Mine involves one of those "fuck you got mine" well-off gay men that decided to abandon the left (and for the most part, my friendship with him) entirely as soon as gay marriage was legally protected at a federal level.

I tried to catch up with him years later, but by that point, he started with a rant about how "commies were the ones that killed people like me. Are you still a commie, Ulysses?" and when I pushed back just a little about that incendiary statement I found out that he was supporting fucking :trump-anguish: because of that rainbow flag stunt back in 2016.

I haven't talked to him after that. :doomer:

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    I'm often the first commie that liberals have ever met. I have one coworker a few years back who called himself an "acolyte of Gandhi," called himself basically liberal, and that he believed in a wishy-washy happy global peace. Over the course of the next year, he became an outspoken fascist. He would tell me there need to be machine gun nests placed at America's land borders. He started giving money to Republican candidates. He even showed up to a drag queen event at a library with a gun. He became absolutely deranged and he placed the blame squarely on me.

    I have a feeling something else was going on, but he did say a few times that he never seriously considered the stuff I was talking about, like how there's structurally enforced poverty, how America endorses white supremacy. He'd never considered that stuff before and the moment he did, he dipped instantly into blood and soil fascism. He's not even American. He's from Bolivia.

    I know several other people like that, just basic encounters of people who'd never considered social/political questions and the second they do, they gravitate towards outright fascism out of instinct, despite believing they're normal.

    I've also known two moderate centrist lib types who have become steel-eyed Catholic fundamentalists in the past few years. The very odd kind who want complete Catholic sovereignty over Earth and believe Pope Francis is a clone or antipope or whatever the hell. I can't keep up with their frantically changing conspiracy theories. I also can't keep up with how much they try stepping on eggshells when talking to me, like they'll say shit like "Technically, homosexual attraction isn't a sin. I don't hate gay people. In fact, I believe John the Baptist had homosexual attraction." It's ludicrous how they try to have their cake and eat it too, they try to hold onto their normal approachable liberal selves and their deranged theocratic beliefs. Everything's a technicality with them or some kind of major attack against them. One of these people is gay too, so I have no idea how she's squaring that.

    • RNAi [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      He’s not even American. He’s from Bolivia.

      Ah, you met an average white latam