How did you become a leftist?

When I was a youngin I suppose I would be a liberal/socdem. Got into libertarian socialism, then "libertarian marxism", then anarcho-syndicalism. Got into the Rojava revolution and read some of Ocalan's work, got more into Bookchin and ended up rejecting anarcho-syndicalism as outdated. Now I consider myself to be a firm communalist.

I really should rename this pic to "libertarian socialist revolutionaries"

I feel like the only leftist that never had a liberal phase

I've always been anti-capitalist. Even during my flirtation with the right I was into turd position crap

Worked with the poor, lived with the poor, grew up drinking powdered milk in a trailer park.

Oddly enough reading my APUSH textbook back in highschool. I remember reading about the labor conflicts and movements and somehow, not getting sucked into the ideology found in textbooks. I realized something was up when you have anyone vaguely left in this country having the state try its hardest to squash them. Admittedly I had no negative opinions really about left to start, so once I did research I found myself reading and visiting here.

Honestly the only thing I remember my teacher commenting on the labor movement more than once was that the Knights of Labor let women in (in her paraphrased words: "Think of a knights armor with a big mound on the breast plate")

I'm a prole. Not being a socialist would be the ultimate classcucking.

I was quite libertarian (occasionally browsing Holla Forums) but then my high school ended and real life started. I found out that life is not just rpg, so I was pretty confused by my ideology. Then I found out Zizek, listened to a few his videos on youtube, found some Holla Forums memes on Holla Forums about him so I came here and started reading.

I don't get how people aren't class conscious tbh

I've always been aware of the differences between me and richer people. It stings every day.

The only difference is that they work harder than you, pleb

Original sin, basically.

...

You're one of the best users on this board, porkyposter.

I started out as a liberal, but had a growing hatred for feminists and sjws. I got swept up in the GG crowd when I found this place and became a market socialist, was also on the bernie train very earlier and together it all drew me farther left.

Prepare for my autism

"son *clears throat* human nature" -t dad

My dads still libbie, but he's slowly becoming succdem. He was my road into politics and has always been my much respected sparing partner.

My parents first met at a Communist Party's clandestine meeting during Pinochet dictatorship. Didn't had a choice tbqh.
Still, after many socialist and communists sold out to porky when "democracy" returned, I changed from red to black and now I just autistically Stirnerpost.

I became a leftist once I decided to throw away all my own intuition when dealing with information.

your parents were very brave

American answering. Also probably pretty cringy.

Figuring out that cannabis and other drugs are illegal not because they were unhealthy but because criminalizing their users was/is politically expedient for various politicians throughout history caused me to not trust the state.

I wondered what else I had been misled about, so I went on to study the brutal past injustices and ongoing hypocrisy of the American government. I basically knew at that point that the status quo in the US would be protected at any cost. I was around 18 at that time, not fully class conscious, but it was enough of a start. Hicks, Carlin and Stanhope were probably my biggest influences at this time.

I drifted more libertarian initially. I was following/supporting the Free State Project in New Hampshire around 2007-2009 and I had some hope for that movement, though mostly I think I was just fearful of what was obvious oppression on the part of the state. I was also on 4chan a lot around this time. This is also when I stopped watching TV and consuming corporate media.

Occupy emerged and I found solidarity in people who at the time were to the left of me. I was still more of a social democrat at this point, though with ever growing class consciousness. I was fresh into the initial payments of my student loans that I'm still paying off… though at that time there was basically no way I'd be ever be able to repay them, and I'd had a job since I was 16 and all through college to barely support myself. I'd done everything I was expected to do, and I did it well, and I was still getting buttfucked by essentially every establishment that had even the slightest capacity to buttfuck me with no end in sight.

Obama's presidency and the US political shit show did not help any of this.

I could go on, but I think you all get the point. I know when I'm getting fucked and I can see who it is that is doing the fucking.

That's all it really takes, isn't it?

Not to end on a sour note, but capitalism has poisoned our planet to the point where the human race likely does not have a long-term future. It is the ideology of cancer. This was always the only possible conclusion of maximized consumption at the lowest possible cost, yet so many of us are still being marched inexorably in this direction to the detriment of our entire species for the benefit of the few, and I fear that this will be the case for humanity until our last days.

