A 17-year-old kid started working with me, and he was talking politics with another co-worker. I was staying out of it, but then he asked me what I consider myself to be, politically. I hit him with, "I'm a pretty hardcore communist, actually." His jaw dropped and he laughed, and he was like, "No, really. What are you, actually?" When I told him that I was a Marxist-Leninist, he responded with, "Dude, that's terrible. Why?"

I'm normally not super open about my politics unless I gauge that someone is accepting to hear some theory, but I just wanted to fuck with this kid lol. I told him that the incentive for ever-increasing profits in the interest of a small group of elites is destroying the planet and exploiting people all around the world. He came back with, "You really need to read more. If you understood more about what you were saying, you wouldn't support such a violent ideology." I'm literally twice his age, lmao.

Then he asked me if I ever read 1984 :michael-laugh:

He asked what led to me becoming a Marxist. I told him that I used to be a libertarian like him when I was his age, but as I grew older and started learning historical materialism, my worldview changed.

We went back and forth a little over the next 20 minutes. I kept it cool and respectful because I wasn't super invested in debating him. But he was getting all flustered and started playing all the hits, like workers not being entitled to owning their work because the boss took all the risk. Humans are naturally greedy, so socialism could never work. Marxism is responsible for over 100 million deaths. I rebutted what I could when I felt like it, but I'm not a debate bro and I didn't really care what he had to say. I just thought the whole thing was funny.

My favorite part was his face when I told him that I don't support liberal democracy, and that a one party state is actually far superior. :che-smile:

  • RonaldMcReagan [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I told him that I used to be a libertarian like him when I was his age, but...

    :data-laughing: You fucking hit him with the :grillman: "when I was your age"beam, you bloody legend.

    • SaniFlush [any, any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Millennials unlock that move at an absurdly young age for some reason

      • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Grow up in the 90s,bush steal the election when you're like 10 and just aware that it's wrong, 9/11, have a political awakening over the Iraq war, have Obama totally fail you and get a gameshow host business weirdo. It's actually really weird that more millennials aren't radical

        • Antiwork [none/use name]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Dems are pretty good at their propaganda. They get you locked into the two party view and it almost seems obscene to look outside that lens. Even though people hate the two parties, they pick one and move on with their life regurgitating the slop fed to them. Something must really rock one’s world or a bunch of little things happen and the lightbulb clicks, but even then sometimes they just go further right.

          Through these discussions on HB for a lot of people it took Bernie getting fucked twice to finally get the blinders off. All those other events weren’t enough, although they certainly help the process. And even once the blinders are off and you open up to learning more about Marxism, not much changes, but how much more you hate westerners.

          Also millennials are starting to get better paying jobs as they get older and as such their class interests are changing.

          • ThisMachinePostsHog [they/them, he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            I was on the path of radicalization from early 2019 thanks to the memes and discussions on /r/cth that shone Cuba and the USSR in a different light. Then, seeing Bernie blatantly getting fucked a second time was the final straw that showed me that our democracy is a sham. Not just the political process itself, but seeing the consent-manufacturing machine work in real time really took the blinders off. After that, I started pursuing what socialism, communism, Marxism, and imperialism were all about.

            Things in my own personal life were really bleak at the same time that all of this was going on, so I was primed for hearing something new. It sucks that things really need to go wrong in someone's life before they're willing to consider their worldview might be skewed.

        • SaniFlush [any, any]
          ·
          2 years ago

          They require structure which would allow them to resist the status quo. In other words, mutual aid…

    • ThisMachinePostsHog [they/them, he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Hahaha I fucking loved that I had that option. "Well kid, the older you get, the more you'll realize how fucked up the world is and how your individual rights aren't the most important thing in the world."