Like a moment that seemed insignificant and unimportant at the time, but looking back was in fact a pivotal moment in pushing you towards radicalization.
For me probably being introduced to Guitar Hero at my friend's house in like summer 2007. At the time it was just another day, but looking back I ended up falling in love with those games, I ended up being introduced to The Ramones and even more importantly the Dead Kennedys through them, which caused me to get into punk music and resulted in me adopting very critical attitudes towards larger American society, attitudes which later grew into anarchism and then Marxism
Honestly, I can't really name any single one in particular but there are a few things I can point to:
1.5ish: When I was around my early teenage years I was doing some social studies homework with my grandpa who was watching me and it started about the cold war but he started telling some family lore...but the important part is at some point we were discussing American history in general and he told me to never think of us
s as permanent members of the white people club, the KKK despised us and Irish immigrants too, and how us and said Irish immigrants quarreled a lot together when we both ironically had so much in common. So why be bigoted and do the bidding of the very WASPs that hated us? The real kicker is he's a conservative but he inadvertently taught me about intersectionality and how non-antagonistic contradictions are heightened on purpose by the ruling class.
Another counterintuitive thing, but being a weeb. I got into anime at an early age of 4 when my cousin who was 11 sat me down and showed me both Dragon Ball and Pokemon. I was hooked immediately, and it made me really fascinated in other cultures. I also think there are some decent morals to be found in some of the anime I watched. Pokemon actually opened my eyes to a better world than the one I currently live where people are friendlier, and there is much less scarcity in the world.
Learning about MLK. I was immediately outraged that this country let that happen, and then probably the first spark of tankie-ism happened when I learned about the nazis and made some connections between them and the US' treatment of minorities in middle school. Not to mention that even in elementary school I was a little spooked by all the forced patriotism we did, like I remember rolling my eyes over this school sing-a-long where we just sang (and I quote) "Patriotic songs" to our parents.
One of my favorite western cartoons is Avatar: The Last Airbender. English class did teach me how to think critically so I really started to examine it and realized that I too can call out the atrocities of my own nation, in fact I'm probably betraying leftism in some weird way because I'm calling out these atrocities almost for the US' own good. Now that I'm an adult and read gramsci, I've made it a habit to overanalyze entertainment almost more than how I analyze news.
I'm sure there's others, but those are four things I can think of off the top of my head.
In North Korea,