I don't know if there's much hope for our combined futures, comrades, but I do know that the only way things can possibly get better is if we make them better.

I was a liberal until I started researching communism for fun and because one of my friends is a Cuban immigrant. I read the manifesto and then Some of Lenins work.I was a leninist for a while then I became more and more libertarian but I still support the vanguard party. I don't know what i am. Libertarian Leninist?

alright this is a little embarrassing as well but if this can only convince one person into the revolution then i'd be grateful
Fucking stupid bullshit like what the fuck

Having been brought up in a very racist, petit-bourgeois milieu, I was a Holla Forums Nazi for most of my teens until I started getting into weird Twitter, through which I got into left Twitter. Now I'm a socialist thanks to podcasts.

Basically I'm an enormous retard

Stop making us look bad.

How blind are you reddit? He could only make it more obvious if he finished the story with

It wasn't cringe, nice story.

I started working and realized I was paying rent to work. When I stumbled onto Holla Forums after being a GG it just went on from there. I still consider myself a patriotic American, but to me, patriotism means helping my country overcome the spooks of nationalism and entering the next stage of human development.

Visitors from another dimension or another time.

I was being facetious. Are you implying this isn't a shitposting thread?

I grew up all around Holla Forums, my dad blamed not getting in the army because they took too many niggers and that's why he was working at Wendy's for all of his life.

The only people who were nice to me growing up were people who leaned left. I've just been swerving more and more from "Democrat" to "actual leftist" since.

Funnily enough, my dad is a "communism doesn't work in practice" kinda guy and he was pretty astounded when I admitted that I had become a communist.

This is actually how I got into socialism

Don't blart his fucking working class

lol

leads to lookash, Lacan, etc

...

Not with that attitude.

I've learned to love the gulag, but gulags do not make a society into a communism.

Grew up not liking corporations. I just don't trust them, I always felt they drained people of their livelyhood and drain areas of their wealth, centralizing it in their bank.

Existed as a quasi-socialist/socdem for like 10 years. Unenlightened though, I hadn't read any leftist theory. Just agreed with it based on my own stances. In comes Bernie, agree with him, hopped on board early. Saw how the establishment absolutely smashed any hope of him being a leader.

Got pissed, saw that reform isn't an option in a system that is designed to suppress rogue radicals from inducing too much change. Become disillusioned. Read Marx, leads to other authors. Evolve into a level 3 Marxist.

Sounds like me and my dad, only my dad has always been a bit of a market socialist. He had this idea that he used to be really big into about employees getting a proportional amount of stock for their time in the company (based on the idea that the owner should still have control of a company they started, but this could be a way to add a bit of worker's democracy to the mix). After my criticisms of capitalism and how it's not meritocracy he's basically full marksoc now, but he still has some traces of liberalism.
Also, instead of becoming a tankie I become a ancom. I did this mostly because I saw the negative effects of authority on society and I was big into anonymous at the time. For the longest time I was basically a libertarian until I took the time to read some ancap blogs. At that point I was a proto-ancap anarchist without adjectives. Then I decided to really read about the different varieties of anarchism and decided that anarchist communism was where it was at. That was when I told my dad I was an anarchist-communist, and we've been verbally sparring at least every few days since then, often multiple times in a day. Since then I got my brother into Holla Forums which caused him to become a Marxist. He influenced me to read about Marx, who appealed to me largely due to his analysis of history, which made a lot of sense and seemed rational to me. I called myself a Marxian anarchist at that point. During this time I read about Luxemburgism and council communism, and decided to make the switch to Luxemburgism because anarchism's complete ideological refusal to use the state, and their tendency to create a state and not call it that led me to think that Luxemburgism would be a better way to organize the working class.

Crass.

Was a lolbert, got a job, got fucked over, quit, got another job, got fucked over, quit, got another job, got fucked over quit.

Realized that us workers did all the work and the owners/and or managers did quite literally jack shit for 99% of the day to the point we would be doing their jobs for them. Also getting paid complete shit.

Then watched a documentary called Outfoxed which got released (i'm much older than most here I suspect) and it was like being awoken to how things actually were. Then read Manufacturing Consent and down the drainpipe it went.

