I was never very religious. Basically I just believed without thinking too much about it and thought church was boring as shit.
During 10th grade an astronomy class that was supped to be a blowoff class ended up being my favorite teacher and it reignited my fascination with space and science that I had when I was really young but kind of just faded. It also sparked my agnosticism.
That all led to some basic facebook usage of the early 2010s when everyone was getting in to, well not science, but pop sci articles. So id be posting stuff from I Fucking Love science and other pages that turned out to be pretty shit once you peeled their layers.
At the same time I joined a decent amount of atheist pages since living in the south didnt exactly provide me with many to relate to with these new changes in beliefs. Over time it became clear there was a dichotomy in some of the pages where some were super misogynistic while some others had zero toleration for any misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, etc. So I left the other pages and stuck with the ones that were tolerant. By sheer luck the admin of one was a big leftist and posted a bunch of memes dunking on ancaps and supporting ancoms.
This led me to many pages of similar flavor and a lot of pages focusing on rationality, skepticism, and critical thinking in a realistic manner that tackled pseudoscience and fallacious arguments with peer reviewed journals being passed about compared to the "critical thinking/skepticism" that leads you down the path to conspiracy theories and becoming unhinged ancaps.
One day an ancom meme led me to reddit to some lefitist pages. Eventually finding and joining chapo where I lurked and learned and eventually participated.
Throughout the whole process from facebook, as shit as it is, to chapo I was slowly picking up more leftist ideas that just seemed so common sense. Especially with the help of a kid I met only twice in college.
He was only out as gay at the time but the first time I met him the homophobic dicks who my friend was hanging with would always fuck with him. I added him on facebook and hes since come out as, actually I dont know If I can comfortably say as Im not sure where he is in his journey but he does use he/him pronouns but is gender fluid in his style. Dude was a great person. Always volunteering to escort people in to abortion clinics I think every week. Also the fact hed regularly go in to waffle house in the deep south in fishnet stockings and full makeup. He was a straight "I dont give a fuck badass" and dude is crazy smart. Like he learned Latin for fun smart.
Anyway through just basically listening to him and his pro trans posts and his pro leftists posts on facebook he helped shape me the most probably.
Sorry, this is sorta stream of conscious so some things are a bit lout of place time wise but I forgot to mention the cringy shit politics I had before and during my progressions so ill throw in special paragraphs for them.
Basically I was just barely too young to vote for Obama in 2008 or I 100% would of. I fell hook line and sinker for his faux progressive talk. By 2012 I was on the fuck him train because of his drone strikes, reaching over the aisle at the cost of our citizens, and all the other fucked up shit he did. This led to my most embarrassing vote....
Gary Johnson 2012. I was not a libertarian and wasnt well informed on his politics due to laziness on my part but I was at peak anger with war on drugs and locking up minorities for fucking weed and I bought in to the "he needs to get 5% to get on the stage" or something like that. Then in 2016 I had a much better understanding of what a tool he is and after the bernie fucking during the primaries in 2016 (and 2020) it became clear electorialism is not the answer to anything and voting in the big events like that is just a theater show.
Then delved more in to communism, socialism, anarchism, etc. For awhile I thought I was communist but I realize I havent read near enough to say thats my beliefs. I might still be but Idk where I fall in the leftest spectrum other than Its more left than socdems or demsocs, proabably more left than just socialist but I dont have the education on anarchism or communism to say I fall in to that either as I feel they heavily rely on healthy human cooperation and I havent had faith in other people in over a decade. Especially other Americans.
I just really really hate capitalism, classism, racism, sexism, some other isms, etc. Whatever gets as many people taken care of regardless of their status in society from healthcare, to housing, to income, to normal human amenities and basic human rights. The world is far to rich for all people to not be living comfortably and without racial or other prejudices.
So thats how Im here. Didnt not mean to write this much but it just kinda happened and its done so whatever.
Anyway what has been your journey to being a leftist?
copy-pasting my own comment from a previous thread :
It’s weird because it’s not a straight line for me.
I grew up in a fairly privileged middle-income family but my mom was a immense influence in sociology, psychology and a lot of feminist stuff. My family has always been, at the end of the day, pretty “centrist” and liberal, parents sometimes voting left sometimes right (this is NOT in the US btw). Apart from that I felt “apolitical”, like I didn’t really care, because I didn’t have to care. I started being more politically aware through my group of friends and meeting people who had very different situations, some of them seemingly unbearable to me, and that got me questioning. One of my oldest and best friends has almost always been an Ancom through his own family education, and bless him he was a big influence.
But a lot of those things were just kinda swirling at the back of my mind for years because I didn’t have a consistent philosophy or theory, and I didn’t have to care. I could focus on school and work opportunities and my path was pretty set, I just had to not question it.
