can't stop thinking about how i might still be a vaguely-socdem buzzfeed lib if my spanish teacher when i was fourteen hadn't shown us the motorcycle diaries (che guevara movie)
I spilled baked beans all over myself watching Cars 2 in theaters
Then some kid saw you and shouted, "This liberal believes in electoralism!", and everyone laughed.
r/ fucking politics lol. That's what finally did it for me. I always leaned left but still believed in the Dems/lesser evilism out of Trump desperation in 2016.
I would go on r/politics every day. I'd read articles and comments. I had a front row seat to the #Resistance in action.
They proceeded to do nothing of value. And the "nice" and "sensible" Republicans, even the ones who could hopefully protect the integrity of the nation because they were so patriotic? They voted alongside Trump every time. Every now and then they'd make it so like Senator Collins or someone would heroically vote against something shitty but the margin would always be 50-51 so you know it was a show. Moderate Republicans literally do not exist and r/politics users should know that by reading their own sub lol.
Paying attention to politics long enough radicalizes you.
The /r/politics position on Bidenism pre-super Tuesday VS post-super tuesday was also interesting to watch lol
Yeah, /r/politics was genuinely kind of okay for a bunch of liberals for, like, a month. Then the Great Centrist Merge happened and suddenly the only acceptable opinion was full 100% uncritical support for Joe Biden. Guarantee some money changed hands somewhere.
I'm not even sure. I think it's very possible /r/politics simply bought into the propaganda that "differences are hashed out in primaries." It's like the Stalinist "dissent in the politburo makes us weak" position, except for democrats lmao
There's no way it isn't some sort of op. I have r/enoughsandersspam users tagged, and now they dominate most threads, especially ones about former primary candidates.
Also wait didn't the dems spend a bunch of money pushing articles on /r/politics in 2016 or am I tripping
Yup. I was already left leaning when it happened, but the true, final nail in the coffin was their whole treatment of Tara Reade. IIRC I saw that first surface on some leftist sub first, went around a few other leftist places, then decided to see what politics was doing about it (I had stopped regularly going there a few months back).
Wasn't in Hot, wasn't in Top for Day or Week....
Was in Controversial. Top comment something about her writing some piece that was favorable to Russia or Putin. Truly solidified to me what sort of people many of them were.
best articles are generally always in controversial for that sub. if it's not shitting on trump or praising the dnc superstars, downvotes away!
Agreed. I do still dumpster dive in there from time to time to see how they react to reality (the kente cloth stunt Dems pulled, AOC going after party leadership, anything suggesting that this election was a significant blow to them for not winning seats, etc).
So I guess I just go there for the schadenfreude, really
This was basically me. I mean, I have some vaguely leftist history preceding 2016. I spent weeks at Occupy and had been going to antiwar rallies since I was 17. I always knew our government was fucked and unresponsive to the people, but I never had a systemic analysis which explained why. So I was a radlib, I guess.
When Trump got in I was like "oh shit oh fuck" for a couple reasons. In hindsight, it is clear the right was splitting off into their own alternate reality throughout most of the Obama administration, but that alternate reality seemed like a fringe thing which could safely be ignored. After Trump, it became obvious that it couldn't be ignored. Everyone from right to left became convinced overnight that this ascending Milo Yiannopoulos / Richard Spencer / Alex Jones wing of the right might actually become the new reality. Additionally, the corruption had become more blatant and outwardly criminal than ever before.
So I joined the libs in freaking out for two years and did everything I could to support the bLuE wAvE in 2018. The hysterical media environment had turned me into a full blown Russiagate crank. 2019 came, a new Congress was seated, the Mueller Report was in our hands, and there was a pile of crimes so high impeachment should have been a no-brainer - but Pelosi wasn't having it. Support for impeachment had hit a high water mark and rallies took place in over 80 cities, and she wouldn't budge. Everything the media had been saying for the past two years basically said the Republic was hanging in the balance, and finally the Democrats had the power to do something about it, and they did nothing. Even the natsec ghouls were saying now is the time, and they did nothing. This broke me for good. They couldn't make it any clearer that they don't give a fuck, and everything they've done since then only helped prove the point.
