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.
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.
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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.