Funny story. I was raised by racist chuds so while I had leftist views as a kid but had some chuddiness views from being influence by the people around me (think stupidpol minset). It took going to highschool and getting the shit kicked out of me by the indigenous students and then getting to know them in a legit effort to change to make me realise how fucked up my veiws were. I was then a socdem until around 2015 when I saw how ineffective electorialism is and how right-wing and weak the so-called leftist parties were.

Long story short, beat up racists.

:LIB: ➡️ :LIB:

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I was a conspiracy junkie, I really liked the feeling of learning secrets that no one else knew. Besides the real out there shit like David Icke, though, you begin to notice a pattern, namely, that if you lift the rug of literally any major industry, you find evidence of terrible and immoral bullshit. At first you're just assuming it's all about individual greed, but this left unanswered the question of why these greedy people seemed to run everything. I had a sort of sudden revelation when I realized that, because of the competitive nature of capitalism, the theory of evolution applies, and the only parameter for fitness is profitability. Combine that with the fact that profit is, by definition, socially corrosive (taking more than you give is literally the moral of countless fables), and that goes a long way to explaining why everything seems to be getting worse all the time. Peter Joseph and his Zeitgeist and Culture in Decline series, an absolute shit-ton of Chomsky lectures, then finally Marx, and 10 years after I started looking into this shit, here I am, a unabashed and terminally online communist.

This isn't a bit, I swear it isn't a bit.

I went left because of Avatar.

But it wasn't because of the movie itself, it was the reaction of the people I was hanging out with. I was your basic internet rationalist atheist, and I thought the movie was basic brainless fun, and then all the people I hung out with started using words like "Race Traitor" to talk about the hero of the movie and fantasizing about how the Galactic Empire would genocide the blue space cats and take the resources of the planet.

And I went, oh fuck, I'm surrounded by Nazis.

And then there was Gamergate, which further cemented me in being sure where the right position was on the subjects of both racism and misogyny, but I was still missing something because I was reading blogs by wealthy white feminists and they had a ton of good points, but then they would jump from a post about the evils of the patriarchy to photos of the $400 meal they just had in an upscale restaurant.

Turns out what I needed was a little dialectical materialism.

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Libertarian - >but health care is good - > soc dem - >anarchist leaning leftist - > somewhere between anarchist & ML.

Raised in a generally conservative home; felt the need to be a republican in high school. Became a lib in college. Liked Bernie in 2016 but considered voting for Trump in the general (I didn’t). Realized after the 16 election that the Democrats were basically pointless. Liked, donated to, made calls and knocked doors for Bernie in 2020. That was my last stand. Read Lenin in 2020 and in 2021 I’m reading mao. I live in PA so I’ll vote for fetterman in the senate race but I’m kind of done with voting. now any family get together I just get accused of liking trump because I didn’t vote for Biden. Good times

Lib -> anti feminist -> TERF -> ML -> anarchist (I think)

The event that pushed me from TERF to ML was realising that I am in fact trans and had internalised society's transphobia.

fash -> radical centrist -> lib -> commie

The vast majority of my home country is drowned in reactionary beliefs, and if you are young and impressionable and you cant figure out what this dysphoria thing is you can get sucked into some less than pleasant ideologies. Then you can realize, that you are now 15, and have to act grown up so you start moving towards the radical centrism, free market, science, fuck SJWs stuf. Then you figure things about yourself have a crisis, realize you have been a terrible person, and surrounded by terrible people, so you kinda start listening for a change -> Then you transition, listen to a couple of podcasts, work in corporate environment, and realize that those commies had a lot of very good points.

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What country you from?

I was pretty lib growing up, in the privileged 'don't need to think about politics sort of way'. As a teenager I was vaguely aware of Gamergate as being about 'ethics in video game journalism', and was subscribed to places like /r/tumblrinaction and /r/imgoingtohellforthis. What ended up getting me out of those spaces and on a path to the left was this Lindsay Ellis video talking about feminism and gender in transformers lol. It made me give pause and think about what my own preconceived notions about gender and feminism said about me. I then got introduced to Contrapoints through Ellis, and it helped crystalize a lot of disjointed lefty thoughts into more of a coherent ideology. She was also the first trans voice that I really listened to, and so for that I'll be forever thankful, even if she is a bit of a lib.

Then I started reading theory, and making my own way. Found the subreddit, and it felt like home immediately. Stuck around until the end, and then joined the discord before coming here. Was a great community to have through this summer, I'll tell ya.

I read The Jungle in middle school, and that trivia nugget about people misunderstanding Sinclair's anticapitalist intent was the seed that rooted and grew in my brain for the last 20 years

9/11 happens, I will always find it absurd that the fuckin' Dixie Chicks getting ostracized for saying "war bad" is my first explicitly political memory

Never understood the appeal of cultish patriotic displays or black friday tier consumer spectacles, but otherwise was pretty apathetic. Had a couple friends who were gay, hated the creeping anti-Arab racism

all of the above led naturally to being repulsed by the GOP, and then Obama was just kinda "yeah he's better, but what's with this treating him like the sun god incarnate shit," still too apathetic to give a shit about Ron Paul or whatever

Bernie's message really resonated in 2016, blood-run-cold horror when we elected the genocide gameshow president, but also rapidly being repulsed by the dems as I learn how much Bad Shit was actually holdovers

started listening to podcasts, PSA and Chapo at the same time at one point, their wildly different reactions to McCain's death finally snapped whichever neuron was still making me think dems were worth anything

it's been downhill ever since :agony-turbo:

Kid -> Anti Authoritarian / Kids rights -> Equality or at least stuff that kids need! -> Oh can actually the social democrats do something to better the situation? -> They govern and fuck everyone over -> Teenager who doesn't think politicians will improve things -> Collective self action -> non-pacifist militant Marxist

As preschool kid I was always trying to make sure everyone got their "equal" share. When people had different preferences I wanted them to have what they liked instead. Though I always tried to give out stuff I liked to people, cause that is good and it is tasty and sharing is good. That went so far that when I found 1 Euro on the street I would buy like 3 vanilla pudding custard things so I could share them with my family.