These people had the biggest freakout I've ever seen in my life about an existential threat to Liberalism occurring around the world. This caused me to try to be the most effective and devout Liberal I could possibly be. Hell, I started reading Montesquieu, Mirabeau, Rousseau, Paine, the Federalist Papers and shit, in addition to reading the Liberal media every single day. I became more Liberal than you could possibly imagine, and from that galaxy brain plateau of Liberal enlightenment, I could only see the Liberal leadership as a bunch of slimy, self-interested pied pipers leading us to certain destruction and subjugation.
Throughout this period, I started listening to the Marxists because the Marxists not only identified all of these harmful tendencies, but had a robust system of analysis which explained exactly why these things happen.
Legit, partially me too. I posted my full story elsewhere in the thread, but the leftists in that sub that pushed back to the DNC shills relentlessly over the years tremendously helped me shake the last bits of my liberal ideology. That and reading all the insane shit Trump did and leftists showing how dems/republicans did most of the same types of shit trump was doing historically, or how they failed to do anything on the real atrocities trump was doing.
I try and return the favor now by always sourcing and arguing how shitty the dem arguments are for the random lurkers reading. Repeat factual things enough and people will begin to learn and hopefully go down the same paths we did.
Dad was forced to move in with me after being diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. He's too sick to be on his own; not sick enough to die in a hospice.
I was just a bleeding heart liberal up until this last year plus of having to change his piss and shit buckets. Capitalism will destroy all of us, even when you do everything right. I didn't do anything wrong; neither did he. But here we are. Fuck this hellscape.
realizing that I was trans was a big part of me becoming a communist, as I could see how the government oppresses me as a trans person, then I could relate to other minority groups.
I saw a comment on r/fullcommunism saying that terfs get the wall, and honestly that was all that i needed to go from a politically unaware kinda liberal who thought bernie was neat, to very far left. Also i found out neo-nazi's arn't joking when it comes to jewish and trans people.
I've always wanted universal healthcare and was always anti-war, ever since i first became politcally aware in any way. But my radicalizations were:
Conservative -> Liberal : Watching Palin debate embarrassed me so much I stopped being conservative (age 18ish)
Liberal -> Social Dem: Watching Bernie sanders run in 2016 on universal healthcare + environment stuff.
Social Dem -> Socialist: Watching Bernie eat shit in 2016, Listening to Chapo, Reading internet memes
Socialist -> Communist: Reading State and Revolution + Bernie eating shit in March.
Same, except I spend a couple years between conservative and liberal being a shitty libertarian
Being a scholarship kid at a bougie high school did it to me. Best moment was when a kid got a first car for their birthday that was worth more than the house my family lived in
i had a really good US history teacher in high school that planted the seeds for my radicalization. we hardly ever used the textbook and instead he would print out packets and show us documentaries. he spent a lot of time emphasizing how important the communists and unions were during the labor movement, and much anti-communism and mccarthy-ism fucked up this country. and when we had a mock presidential debate he picked me to be Eugene V Debs :debs:
My neolib/neocon history teacher printed out a Howard Zinn analysis of WWI to deconstruct and criticize. I guess he participated a little too much in the "free marketplace of ideas" :O
Jealous. My high school history teacher had us watch Not Without My Daughter to learn about the Iranian Revolution
lol I've heard about that movie but I've never seen it, but it's on my list. and I'm really glad that you and everyone else here were able to be radicalized because everyone i went to school with was/is a chud :af-heart:
I looked up communism on Wikipedia when I was 15 because I wasn't sure what it was, and it sounded like a good idea to me. After that, I tried to figure out why it isn't a good idea which only radicalized me further.
Also it helps growing up as "the poor kid" in a decently affluent town.
Several things radicalized me, and this will be a long post really detailing it.
Born in the deep south and have spent my entire life there. My family have a legacy in industrial and seafood work with shrimping, oystering and ship building. This legacy goes back to my great grandparents. All of them were very pro-union and I grew up hearing stories about how they used to have strong workers rights, unions and labor was something they took pride in. Grandparents still to this day talk about how all that was destroyed in the 80s and then 90s with the help from Democrats in Clinton's presidency. They can tell you about the days they used to have unions and how it all disappeared.
