How did you become leftist?

Was always a progressive liberal since I pretty much first had a political thought, the gultural marxshmism meme during GG compelled me to finally look up what socialism and Marxism actually are. Wolff was very helpful.

Brought up in a Labour supporting household so I was always a SocDem even when I went through my le rationale atheist phase.

Honestly, I just saw some good memes and realised the communists were right

I think people on the right have some issues with ethics that people on the left don't. Secondly, I think (some) are intelligent people, from my experience, but they're also blinded by ideology. For example, many conservatives are more concerned about how much the rich are going to be taxed in their inheritance than they are about increasing their wages. Which is insane to me.

Leftists (including liberals) aren't perfect, but at least they have less issues than those on the right.

I didn't. I'm a communist.

Just kept hearing about statistics of how many people starve to death and so, looked for any viable alternative.
Did the usual slide of going from "all sides r dumb" -> socdem -> demsoc -> socialist -> communist.

I think basically I was always somewhat to the left. I think I was able to realize I disagreed with conservatives around 15 or so when I started paying attention to world events. At some point, I realized I really did not hate Muslims or unions as much as the next guy. I just never took notice until around that age.

Was always a left-liberal/progressive-democrat, i.e a quasi-social democrat, this election and getting into Chomsky pushed me to the far-left.Even if Bernie got elected he would face an uphill battle and wouldn't be able to fix capitalism inherent problems with higher taxes of the bourgeoisie.

I didn't. I'm a communist.

'splain?

Spending high school watching Bush shit the bed, spending college and afterward watching Obama accomplish pretty much nothing while the crash and its aftereffects altered the course of my life in a significantly negative way, was already a pretty anti-capitalist guy by the time 2016 came along and Trump's victory gave me the final push I needed to go full-on Marxist

You are a leftist, dumbass.

I didn't. I'm a communist.

I got tired of SJW's and Holla Forumsyps competing to see who could shit up my safe spaces harder with their idpol garbage. I'd seen both of them talk shit about leftypol and I figured that if the cumshitter wastes of human life didn't like it, then it must be worth something. I came here, and subsequently discovered that my beliefs already aligned 98% with socialism, I just never knew because American political education is fucking abysmal.

I was always on that trajectory. I was born to a family of petty criminal types, most of whom worked in the same car factory, so I had a much clearer perspective of what life is like for proles and criminals versus what broader society had been saying. By the time I had any political opinion, I'd say I was social democratic with an anti-parliamentary bent. (Being a tween will do that.) Then, when I moved to the States, I picked up Hitchens and hardened my social democratic stance and started to lose my anti-parliament stance. Then I moved back to Canada after high-school and started a very confused oscillation between Social Justice liberal and democratic socialist in my own bizarre sense that I thought liberalism could literally be slowly voted out and turned into socialism. The latter opinion was solidified by Bernie's campaign and I was hella Bernie brocialist. Then he lost, and then Trump won (I didn't want Hillary to win, but Trump winning felt like the snapping moment where I had landed in the Twilight Zone), and in the aftermath of my bottomed out spirit, I happened to pick up "The Society of the Spectacle". After reading a few more leftcom books, including my personal favourite, "The Situationist International Anthology", I smartened up and went full communist.

Thanks to Holla Forums. Was really a clueless Holla Forumsyp.
You guys seriously saved me from being suicidal most of the time, and gave me something worth striving for.
Also someone make a fucking spookbusting flag already.

I've been a Communist since I was 4. We were poor and dad had to work in the Meatworks to keep us afloat, so I always thought the bosses were greedy arseholes. Combine that with Red Alert 2 (Soviet Campaign) being the only game we owned. So I always saw the Soviets as the good guys.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. lifestylist………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Autism.

Fascism.

Was on 4chan since 2006 and came along for gamergate because I didn't like SJW's but was pretty skeptical of Holla Forumstards because I always had this underlining feeling that somehow their puritan values didn't jive with the spirit of most imageboards and this really started to escalate when Holla Forumstards started pouring in enmass when moot played a joke on Holla Forums (Holla Forumsharbor). Before that point Holla Forums seemed extremely reasonable and they didn't grate on the rest of the site, I think that was because before the Holla Forumsharbor thing Holla Forums was mostly comprised of Holla Forumstards who were also Holla Forumsfags so they were a bit more "lite?" compared to what came after and I kind of saw everything start to get worse and worse in quality as time progressed to the point where I didn't even bother to go there anymore and Holla Forums got much worse thereafter due to many factors Holla Forums being one of them. Anyways later on I remembered Holla Forums just because they were like the butt of the website or something like that but I never actually went there, I just listened to other people talk about how cucked they were and shit. But I never actually went here so I decided to look at it for a change and I saw this article: jacobinmag.com/2017/02/paleocons-for-porn

So this article literally summed up the problems I had with Holla Forums the whole time and seeing the constant contradictions everywhere that, I knew was a contradiction but I just kind of ignored it because if you bring it up you either get a bunch of hand waving non-answers or actual admissions that the goal of Holla Forums is to subvert the site, later I would actually research the Frankfurt school and realized that "cultural marxism" is like 99% garbage that is told to you by people who DESPERATELY want you to NOT go check them out yourself.

