Sorry if this has already been discussed or if I've already told you these stories before.
I didn't radicalize until 2017 or so and was a lib until then. I was in high school in the '00s and there was only one guy there who was an out communist. He was more than an acquaintance but not a close friend. He once went through the trouble of downloading a bootleg copy of The Fellowship of the Ring for me, which would have taken like all day with the internet speeds of the time, and then he burned it onto a CD, for which I will be forever grateful. We never talked about his political beliefs together—I was a lib but always against the Iraq War (wish I could say the same for the Afghanistan War). My lib friends and I discussed his beliefs once behind his back, saying it was funny that he thought capitalism would expand across the world and then destroy itself, ha ha, how could that possibly ever happen?
When I was radicalizing in 2017 I reconnected with him and he gave me a Trotskyist book, Socialism Seriously, which I liked a great deal, even though it trash-talks the USSR within the first two or three pages. He moved to a state with more jobs and became a [member of a rare decent powerful union with good pay and benefits] and seems to be more or less a lib now, although I haven't been on FB for quite some time so I'm not sure.
Anyway, being a radical today is hard, even though to be honest it seems like it's even harder to be a liberal or a fascist ("Why is everyone around me sick, dying, or miserable all the time? They just need to work harder and smarter!"). Most of us were radicalized, if I'm correct, post-OWS or post-Bernie, so I'm curious if any of you were radicalized earlier and how things were different at the time—for instance, as terrible as the internet is, I can't recall anything resembling a communist community existing anywhere in the '00s. Leftwing websites were merely progressive at best.
I thought the revolution was on the verge of breaking out when the anti-globalization movement stopped the WTO and rioted in Seattle in 1999, and then could summon 100,000 people every few months for the next big IMF/WB/WTO meeting.... sadly this was ruthlessly crushed by the forces of repression, co-optation, and sabotage. classic divide and conquer and it worked. they got lucky that 9/11 happened right around the same time (or they did it as a "break glass in case of emergency" action when they saw they were getting their asses whooped and the movement was growing) and it gave the ruling class way more power and sympathy and trust than they had on 9/10/01....
then the anti-iraq war organizing gave me a little hope but it was always very liberal and shallow.
then OWS gave me some hope but it was very liberal and full of psy-ops and crazy people.
then bernie gave me some hope but it was brutally crushed by the forces of elite power.
now i just want to live long enough to see some of the evil people i despise die before i do.
Through ows I met some people that took crazy to new levels. They weren't always effective, but sometimes they really did annoy the right people. I'll take what I can get. :rat-salute: