LOL
How does that quote go?
If you’re not a communist as a youth you have no heart, if you’re not a communist as an adult you must be reeducated.
:geordi-no: you'll get more conservative
:geordi-yes: you'll get less liberal
people get more right wing as they own more property. But capitalism makes it increasing hard for people to own property in this way right wing politics is an ouroboros that eats itself
I think the actual trajectory is apolitical people becoming more conservative as they become home owners, so give us homes, boomer
I actually went from being a dumb 4channoid in the right wing pipeline to a borderline Red Fash. I'm only semi joking, I seriously think the majority of people in the West™, myself included honestly are going to need to be put into fucking line before we destroy (or well, finish it off) the planet.
It's honestly hard because the mechanisms that would have caused your politics to become more conservative have now disappated. What the fuck are you gonna do? Keep paying rent well into your 60's? lol...
spoiler
I legit think sometimes I might be drawn to Left Wing Authoritarianism/Tankie mode is because I put all my skill points into Physical Instrument
I used to be the kind of euphoric neoliberal techbro that would have gone all in on believing the billionaires destroying the planet were actually its only hope.
Life and time changed that.
I don't think it's really that possible for most people (apart from failsons with dads that own boat dealerships, or richer than that) to be comfortable and placated enough to get more right wing except out of fear, hate, and ignorance. They're enough, sure, but there really isn't that much else for the right wing to offer the masses except easy enemies to hate in response to complex problems.
I seriously think the majority of people in the West™, myself included honestly are going to need to be put into fucking line before we destroy (or well, finish it off) the planet.
yeah, I agree. We need the forces of nature to humble the fuck out of us, but it might be too late by the time things get to that point.
I also took the 4chan-to-leftist pipeline as a teenager. I wonder if there is something about that route that produces more authoritarian leftists?
I personally don't aspire to authoritarianism, as I hate being told what to do but I'm pretty realistic just from having worked a lot: most people can't really be trusted (for many reasons, largely not due to their own shortcomings I think) and any kind of effort to steer society away from capitalism is going to necessisitate a lot of very, very heavy handed behavior for a time. Just look at anti-vaxxers in the USA. Are you just going to ask them to fucking stop? What about the people clear cutting forests? The guys who habitually underpay and exploit labor?
I think it's just that a lot of dumb 4channoids tend to be weirdo edgelords (which never left me, I'm just grotesque about it) and as such aren't really enamored or impressed by "civility" and I tend to feel some anarchists/liberals I've interacted with are extremely naive with regards to hyooman nature. If you spent your formative years looking at fucked up shit on /pol/ you can pretty quickly realize that humans are capable of some monstrous shit and that Nazis and the right in general tend to lean into the worst of that (and I know this to be true because I've posted with those assholes) so it becames very hard to want to confront that kind of evil with anything but equal and greater force. Even fucking Fanon makes mention of that.
Beyond looking at like gore and liveleak I've personally just had a lot of negative experienced with humans in general so like....I'm not convinced everyone can be "talked" to or reasoned with, and while I'm scared of engendering the same abuses we have now like there are only so many ways to deal with people who refuse to get their shit together
ive put all my skill points in to Dandy Boy Instrument and I'll still lean that way when push comes to shove
Lol having a job that tries to screw me over at every opportunity and paying rent to a useless landlord will make me think rich people are poor wittle victims that need to pay less taxes lol
Imagine not owning any capital and in fact being exploited by capitalists and still calling yourself one.
I have at least 3 people in my life who would rather die at the altar of capitalism than criticize the system that has impoverished them. And they live in squalor.
I don't get it.
It's like part of the death drive or something, they throw self-preservation to the wind to make sure the 1% remain comfortable.
americans believe suffering makes them virtuous, so they want to suffer as much as possible
Younger me was such a :LIB: that it makes current me seem like not a :LIB: .
One of these days I'll type up my effortpost about how on a certain level a lot of our factional distinctions are completely meaningless and arbitrary (not that the beliefs and ideals themselves don't matter to individuals, though)
:ancom-heart:
Predicting my future. I'm in my late 30's and wondering if I should ditch this nym.
I think this old adage comes from the 60's flower power hippie to 80's Reaganite capitalist pipeline. I'm so-so on the hippies being a radical movement, I mean they were anti-war and supported black liberation but they all grew up to be shitheads come the 80's. Anyway like others in the thread have said, as they amassed wealth and began owning land their values shifted to align with capitalism because that's where their new class interests were. This doesn't apply to young people today as the vast majority of us have no real prospect of joining the capitalist class.
yeah turns out that a movement whose #1 priority was avoiding getting drafted so they could keep smoking weed and dropping acid didn't have the most ideologically disciplined members. don't get me wrong weed and acid is fun and based and I'm generally sympathetic to hippies, but they never had the theory or the anti-capitalist critiques like the Panthers or even SNCC. It was more of a cultural movement than anything else, and once the Vietnam war was over a lot of them didn't have a reason to keep protesting.
rent to a useless landlord will make me think rich people are poor wittle victims that need to pay less taxes lol
Same Except i went the libertarian socialist route
"You'll instinctively ask 'what is fundamentally wrong with this person?' whenever a conservative announces themselves as you get older."
"You'll increasingly see conservatives as some kind of alien species that can only ever choose the worst option in a Hanlon's double-sided razor kind of way as you get older."
"You'll sit there in the dark in clown makeup watching conservatives kill themselves with a horrific virus for no reason and it's just like lol, lmao as you get older."
That only works on the assumption that you support capitalism because your class interests allign with it. If you do, and start out a progressive lib, who cheers for LGBT+ liberation etc., but start aging, and working (thus have way less time to educate yourself on future struggles etc.), you might find yourself speechless when a future social movement starts, say in support of disabled people's rights and start becoming a reactionary.
If you're a communist in the first place, I feel like there is less of a danger of becoming a right winger like the libs say, but doomerism might eventually get you to accept grudgingly social democracy, or maybe have the "I don't understand the social struggle anymore" make you a KKE boomer or something.
in Russia the Russian Communist Party is basically the just the pensioner party now. They can mobilize huge numbers of boomers whenever Putin tries to cut social security, but they know they aren't launching a second revolution anytime soon. They still call themselves communists though, but the conditions just aren't right.
That's because the Party went socdem in the mid 80s (Perestroika anyone?) and has not advocated for socialist economics (iirc they support a "mixed economy") since the same era
I think it's less culture war or "progressive" issues and much more rooted in being self-serving. If you're young, which generally tends to mean little wealth, even your selfish interests align with more leftist positions.
Once the mony starts rolling in though, your self interest changes though. I mean, at least under the premise of all the usual brainworms. They're the same people, just different wealth.
