Personally, I grew up on a single parent home, where I saw my mom get destroyed by her office work. The lack of unions, no external help and general misoginy, made her get super depressed, and became an alcoholic. In my teenage years I was almost lured by the manosphere communities, but got helped by a group of close friends that were left leaning. Most of them were anarchist, so I started with that. Slowly but surely, I started to understand how sick this system is, and it made me furious, but I never found a way to show my ideas. No political party represented my ideas, and I fell deeper in the anarchist rabbit hole. Yes, I was a hardcore anarkiddie, but I bite me back. When I needed them the most, they turned their backs on me, and fell into deep depression. And in seeking psychological help, my counselor recommended me going back to my roots. So I went back to videogames, japanese culture and most importantly, read again after years The Communist Manifesto. I still don't know how to position myself in the left, but I know that I'm a Marxist, and that I want change. Stay safe, comrades.
I describe it as a gradual slow leftist shuffle. Which also sounds like a snazzy dance number.
I lived in the US as a young child, and when I first became politically aware I was your stock standard social-issues Democrat that thought the Democratic party really cared about the worker. The more politics I consumed the more I shifted left, but still within the framework of the Democratic party.
By the time I hit uni I was pretty disenfranchised with the Democrats, but still fell for all the "lesser of two evils" bullshit since I obviously didn't identify with the Republicans. If nothing else, I thought they were at least the anti-war party. Which obviously couldn't be further from the truth.
I left the country before the end of my university years, which was very instrumental in shaping my future politics. At this point I was probably Sanders-style soc-dem. I went to graduate school and studied international relations and security, which led me to quickly realise what a destabilizing force the US was on world security. I didn't quite consider myself a full marxist-leninist yet, but I had started to read theory that I was very sympathetic towards.
One of the biggest events was probably the research I did during grad school in the DPRK. It's probably obvious to everyone here, but realizing just how much EVERYTHING I had been told about the DPRK was wrong was pretty eye-opening.
From there, it was a pretty direct line. I think I had a moment or two early on where the indoctrinated stigma against communism still plagued me, but I got over that fast. I actually work in an industry that caters towards the ridiciously wealthy now, which only makes me hate capitalists even more. I could probably go on for days about the excesses of some of our customers.
Please do, comrade. Weirdest one you've had to deal with without doxxing yourself?
I work hospitality at high-end properties, my old property got lots of heads of state, royalty, and the like. Those can be bad with some bizarre demands, but the worst are the mid-tier CEOs who are far more self-important than they have any right to be.
The worst anecdote I can recall from my last property is when a guest, who was a Shiny Member and CEO of a tiny company, was already upset while he was checking out that he was not given champagne amenities and a free upgrade to a suite. We made the woeful mistake of allowing one of our front service staff to help him carry his luggage to his taxi, but the staff member was a foreigner. He was very upset by the fact that we didn't hire exclusively locally and refused to leave while he called the police.
After arrival, the police that he called promptly escorted him off property and he is blacklisted as far as I am aware. I am still not sure what he expected the police to actually do.
I guess he took the idea that "the police work for the ruling class" a bit too literally.