As a recently radicalized baby-lefty I’ve been thinking about this a lot
"the idea of a “moment” of radicalization is liberalism and connotes that people need this singular moment of experience or persuasion whereby they enter the class conscious state."
fair point, just goes to show that my perspective was influenced by my own experience, thanks for pointing it out because now I'm aware :D
So I guess the real question would be "What's your personal history with leftism?"
Mad props to you for at least trying, man. I wish I could unionize my workplace but there is only 10 of us and all of them minus the 2 managers watch Fox News on the daily... and they aren't even old. Shit's sad. And don't fret about labels, we're all leftists in some sense. I think I'm an anarcho-communist.
Other than The Conquest of Bread , I have not delved into much AnCom theory. I have been suggested Now and After: The ABC of Communist Anarchism but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
My parents were yuppie-ish radlibs. They were devout protestants strongly concerned with social justice. Above all, they were anti-war and anti-racist, so that was a decent foundation.
Formative anti-imperialism:
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the lead-up to the Iraq war protests in 03/04, seeing HUGE numbers turn out. seeing cops kettle people. also got me connected to Palestinian solidarity.
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a protest against Bush at one of his town halls. it was crazy to see his security detail he needed to keep up the straight-talkin folksy schtick. I vividly remember being shocked at seeing how big sniper rifles were in real life, and odds were they were there to be used against Americans if need be
On Communism:
- my younger brother studied geography in college. he was introduced to David Harvey and subsequently Marx. my brother and I had/have a great relationship, and as a left-libertarian at the time, I was very easy to convert
Other galvanizing experiences:
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working retail
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having medical debt go into collections
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having a hilarious amount of student loans that I will never be able to pay off if I want to enjoy a normal quality of life
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serving on a jury for the first and only time at 19. I failed to cause a mistrial/nullification, and let myself be bullied into rendering a guilty verdict for crack possession against two middle-aged black women who were arrested as part of a sting against a drug dealer. watching cops lie on the stand was wild. I consider this the greatest moral failing of my life
This is a good question you've asked, which has generated a lot of great dialogue. o7
Thanks! Geography asks: "what is happening where, and why is it happening there?"
The field can roughly be divided into physical geography and human geography, the latter of which is a social science.
David Harvey is a human geographer at the CUNY Grad Center, and a foremost expert on Kapital. His lectures on Marx's Kapital are all freely available on YouTube and worth checking out. He's also written extensively on Neoliberalism and late capitalism.
That's so cool, always liked physical geography but human geography sounds interesting, I'll look it up
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it stopped being a game or a thing that happened far away with Charlottesville, for me. I kind of held onto my radlib-ness for another 6 months or so but started reading and thinking about politics much more after that. what was left of my worldview shattered when I read the Dispossessed and realized that quite literally the only thing still holding my liberalism together was capitalist realism. once that was gone, I dove head-first into communism and haven't looked back.
the only thing still holding my liberalism together was capitalist realism. once that was gone, I dove head-first into communism and haven’t looked back.
Yeah this is a big mood
Good fucking book, if you havnt and are interested Le Guin's translation of the Tao Te Ching is really good.
Going to let you in on a secret: There’s many radicalizations to come. Not just one. Each one is a transcendent moment in the mind. Each one is transcendent because it is the foundation of the new identity, the new self. The hologram.
There’s a transcendent moment where you’re willing to sacrifice yourself for the masses: when you reach that point, where no real doubt remains, it’s time to join a properly radical organization and be around amazing comrades who will completely and utterly understand why you’re there, where you came from, and they’ll forgive all of it and truly love you.
That’s the point where you get your truly revolutionary nom du guerre. That’s where the radicalization path leads, to the real thing.
that's beautifully said and gives me hope for the future and myself. thanks comrade.
I had worked a lot of shitty McJobs that definitely helped but the moment I really put it all together was when I saw a montage of all the posts of 4chan doxxing Bike Lock Antifa and I was like "wait a second, why isn't everyone hitting Nazis with bike locks? They must be right about other shit too" so I looked up PhilosophyTube's video about antifascism
This is why self-reflection is important and why libs (and even moreso chuds) are trained to be afraid of thinking about stuff
It's always funny when you say stuff like "critical thinking is vital and we need to emphasize it more in schools" and libs nod along sagely
Same, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables and NOFX's pump up the valuum were super formative for me.
I radicalized when I started working and realized that this whole shit is bullshit.