I also always found autonomy important and that people are not mean to other people (though there is a lot to unpack in noticing what is "mean" actually). Then came school and while I succeeded with flying colors the system of hierarchy and control I really disliked - especially when things weren't rational or there were gaps in the explanations. There was also this absurd thing that if you constructed a mind model of something and then thought: Okay how to chose between these two, both possible options? Then I would construct a question which answer: True/False would lead to one of the two models fitting with the stuff (instead of asking: is model 1 I got or model 2 I got right? I would ask the question that would just differentiate between them). This wasn't welcomed in school.

Neither were people who couldn't follow accepted and that was something I disliked a lot. Over time I noticed that it isn't actually your skill or innate things that differed me from others (as I thought there were quite a few which able to develop their faculties) but materialism. I had the advantage of having a semi-stable home, toys "e.g. hammer, light bulbs, batteries/books" and such. However my parents and me lacked people's skills (office space meme) and in school there were a lot of people who succeeded in stuff I wouldn't get, like music/dance/geography/interpretation of stuff.

So over time it became more and more apparent that meritocracy of a school system was a lie, that newspapers didn't talk about the lived reality of kids and people, that kids suffer consequences cause their parents wouldn't have a material good job, that society claims one thing and is another (so anger against idealism of society).

However this made me become more individual anarchist, since I was alienated from society and only over time found connections with others that saw the problems and found them unjust. For example a friend of mine who is "left" and christian and things has good morals doesn't feel the need to do something about it (except write a thesis about how to get more housing units built). He just waits for a revolution where he then can come in and bring in his view points.

After trying a few political groups, campaigns, parties and organizations and see how well my analysis holds I would see which concept would yield most and what would be able to predict things, to alter things and explain things. This is were historical materialism comes in, then in a reduced form dialectics and in a stronger form the core of Marxism.

When I was 8 and watched Star Wards I told my father that wouldn't one want to be in the empire, "since it seems to be powerful in control and not always on the verge of extinction only saved by 'plot logic' (isn't quite the term I used)". That being a rebel sucks and I don't get why blowing up the Death Star would change things, when the Empire existed before the Death Star was constructed in the first place.

When I was around 12-14 I told everyone that left action and activism doesn't do much when the structures aren't changed and that factual power in the society exists and it isn't in ideas and convincing rational speeches, but in resources, might and power itself. You will be able to organize groups only if you have resources and that means in our society having money (and time, skills, political conviction and such). That change is only possible if you have a power base. Which is the reason I did look a bit of high wage jobs. However the liberal "left" and my friend convinced me to do rather things I personally enjoy and like instead of doing what would bring me resources and divorce me from my ideas (I think that argument could've been stronger with divorcing from the material conditions which underlie the struggle by being petit bourgeosie). [Note: My friend was from a more well of family, he and his siblings got around 1500$ per month over 10 years and $25k as starting help, as well as living in family owned condos later on]

Thus I looked into real action of many groups and saw that the convictions of anarchists are nice, but many aren't looking at the factual power base of society (but sometimes go against hierarchy or against unjust morals), quite a few groups also have good practice and are able to organize quick protests, but are bad at campaigning and bringing groups together if it isn't loose. I looked at ecological groups and found the topics important, but the people often well of (except for the poorer ones or antiauthoritarian/anarchist ones) and thought they don't offer a convincing way - how to actually get to where they wanna get (utopist / idealist / believe in the political system). Then Carlo Giuliani was shot by police during G8 and the italian Fascist police tortured many innocent people. This showed the true nature of the G8 states.

I looked into antifascist groups which are essential to secure the rights of people that Nazis want to exterminate (which includes many in their social chauvinism, that is too be found in the "better off" wings of society, too).

I looked into reformism and entrismus and found them lacking, as did most unions (they lacked class consciousness and weren't looking at the global plight of the working class, but about the existing workers and not at the unemployed).

I looked into ML groups and found many being more interest in theory and the right wording instead of action. I wanted to look into trotzkist groups, but the one who organized a meet and greet split into three groups before the meet and greet happened and the one person of them who gave the talk was class reductionist as fuck. Going so far as saying that the feminist fights of the past weren't a step in the right direction and as such are holding nothing of value.

Overall I noticed that real campaign building, organizing working with marginalized, people without papers and being radical and collectively working seemed to be impactful in a way we lower tiers of society can't be. We did create places of power and movements of power instead of begging the "responsible person" to better things for us. That combined with more theory made me become a not totally authoritarian communist with revisionist ML tendencies and anarchist aesthetics.

Factual analysis of history and state action made me measure the capitalist economies with the measures they typically use on others - they don't like that.