Another interesting journey of mine has been my travels through different schools of Socialism. Became a Leninist, then became an Anarchist, then a Left Com, now I sit somewhere where I think Leninism gets shit done, but inherently leads to authoritarianism and Anarchism is utopian nonsense.

I was once a child and I saw taxes.
I understood this immediately as theft and I understood it intuitively as exploitation.
Then I became an adult and I understood why people do this and why others that are victims actively support it.

Only if you believe involuntary hierarchy is good and necessary. It is not.

I'm still new and don't have any firm grounding but it goes like this

that was almost a year ago, but i only got heavy into the shit around 3-4 months ago due to the political shit going on in america

As a kid I only ever witnessed or heard people talk about the state, police, and capitalism having negative effects.

...

It seems presidential elections push many people into identifying what they believe in.

I've always thought of myself as anti capitalist to some degree or another, my flirtations with the right were mainly as a Turd Positionist of a Nazbol variety. I eventually got more into Stirner and rejected Nationalism, and later Jim Profit made me reconsider actual Marxism.

What made you reject your family and heritage?

What made you accept it?

I was always anti-big corporate and pro-environment, since I was a kid, so always on the statist side of the political spectrum. But I became fully communist when I realized that Stalin did nothing wrong. Throughout youth we are always fed the BS that he was a manic mass murderer. Yet the evidence points towards that if he hadn't done his admittedly bloody purge, the USSR wouldn't have stood a chance against Germany, being divided and full of collaborators and Nazi sympathisers.
From that on, it was just a small step to reconsider my other preconceptions about communism.

My mom raised me pretty damn liberal, just as she herself is. Dad's politically neutral, so he didn't have much say in that part of my upbringing. We considered ourselves full-on democrats during the Bush presidency. I was actually dreaming of the day Bush stepped down from office as a kid at a few points, but not too often, since I was still just a kid and all.

Then Obama is elected president, and I'm all giddy and hopeful he'll actually fix all the shit that Bush caused, i.e. bring our troops home for good, fix the broken economy, etc. Sadly, he only manages to lessen the recession by a marginal amount in the long run, as the economy is still relatively in the crapper during his presidency. He doesn't do jackshit to bring the troops home or end the war, but instead increases military spending and introduces drones and shit, expands the NSA spying to the point that Snowden calls the government out on it, etc etc etc. I lost my faith in Obama and in the democrats as a whole pretty early on into his presidency, but I was still totally fucking annoyed by idiotic right-wingers who would blab on about "DUH GUBBUHMENT GUNNA TAKE MUH GUNZ AWAY GELP GELP" and "OBUMMUR'S A KENYAN COMMIE NIGGER GELP GELP"… and this all took place growing up in the fucking BIBLE BELT. Still haven't escaped this total hellhole to this day…

So I still considered myself liberal after branching off from the democrat party, and always supported left-leaning issues because not only was I raised that way, but because I just saw it as the right, moral thing to do. It was only a logical assertion to see the right wing as pretty fuckin' evil, for lack of a better term. They're bigoted against everything that doesn't adhere to their ideal 50's style white suburb paradise, and most of them are disgusting, backwater rednecks that unveil everything wrong with this fucking country. Their lifeblood consists of fear and hatred, and they blindly obey anything on Fox "News", no matter how laughably stupid it is for anyone with half a brain. I could go on, but that's not the point here… and things have just gotten SO much worse on the right wing today than just the tea party rednecks and general conservatives.

During the 2012 election, both Obama and Romney were shit, and I wanted some actual damn change in this country. I heard of a miraculous 3rd party candidate that served as a perfect middle ground between both major parties… Gary Johnson.
For that brief, naive moment in my life, I identified as libertarian, without fully understanding what it meant. At least it mattered for something by helping me fully wean off of the two-party system, but it didn't last.

