I never get tired of 'em. I know we've discussed this before. I know the process is ongoing, not necessarily based on a single event, and depends a lot on your position in society. If discussing the radicalization of others, don't mention any methods unless people specifically told you that certain things radicalized them.

For me, I was a left-liberal for most of my life. Long story short, I ran in a state senate election trying to be as friendly to everyone as possible. The one thing I really wouldn't budge on was universal health care, since I knew from experience that it worked. I lost my election BADLY to a guy who ran on no platform at all, although he had much better name recognition. I worked so hard on that campaign and really was devastated and had to look for answers. Stupid as it sounds, at around that time I found the r/chapotraphouse subreddit and started listening to the podcast. That led to me listening to much better podcasts (like Revleft Radio), reading actual theory, and giving up on the Chapo podcast entirely once Bernie lost the last primary.

I'm always trying to radicalize others but I just usually get nowhere. George Floyd's death plus coronavirus I think resulted in a lot of people reconsidering things, but it seems like many of them have kind of swung back in the other direction now, at least as far as I can tell from watching my friends on Facebook. I've been arguing with my lib dad for months about all of this shit, with the result that he has actually gotten much better at deflecting Marxist points than the average lib lol. Sometimes I can get him to admit that everything is fucked and that Marxism is the only answer, at other times he'll say that we need to make friends with local business owners (some of the worst fucking people in the universe) and not alienate them.

Anyway, if you feel like writing your radicalization story or the radicalization stories of others, I'm happy to read.

  • cumbaby [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I fell for the libertarian grift in 2017 after being a Bernie supporter because (retrospectively) I was perceptive enough to realize that the world around me was very very wrong and I wanted an ideological cheat code to get me out of thinking about it. Coronavirus made me realize that Libertarianism is a complete fucking sham. I started watching Chomsky lectures and fell into a pipeline of sorts that eventually landed me on the old sub, maybe a month before it got banned. I was also pretty into conspiracy stuff in my libertarian phase so I eventually started listening to TrueAnon, which helped radicalize me quiet a bit. I also started listening to Richard Wolff lectures. I’m still a lib in the sense that I don’t really read theory at all but it’s better than being a stupid fucking reddit libertarian.

    • cumbaby [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Oh, also I have always been really anti-war, and one of my biggest realizations was that anti-imperialism is impossible under capitalism. I’d say that the biggest thing that changed my thinking was realizing that we aren’t living under some bastardized form of capitalism, but rather it working exactly as intended for the people it was intended for.

    • shitshow [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      "Ideological cheat code" is the best way to describe libertarians.