Later on, with the financial crisis and the deepening gap between my generation’s opportunities (and even worse for the ones after mine) and my parent’s generation, some friction started happening. My situation and my group of friends wasn’t the worst, but It certainly wasn’t what I was promised and what the system claimed it was. My studies were increasingly frustrating, jobs were not easy to find in the first place and it was even harder to find something “meaningful”, with the growing arguments with my parents who for a while didn’t understand what was going on. The ecological collapse was another factor on top of that that made me realize something was deeply wrong, but still at the time I was some kind of tech liberal, “science will figure it out” kinda person.
Then I had a reactionary period, for a few years. The way I understand it now, a lot of those little bits and pieces were swirling around in my mind but nothing made sense or was consistent : why does politics suck so bad and not make sense? why do I feel like i’m missing something or that i’m lying to myself when I think about politics? why does “meritocracy” not feel like it should? why do we ignore the ecological problems? why is it getting worse for me and my friends? why are some of my friends at their limit, in unbearable situations? Why am i depressed, why does it feel like everyone around me is depressed, why is it all so fucking “normal”? Why do my parents dismiss it and not seem to even understand what i’m talking about? why does politics (electoralism in truth but I didn’t know that) feel like such a joke, such a useless frustrating experience? Why do politicians or “important people” seem so evil or incompetent (important people being mostly celebrities)? why does my job and my previous hopes and aspirations now feel meaningless?
I played a lot of video games, I was in a kind of “tech-centrist” world in my job, and online i’d always lurked on places like Something awful & 4-chan in the olden-days. I liked those spaces and their weird history, weird crowds. I didn’t realise how much it had changed over time and how many skeletons were buried under the ground in those communities. Gamergate happened, and at the time another big question made me fall into the alt-right pipeline : “Why the fuck is everything about identity now?”, I didn’t understand it at all. None of it made sense, why does it all feel so fake? What is all this about “feminism”, because this doesn’t feel like it’s about feminism? Why does it feel like everything is advertising? I watched more and more videos, sargon of akkad and the like, started lurking on tumblrInAction, then KotakuInAction. I knew around me were a lot of alt-right people, I realized (although I probably didn’t admit to myself at first) I was increasingly surrounded by neo-nazis and the like.
So my mind went further : I guess i’m part of this identity group then, since I like X and Y, and apparently that’s bad and some other groups hate us? Why do I feel attacked and angry? Why do I feel like shit, why am i so fucking angry, angry, angry, angry, angry all the time? Ranting about “SJWs” and contemporary art, post-modernism, “some feminism goes too far”, etc, etc. I wasn’t very structured, but It felt like I was finally making sense of things, because at least there was an acknowledgment of the problems. The problems are real, you’re not alone, it’s not normal, and here’s why : [Insert Identity politics and Scapegoatism leading into Fascism]
My friends (unknowingly) saved me. One of my best friends, an amazing writer and feminist, would have conversations with me about it, since I would bring political topics up more and more. It kinda kept me grounded, her and all my other friends situation, the love I had for them and how much I cared about them. I realized I was ignorant about feminism, I realized it wasn’t normal for me to be so bitter and angry at “sjws” all the time. I also realized i was uncomfortable because my beliefs had giant holes in them. I was lying to myself, some things still didn’t feel right, some “answers” felt wrong or incomplete.
It was always gradual even when it was fast. And interestingly it wasn’t all at the same time/speed depending on the topic. My vision of feminism changed, that and LGBTQI+ topics. My media changed, and I started curating more what I watched, learned more about philosophy and politics and basically just kept digging more and more for things that fully made sense. Started watching more socdem, then breatube type stuff, Joined a socdem/slightly radical political party in my country and I got so, so excited at the program (which was actually trying to address the issues and fix things and was so hopeful and humanist), excited about the possibility of winning (which was a real possibility). Disillusioned about the loss and electoralism in general, kept digging, joined more and more radical communities and discords or on reddit, and eventually arrived on chapo.
Sorry for the long rant.
My progression is basically : “Apolitical” Centrist -> Tech-Liberal -> Tech-Libertarian-Edgelord -> Alt-right Pipeline Gamergater -> Socdem -> Questioning Anarchist -> AnCom (not really knowing what it’s supposed to mean but an interest in both ML and anarchism and trying to reconciliate the two) -> Maoism
To add on this, i've also done a lot of work on myself regarding masculinity and toxicity. Lots of self-crit and analysis of my own identity, my behaviours, and the stuff I carry over from family upbringing (lots of bad debate-bro behaviour in my family). Huge thanks to my friends, to breadtube (in part) and especially to this community (old sub, discord and this place) for bullying and helping on that :Care-Comrade:
I could probably add a bigger interest in "leftism" outside of the west, especially in south america and asia, and a more nuanced understanding of china. I don't know if i'm a "dengist" but I certainly understand that context and those decisions better than I used to.