Lived in poverty for most of my life and first realized something was wrong when I got into my teens in middle school. This was after 9/11 and all the schools I went to had Zero Tolerance policies and were run kinda like prisons. Police officers showing up at our school was a weekly occurrence and how discipline was often enforced. We had events of police officers and preachers who would talk to the entire class and scare the hell out of us talking about going to prison or the preachers who would just yell at us about sin and burning in hell. At a young age, I realized that this was not normal. My middle school had gender divided classes that they put all the quote on quote on "bad" and "slow" kids. So if you had bad grades or struggled, they assumed it was cause you were one of the bad kids and would make the argument that their was a connection between bad behavior and bad grades. In these classes, the Zero Tolerance policies were pushed to the absolute extremes as you were told often how you were on such thin ice. Suspensions were common for the most minor things (cussing at teachers, skipping class, etc), and if you got into fights or were merely suspected of having drugs on you, then you had to go up to the principal's office where they called the police and would have a cop search you thoroughly and might put you in the back of a squad car and take you to juvenile to scare the shit out of you. And yes, this happened to me on more than one occasion just cause I "looked" like a bad kid. I was drug tested before when the cops couldn't find cannabis on me while my teacher swore that I looked like a pot head and because I was found with CDs of heavy metal bands in my backpack one day, I just had to be on drugs.
Our schools also had a sorta form of solitary confinement known as 'in school suspension' and it was what the school enforced for minor discipline that didn't result in you having to deal with cops. Suspension classes were the detention rooms and had all the desks divided and facing a wall, and you were not allowed any contact at all. If you even looked away from the wall or desk towards another student, that got you in trouble with the teacher in there watching. This was a form of punishment in social isolation. If you were stuck in school suspension, you spent your entire day just starring at a wall or a desk (if you were doing work), no talking or anything unless it was begging to go to the bathroom and then you were given a 5 minute time span to do your business and be back or else get reported to the administration (and only 3 bathroom breaks allowed). When you had lunch, you couldn't talk or look at the other kids. I spent several consecutive months at a time in the detention rooms and would be so zoned out, all I ever did was sit there and draw. My parents wondered WTF was wrong with me around this time when I would come home from school and not really talk to them and would just stay in my weird little zone drawing or with music. I at least had parents that realized something was wrong and got me out of school after having to deal with cops.
I had 3 suicide attempts by the time I was 16 years old and it's a wonder I'm still alive. High school was a bit better but only cause I had a handful of teachers who were awesome and I've posted about them before on here, but won't get into it. One thing that would lead to radicalizing me was when I discovered articles about the "school to prison" pipeline and was able to relate to everything I was reading. I had thought of school like a prison and reading articles about it, something just clicked in me. ALL my friends from childhood ended up following a life of crime. When we were in middle school, it was petty crimes and I was guilty of this too. We would smash stuff at the school and commit property damage as a way of taking our anger out. By the time these friends of mine got to high school, they were graduating to more hard crimes like drug dealing and robbery.
The 2009 recession happened when I was still in high school. I watched my parents both lose their jobs and then later lose their house. This came after they both voted for Obama and were so excited to get rid of Bush. As I was getting out of high school, I suddenly had to start working on behalf of my parents and helping them survive. That took several years away from me. I watched them both wear themselves down; my mother with health problems, my dad with drinking and they became extremely bitter people as a result.
Because everyone I knew from my teen years was following Alex Jones and conspiracy stuff back then, I also got into it. 2008-2009 Alex Jones and conspiracy stuff in general was very different from how it is now. Jones ran the whole "Endgame" theory which I began thinking must've had some merit to it if Dave Mustaine had made an entire Megadeth album about it. I spent a few years in conspiracy land, and some how came out of that as a Marxist, beginning around 2013. I began reading Das Kapital as a result of getting curious about Karl Marx after seeing so many conspiracy theorists blame Marxists for everything. I could clearly see that Obama absolutely was not a Marxist right from the get go. I spent the next few years mostly reading Marx, Engels, and later Lenin, Stalin and Hoxha. I felt I finally found my political beliefs as their writing resonated deep within me. Around the time of the first wave of BLM protesters, Trayvon Martin's death, and later the Michael Brown shooting and all the riots in Ferguson, I could not turn back at all from Marxist ideology.
When Trump called Mexicans rapists on TV and then threatened to ban Muslims, I decided to get over my teenage new atheist phase and finally buckle down to study politics properly, because obviously something bad was happening in the world, so I needed to figure shit out
8 months later in July 2016 I called myself a communist for the first time
After 9/11 I wanted to get informed so I started listening to news on the radio. I found a home with KPCC (NPR) and for about a month or so that was my go to. One morning the signal wasn't coming in that well so blindly moved the dial and heard the voice of Amy Goodman. Luckily KPCC and KPFK are practically right next to each other or I'd be a lib.