I'm nd and had a lot of self hate, especially when I struggled to do 'normal' things like the hell that is modern education and work etc, because I bought the line that it was a personal failure, that I sucked and it was my fault, took a while to realize that no, this is unfair to except of anyone not just myself
I mean, because of that workplace I actually learned that I'm not neurotypical
Sure would be nice if we had actual support systems in place that helped people get to know themselves and their struggles so they can learn and grow in a healthy way!
fuckin hellworld...
Bush v Gore, when the supreme court just elected Bush for no reason
Never followed politics much, but did my civic duty of trying to research candidates and selecting whoever I thought had the best ideas. In the couple of elections that I earnestly voted in, I just ended up getting pissed at the Republicans for basically forcing me to vote Democrat. Democrats were never all that appealing to me, but Republicans were obviously fucking ridiculous. Same story in 2016: "Thanks to the Republicans for handing Clinton the win, so we get 4 more years of mediocre Obama". I didn't really have much of a vision for what I actually wanted to have happen (coming from a very PMC family and a PMC upbringing), but I knew that shit was boring as fuck if anything.
Trump wins and combined with some IRL experiences (met a few millionaires from my work and conversation with them was...uninspiring if anything), I realized that what I now know as the liberal notion of meritocracy wasn't real at all (I knew it wasn't real but figured it was kinda real).
I also have been very interested in tech, and constantly wondered what the transition to an automated society would look like, since that's obviously not a possible bridge to cross under capitalism.
The only ones talking about the conditions that led Trump to get elected (instead of the same old "Trump is an evil liar" stuff that was already well established), and an automated society were the socialists. Started out on the libertarian side, since there's obviously a lack of freedom under capitalism, and I've started to understand the materialist/Marxist side better over time. I don't really claim to ascribe to any particular tendency.
I’ve always had left tendencies i guess but ussr/communism meme culture somehow led me from me_irl to latestagecapitalism, which I originally saw as a funny meme thing about how everything sucks. But like a year or 2 later, a few months after Bernie announced he was running, I found chapo. and the rest is history. I wish I still knew what post originally led me to chapo
A lack of empathy and only being concerned about your own career and income?
And even internally, corporations push out plenty of propaganda out to the white collar workers i.e. "well we need to build that new factory in China because American workers want too much money!"
I study the atmosphere and realizing libs aren't going to do anything about climate change has driven me further left every year.
It was a slow process for me. I started out being extremely naive in grade school and actually thinking this country was a force of good in the world because that's how the media and people around me portrayed it. I joined the marines thinking that it was a noble thing to do along with trying to force myself to be a man (I'm a transwoman). I went to Iraq shortly after 9/11 but remember being confused as to why we were going there since they had nothing to do with 9/11. I remember seeing how rundown that country was and thinking there was no way that place was a threat to the U.S. I just felt like a bully being there and really started questioning the leadership of the u.s. I started reading books by Carl Sagan around that time since I was also questioning why god never seemed to answer my prayers and was curious as to what actual scientists had to say on that matter. I read the demon haunted world and saw the world from the eyes of a skeptic and non believer for the first time in my life. I became skeptical of the media and questioned why people said what they said instead of just accepting it. The more I learned and questioned the more left leaning I became. I regret serving in the military now obviously since I'm posting here, this country is just a bully picking on weaker countries that can't fight back all in the name of profit and that's fucked.
After the military I started working in dead end factory jobs where things never seemed to improve and the pay never kept up with inflation. My social anxiety kept me from doing anything more meaningful job-wise. My depressive episodes became more and more frequent. I saw my only purpose in this society to be that of a wage slave working towards making some rich fucks more rich and nothing more. Life has felt pointless most of my adult life now starting with the military. I know some of that is related to my mental health conditions but still.. It's been about 15 years of manufacturing and it has made me hate the system that just wants to use me until I break and feel a lot of empathy for those that are suffering similarly so I want change to occur. I want equality and I hate the rich and the amount of control they have over the rest of us both in this country and beyond. Too many people suffer in the name of misbegotten wealth.
I don't know theory so I just call myself a leftist at this point. My adult life experience has radicalized me. Maybe when this depressive episode ends I'll read up on theory but it doesn't seem my thoughts will ever matter in this world.
Comrade: there are a lot of ex-military leftists. Your thoughts do matter in the world. Please continue your struggle and work towards reaching out to an organization. You will be accepted as an equal comrade. You will be valued not because of your past, or in spite of it, but because of who you are now.
Thanks for sharing comrade :)
And for what it's worth, your thoughts matter to me <3
Just seeing all the working class boomers in my life busted & broken and unable to retire or comfortably wind down their working lives
