover our mistakes. If they say something wrong, well, everyone believed that media pundit at the time! But if you quote an article that didn't come from the AP press, god help you. And then when that article proves to be right a few weeks later, you're still somehow the one who was stirring the pot because you came to that conclusion before "the adults in the room."
Over and over again. It's so goddamn frustrating.
I remember coming across a comment on the CTH subreddit talking about how chuds perceive history and their lack of any coherent framework to analyze it. The comment went something like "these people see each step of the way how the bourgeoisie has played tricks and used violence to suppress workers, but they're too dumb and too lacking of any theoretical explanation for it. We as socialists have a way to explain these things..." or something to that effect. I thought it was the most smug, most annoying thing I'd read in my life.
Anyway it's 2 years and a little bit of reading later and I completely agree with it.
viewing yourself as lucky for having been encountered the social currents that you personally needed to come to a better framework in spite of the social order largely trying to push you away from it
Big fucking mood here
we are very smug
Its because we are right :lea-smug:
:100-com:
That's exactly how I feel. Getting exposed to historical materialism and Marxist theory has completely changed how I view the world and society. It's so much better than seeing everything as "red states vs blue states" and Orange Man Bad.
The cth sub was the reason why I decided to sign up for that god forsaken website. Things were never the same after it got banned...
Genzedong is the closest but it's quarantined . Also the trueanon sub is pretty good too, similar vibe to CTH
They killed Genzedong then co-opted Shitliberalssay and Communism memes.
The Deprogram subreddit is pretty good I've heard. Its supposedly the new genzedong.
I've quit reddit and only look at it once every couple of months. If /r/genzedong still exists, that was the last place on the site that wasn't brainwormed as far as I know.
@ pinging chuds and bullying so many libs that we gained a reputation well beyond our own sub was really the pinnacle of redditposting. Back when we were all deluded into thinking that posting was an actual method of political action lmao. Ignorance is bliss and all that
I completely agree, it’s taken a lot of self education and self Crit but CTH completely changed my worldview. From Russia gate lib to committed communist.
I was first exposed to leftist ideas in the 2016 primary, I probably would have ended up just watching ContraPoints and Vaush videos if not for arguing with people on the subreddit about Castro etc and being forced to reassess a lot of the things I used to take for granted about history. The sub wasn't always good but it was way more good than bad.
I honestly think it's so weird that we changed our name to Hexbear because we didn't want to be a podcast site, but we were named after the subreddit which was way better and more notorious until it got nuked :shrug-outta-hecks:
Looking back the sub was probably pretty critical in my journey as well
Supposedly impetus for changing the name was an AMA with a labor group that fell through because of the association to the subreddit. Since we've had dozens and dozens of extremely informative AMAs with labor groups since then, I think we can all agree that changing the name totally worked in our favor and didn't just hamstring our ability to attract former members of the subreddit.
spoiler
no I'm not still salty about this why do you ask