Continued in Part 2…

Part 2:

Over the years, I was growing smarter and smarter about what was truly wrong with the world, and that there were higher forces at play than just the government we think is the ruling entity of this nation. The major corporations were getting more and more powerful, dodging taxes and getting away with it, perpetuating abominably shocking work conditions overseas in sweatshops and Chinese factories, and owning 1% of the entire nation's wealth, just as a rounded figure… the actual figure is actually slightly less than 1%… leaving over 99% of the nation to suffer. The middle class rapidly started becoming an endangered species. The poorest of the poor started working up to 3 jobs at a time just to be able to support their families, due to how criminally low the minimum wage is. Gerrymandering, lobbying, Super PACs, etc. were all the major forces at play in real-life politics. The list goes on, and I'm sure you all can see the pattern I'm going for here.

It was all beginning to make sense to me, but there was just one final catalyst to get me to realize the truth. I can't say I remember how I figured it out, but sometime as a high school junior or senior, I discovered The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx. I only skimmed through it, but the little bits I did see of it intrigued me very much. I researched communism online to see what it was really all about, and there was a multitude of condensed definitions and explanations that helped me to realize the truth of everything going on:

Capitalism has always been the greatest evil plaguing the world ever since its initial conception, and the bourgeoisie elite have been perpetuating its existence for their own selfish gain for far too long, exploiting and oppressing the proletariat in the process. And now, it has gotten to the rather scary point that the majority of the proletariat has been brainwashed by propaganda in state and media that everything is completely fine, and that they're happy living the way they are. At least, that's the way it is in the West.

I realized that the only way for humanity to break free of all the evils and oppression in the world is to destroy the capitalist establishment in a glorious revolution, have the bourgeoisie arrested, tried and executed for their crimes against humanity, and construct Marx's communist utopia atop the ashes. I realized communism truly is inevitable if humanity is to reach its full potential and advance to new heights we could only dream of beforehand.

So many foolish Westerners still believe ridiculous Red Scare propaganda about it, and even those who see past the jaded, irrational perspective of the right wing still ignorantly spout the "human nature" fallacy, among others, in an attempt to distance themselves from communism. Well, humanity has already been advancing for years and years now, and has made more progress in the 20th century alone than in any other century beforehand, socially, technologically, etc. We've very slowly started to abandon our more primitive, animalistic instincts in favor of civilizing, educating, and advancing ourselves for the greater good of the human race as a whole. And we can do a hell of a lot better than that even still. Social progress has already proven itself to be an unstoppable inevitability, and with that, communism will surely follow, and we will all be freed from the shackles of state, class and capital all in due time, whilst the wicked bourgeoisie elite are justly punished for their sins against their fellow man, whom they've selfishly abandoned for their own unscrupulous interests.

I still intend to fully read all of Marx's work, though I'm familiar enough with it to debunk a great deal of myths the West has fabricated about him. I am more than proud to call myself a communist, a true, thinking warrior for the workers of the world and the freedom, equality, peace and justice we all deserve.

… Any questions, comrades? I wish to leave nothing out.

be honest now
are you from Reddit

Never been to Reddit in my life, fam. In all honesty, Holla Forums is the first place I've ever been to when it comes to anonymous message boards.

Why? Am I a newfag or something? Go on, be brutally honest. I've seen enough shit here to take it like a man.

Naw sorry m8, your post just came across as quite spooky, what with all the grandstanding and moral stuff so I felt like shitposting.

I was around pol so much that I realized the white race needed to perish and leftism was the only and final solution. I thought we all agreed on that?

That aside, environmental issues and the corruption so massive between government and business it eclipses the sun at this point. I was always left leaning on most social issues and foreign policy. It took me a while to become a leftist economically though.

What does this even mean?

Spooky? Damn, guess I really am a newfag. :P I only recently learned the difference between liberals and leftists, thanks to Holla Forums.

As for grandstanding and moral stuff, this is just how I honestly feel about communism. It gives me a reason to live…

Hello darkness my old friend

...

...

Illegalism, counter-economics

Its a good path, just dont get caught

Thanks for giving me a name.

I don't have an issue with shoplifting, graffiti, etc. I shoplift from work all the time and when I was younger I used to tag. I just don't like how it's become a lifestyle for middle-class kids being used as a facade for actual political substance. I can't complain though, I acted profound when I was like that

Counter economics have been gaining some terrain lately, I was thinking of starting counterfiting money with a friend, but money necessary for the press and shit is a lot and the tint is a bitch to get

Watch out for how they feel too. Cashier I work with ratted out some guy with counterfeit 20s a few months ago because they felt moist. Counterfeiting money is hard as hell unless you do it with small bills because nobody really bothers to check them.

