What event or series of events lead you to the left? Were you born into it...

What event or series of events lead you to the left? Were you born into it, have a radical political transformation or just read shit on wikipedia till you said "that sounds right"

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Bat'ko The Manarchist's Fyre Festival recap video. Dear God, the memes, the hilarious JaRule Stalin memes. Had to check out Holla Forums after that. I actually learned a lot from this message board. Shit, I'd even say I'm an entry-level communist now.

Bernie Sanders got me on the electoral train for the first time ever (sounded like someone genuine in politics, which I had never seen before). Hopped off that train before it crashed back into the trainwreck of the status quo and remained stuck in the strange, wonderful, alien land of actual leftism because someone linked me Einstein's "Why Socialism?" and I then hung around on the "Monthly Review" site to read more. It helped me realize that not all Marxists are raving idpol-filled tankies (you guys hurt the left far more than you help, even the anti idpol ones here) and, by proxy, eventually led me to watch Noam Chomsky's lectures and realize that anarchists =/= smashies. Wikipedia was a big help once I wasn't dismissive enough to actually go and read through its articles on leftist ideologies before seriously reading into them. I look back on my liberal days and cringe. So smug and ignorant at the same time.

Your political and ideological worldview is so bankrupt that you look to you tube memes to gather your political positions?

Thats so depression im might just have to go have a cry and a cigarette.

Bit of an environmental science nut and a social recluse and never had any interest in politics at all and browsed /sci/ frequently as well as other 4chan boards. Then the Holla Forumsyp nation attacked. My hatred for their bullshit ruining my favorite website burns so strongly I became a commie. It just makes sense. Accelerationism works.

I was the average moron who reacted like a monkey on anything related to communism. A libertardian at some point, once I found lainchan like three years ago and engaged for the first time with what were most probably anarchist communists, who reacted politely to my kneejerk. Some time after I started browsing this board, being the meme socialist who reads nothing.

It also helped me to enter this board when I saw that communists, as everyone else, are not part of a monolithic entity which shares the same thought, there being ideological divisions almost everywhere in the left.

Now like two and a half years I am finally reading theory. Slowly I understand more and more and it brings me joy.

But I was already a materialist as a child when I saw poverty as one of the factors that lead to crime, this being the earliest instance of what I can call dialectical thought.

Holy fuck I didn't plan on doing this much redditspacing.

Started out in high school, listening to hardcore and punk and shit.

After that just always kinda connected with anti-corporatism and anti-establishment politics. Used to debate with a couple of tripfag's on 420chan's pol that were leftists and their arguments just made sense. Then fell for the Bernie Sanders campaign and hoped reform could happen. As primary started I found this place and quickly radicalized, since I was already quite open to leftism. The rest is history.

Since finding this board I've learned a lot, not actually from the Fyre Festival memes. I've started reading stuff in my spare time since then too. Don't be so elitist.

My family are leftists going back generations.

After we became estranged my father actually joined and became a member of the CPC.

My grandparents were key members of the free speech movement and anti-draft resistance. Even after the heady days of the sixties and seventies my grandfather was a union organizer into the 2000s. He still does some political work but he's pretty old now. (Imagine Chomsky mixed with the husband in courage the cowardly dog)

My mom and her sisters all worked in politics and the labor movement but have mostly become alienated after the continued retreat of the movement.

I was personally radicalized after the betrayal of Obama after campaigning for him. I was genuinely anticapitalist but I foolishly defended the presidency against republican hysteria until about 2011 when I began college and Libya happened. After studying philosophy it only reaffirmed my views and allowed me to be more effective in my thinking and action.

Come for the memes, stay for the theory.
I got a guy browsing here because of that, he's still apolitical and capitalist sympathizer prolly tho.

Welcome comrade.

Thats pretty awesome

I was personally radicalized after the betrayal of Obama after campaigning for him. I was genuinely anticapitalist but I foolishly defended the presidency against republican hysteria until about 2011 when I began college and Libya happened. After studying philosophy it only reaffirmed my views and allowed me to be more effective in my thinking and action.

Damn, im the same. Obama radicalized me to the left with his betrayal

I am not sure that I would call myself a traditionalist leftist. I hold leftist views out of necessity more than a principle belief. For example, I am in favor of health care and other health related social services for the sheer fact that my otherwise libertarian and capitalist life will eventually be disrupted by those that don't receive medical care. I realize that my libertarian and capitalist life will be made worse if degenerates aren't able to get the abortions they want. Etc…

My parents lean to the left, but for me it was more seeing the injustice in the world, experiencing the drudgery of life. I've always disdained the arrogance of upper class people and their lifestyles. The vision of a socialist society always sounded good to me, and reading theory and socialist history made me realise it wasn't just utopian, but a real possibility and fact.

Memes are modern day propaganda
Armchairs pls go

You should try your best to resist all propaganda as much as possible for the simple fact that it is propaganda. Doesn't matter if it propaganda i agree with.

Me: "Capitalism doesn't seem to be a perfect system like everyone says"
Rightist: "You fucking commie libcuck, move to North Korea!"

Rightists are just shitty people that can't take any criticism.

You gotta sway the publication thoughts and also speak to normies

In the current world it's probably the most powerful tool

I worked at walmart as an unloader with a crew of 6+1 supervisor when it's supposed to have 12-14 people

Which is why i cry and smoke.