Yeah, I basically told my friend that, if we were to do it, it has to be a proper press, not just a pc printer, i read online about the possibility of replicating proper presses with 3d printing technology

Basically we are dead set to obtain enough money to do so first, and then we will decide if we engage in it or just invest in shrooms or something

for more authentic punk movies see Engel & Joe and Death to Hippies! Long live Punk!
iirc SLC Punk was good too, and i guess Trainspotting deserves mentioning as well.

Hey Holla Forums! How is it going?

my father is as conservative as they come. i was convinced by him that obama was satan. he's christian and extremely homophobic but these aspects of him never influenced me, oddly enough.
when occupy wallstreet was a big thing, i was researching what it was. i eventually stumbled across socialism, then communism. it just made sense. i kept reading and eventually considered myself a communist once i got over the fear of communism that was instilled at a young age by school, family, etc.
the fact that i, along with most americans, was brainwashed my entire life to think communism was dictatorships and everyone being paid the same amount no matter what, is terrifying.
years later, i'm just now beginning to read /full/ works of theory. wish me luck on this journey, comrades.

more:
my boyfriend was a libertarian until he was about a senior in high school. he started reading wage labour and capital so he could argue properly against communists.
it made sense to him, he read more, and became a communist.
his friend grew up republican, served in the military for a while and hated it, came back home, listened to his advice, read theory. it clicked.

Must be hard being an American, the political landscape and discourse is extremely fucked up.

Dude, it's fucked. So much of the discourse is just Republican versus Democrat, and since you generally sent given anything resembling a proper political education most people have no idea that elsewhere things are or can be different. Third parties are just 'protest votes.' No one even knows how their government fucking works or why. It's fucking maddening.

Just grow some shrooms its easy as can be and not very expensive to get started. You can make alootttt of money if you do it right.

So basically, anti-communist propaganda, made me learn about communism. Is this higher-level Cultural Marxism?

That's simple.

I'm poor.

Anti-war in highschool. Exposed to chomsky going to protests. Saw poor and disenfranchised people all over my country. Socialism would help close the gap between the top and the bottom. Bretty gud. Now i'm here

i saw what a hard time this lady went through recently which made me question everything i believed in.

Go on I'll bite, what happened?

youtu.be/WXOz3QaUegQ
made me question the whole concept of legislation and identity

…nah not really, kinda reinforces my beliefs tbh

The Bernman converted me from a edgy lolbert into a Socdem which slowly led me to convert into a Luxemburgist-Deleonist(Deleonism part may have came from Pierre)
Ironic

Read some mainstream econ and it didn't make sense. I came to conclusions regarding the feasibility of socialism similar to what Paul Cockshott has written.

...

I was always a leftie; mum was a scot and dad was from the midlands. Am left of both of them, although I am not as-far as a tankie. Mostly drawn to socialism because of the very nature of capitalism causes undue human suffering and denigrates liberty. Also the the best British PMs were Labour so…

brexit did it tbh, though I guess it was just manifestation of left-leaning feelings I've had for a while, but never was able to fully put into words until I actually started realising how socialism is better than the capitalist clusterfuck we have today.

same /r/socialism is idpol and whingey mods who ban for no reason if they think you're "reactionary" (they think Zizek is reactionary kek), basically pulling a corbyn and throwing themselves under the bus instead of trying to actually get shit done.

Bernie Sanders piqued my interest and here I am on an obscure leftist Chinese imageboard.

go back to reddit already or lurk more

I was a liberal and thought it would make more sense if we worked together to automate work so we can all relax and spend our days learning, exploring space, creating art, etc.

Then I read Capital. Couple years later I read more Marx, Lenin, Chomsky, Luxembourg, Mao, Zizek.

Now I'm Council Commie.

When you live in a shit hole like Peru, you have to read and be informed to excel and that's why one becomes a leftist.

It means we're coming, bucko!

el peruANO!!!