I went from being a Holla Forumsack to being a Stalinist after the election, because Holla Forums devolved into a purity spiral circlejerk

I feel bad for flaming you the first few times I saw you, because you (unlike most namefags) actually made attempts to learn more and contribute to discussion.

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I always was anti-capitalist but also pretty political ignorant and reactionary, i slowly became a marxist by reading philosophy starting with Pasolini, Gramsci since i finally arrived to Marx. It took me a while but at the end i came to hate most part of my old positions.

2016

My father is the only real rad-left in our family (an unusual hippy/modernist hybrid, the rest of my relatives are generic center-left/center-right from what I know, some of whom drift into shitlibism during their youth), but he generally did a good job concealing his powerlevel when I was younger.

I consumed a lot of science fiction (also Dad's doing) and became enamored with the idea of scarcity vs. post-scarcity as a teenager. Around this time I also started shitposting on USENET, and stumbled on the Infoshop's anarchist FAQ.

From there I gained an interest in fringe political theories, and found that in essentially every historical tossup, anarchists or their predecessors invariably came out the most morally clean and ideologically sincere compared to any other group involved.


Please tell me some of you got union jobs eventually.

i was kind of predisposed towards sharing, camaraderie, trying to be fair etc. when i was kid so i gravitated towards leftist stuff pretty early on in middle school. working class catholic upbringing i guess. rest of my family is class cucked as shit tho

For the longest time I was just another NeoLib bootlicker. And then I started reading, books and stuff on the internet. Then I eventually found this board, and my radicalism was sealed.

I was an autistic teenage lolbert, then I started actually working. Literally one week of manual labor was enough to make me full commie.

Cold War history of Latin America. Iraq, Afghanistan, Indonesia. Bad orally learning that


Is not at all a meme

Used to hang around with the punks and the skins back when I was younger, going into squats, watching gigs, listening to music and shit :

youtube.com/watch?v=N6y3v8gMh68

Didn't start reading theory until fairly later, and it stuck with me I guess.

I laugh when people say that only teenagers are communists. I was the same, in high school I thought the market was great and I loved Milton Friedman
fucking hell, if I could go back then I'd shove myself into a gulag

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Y-you too.

I didnt want to get a job but I still wanted to get paid so I thought 'I know… communism'.

I was born into it.

such wit. just brilliant

You just have to give people time.

Saddest job I ever had was working on workers' comp cases. I interviewed shitloads of old dudes brought up with protestant work ethic who had one by one seen capitalism destroy them entirely. A lot of them were redpilled as fuck by the time I was talking to them, but it was already too late. I'll never forget some machinist from North Carolina telling me through a tear-choked voice "If I could still use my arms, I'd go back and fucking kill them for what they did to me."

Can't afford to be an uncle tom etc.

One of my history teachers was sort of a trot

Not that guy, but that was a compliment. There's no need to be mean.

Jumped on the Bernie Bus hard after being disappointed with Obama. Radicalized after the general election, currently sitting at somewhere in between syndicalist and marksoc.

The complete failure of the democratic party to appeal to the working class and clinton's horrific campaign were what pushed me to consider going left of Sanders. I've not yet abandoned reformism completely though; mostly because while unrealistic, it's still more realistic than an actual armed revolution. However, if the opportunity came I'd drop the reformism immediately.

i was a full on conservative fuck (parents watch fox news all day every day, children are impressionable) until a spanish teacher in high school taught me about Chile. i started to think for myself after that, and now here i am

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This is how you show everyone that you aren't a nice person, and in the end that means you'll be treated poorly. You say you're here to learn but you're being like this. It's pretty disappointing.

"Proximity" to porkies. If you have any sense of decency that's enough to change your mind.

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Sankara is dead and so is Africa

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Not a lefty, but I camp here from time to time because /liberty/ can be kind of slow and unlike pol, you guys can actually form solid arguments to support your ideals and beliefs and dont suffer from the insufferable autism of being a censorship happy torture chamber. That and you guys have some pretty fresh memes like in .

I dont agree with you guys on a whole lot of subjects, but I actually value Holla Forumss presence on this board, Holla Forums wouldnt be the same without you commies.

Hug. Box.

Gotta love that autofilter

occupy wall st AND the drone wars

shit pissed me off

Good. Niggers are inferior anyway.

saved

When Trump started to talk shit about Assad

Was in a way born into it. My parents were politically split with my mom being a softy lefty and my dad a petite-bourgiese conservative. But since I ended up being raised more by my mom and other people on the left-side of the spectrum I was for the most part a liberal with a soft spot for socialism. I was told a couple times throughout my childhood that communism was a good thing, for poor people like ourselves. The Bush years formed a conviction against the right, and largely through the Obama years I pretty much just remained a socialist/communist sympathizing liberal.

It took some reading and exploring in my twenties to find the groundwork of going further left. I talked a lot with a friend of mine who was further left than myself (don the red scarf, guillotine the rich left) who helped moved me in that direction. And by the time of the 2016 election and the entire Trump-Hillary shit storm I decided to give up whole-heartily on the mainstream spectrum and commit to the far left.

Then I googled Bookchin.