Apparently caring about the environment is leftist (despite the original conservatives being highly conservationist of environments and rural/natural areas) so probably that for starters. I'm leftist in the non-marxist sense now probably after a bunch of searching, because after traveling the world I see capitalism is actually pretty damn good. It's true it lifted more out of poverty that any ideology ever, and ever since it and the industrial revolution humanity has advanced faster than ever as well. Capitalism works so well a bunch of Holla Forums can be worthless lumpenprole NEETS (who will be purged/culled if they actually read Marx) can just shitpost here and not starve to death, all they have to do is merely exist and they get money for no work. In communism, they're forced to work or they'll be murdered. Of course capitalism being so good is exactly why I'm leftist. So many in the left likes to blame capitalism for so many things going wrong but keep ignoring all the things going right, far too much of it. What is killing us? It is not capitalism, it is decadence. Our lives are too decadent, too good under capitalism, and it must be destroyed before it destroys us. We must return to nature.

how can I not be when I live in small town alberta and am mentally unstable enough to have to stay with my parents.

...

It's honestly such a ridiculous and obviously-propagandish term that I'm surprised it doesn't defeat its own purpose and compel more people to research and become actual Marxists.

I worked a shit job since I was 16 and had to do a report on Karl Marx for a class.

Oh wow, I am so sorry, comrade. I genuinely hope you overcome your circumstances someday.

Calgary comrade here. Be my friend, please.

I’ve pretty much always been left leaning since I was old enough to be politically minded. Drifted further and further left as I read and through university. Going to law school has solidified my contempt for the bourgeoisie

Noam Chomsky

[email protected]
hit me up

I was born one. Like the "libertarian aristocracy" of Novatore.

I think it had a lot to do with the Iraq war happening when I was younger, then reading about gitmo and abu ghraib and whatnot being a liberal,hating the prison system(norwegian prisons brah) and drug laws etc, then kinda expanding my knowledge of imperial crimes until I became a socdem,I always generally watched left leaning documentaries and stuff anyway, then having some thought about the history of debt in relation to religion, going searching for a book about it, and coming across David Graeber Debt: The First 5000 Years, right around the same time I was set Society of The Spectacle as part of a suggested reading for a uni course, a couple months after that I found leftypol, now I'm part of several IRL commie groups and doing my best to try and nudge them to a more actually revolutionary position

Working for a family owned landscaping firm. The sheer arrogance of any landscaping bosses ==will== turn you into a commie. When he said to me labor laws are unfair and bosses need representation too I became radicalized fully, this was before reading any theory or finding Holla Forums.

Same but with Hugo Chavez, I basically came to the conclusion when I was 14 that Chavez was basically a good guy who pissed America off and that was his real crime.

Always had a thing for fairness.

Also I'd say the shaking point when I went from liberal to socdem was the 2007 financial crisis, then the tipping point was Nick Clegg increasing tuition in 2010(9)? Anyway the year the Conlib coalition came to power. In my mind before then liberals were more leftist than Tory.. ah how young and naive I was

I got a job and read a copy of the manifesto and here I am.

What kinda job user?

Growing up within the Bush Administration should have made everyone a leftist.

Frankly the Obama administration should've made everyone leftist. The fact people aren't angry at Obama for halting the MIC made me angry and confused as a kid growing up under him.

Well, I was just relating to what came first, but you're right as well.

...

Reading Marx made my a leftist, but living in the US made me an authoritarian.

Retail. I was brought up with that Protestant work ethic shit, so at first I worked really hard, but it didn't take me long to realize that the reward for doing lots of good work is just more work. At first I thought it was just this store, but several years and several jobs later and I found that it was all the same. Good workers would get chewed up and spit out for their trouble, corporate induction videos with scare tactic bullshit about unions, talking about your "obligations" to the company, etc. Raises got smaller as the work got bigger and it didn't matter what store you worked in because they all have to follow the same bullshit directives from corporate, no matter how ridiculous they were.

Long story short, I went back to school and while kvetching with a professor about the state of work and working people he brought up Karl Marx (because he was a history teacher, not because he was a commie so far as I know), he lends me a copy of the Manifesto, and suddenly everything seemed to snap into place and bridge the gaps of understanding which were left by liberal ideology.

Several years later, and here I am.

By and large it did. Most people just don't know it because burger political education is absolutely abysmal.

I am a former Holla Forumsyp who came to lurk in Holla Forums and shitpost Holla Forums memes to trigger you guys, thinking you are SJW lefties, but when I was reading more into your replies and figured that you guys are smarter than most of the bunch at Holla Forums and much more level-headed than liberals, I decided to stay. Even half a year later now, I still don't agree with much of the Holla Forums, but I've been despooking myself by listening to Žižek and lurking, and even though I am politically somewhat centrist by now, I am fully opposed to fascism and always try to support the left-wing position in every political discussion for now.

Sometimes my old spooks come back to haunt me, because I can't manage to overcome my support for peaceful volkish-type nationalism (I'm eastern eurofag) but I try to see it for what it is: an abstraction, and try to focus more on the realities of every situation such as history of exploitation and class issues.

Money? I've been neet for 19 years now and I've never received one penny from the government or any form of welfare. I don't even have healthcare. I literally had to deal with this

Was always. Right wing ideas make no sense to me.

Never was a rightist.

Unfortunately a lot of my early exposure to socialists was pretty horrible since it came mostly from smug, educated people. Then for a while I found online commies that were kind of cool, and in about a year I started hating them again because they really didn't know what they were talking about and their understanding of theory was just all wrong.

Currently grinding for Leftcom levels. Technically I'm not part of the "left" and I am not politically active beyond putting in my vote roughly every year (mostly because the voting place is a 5 minute walk from where I live and lines tend to be short).

Over time I noticed more and more problems with our current system, and then I got around to reading Marx and realized, "Shit all this time there were other people who saw stuff like this. They've gone farther than I ever imagined in picking it apart. I can't believe how much I was lied to about this subject."

I'm probably still not a leftist by the definition of some on this board.

But Nader was my Sanders and what he said made sense and the other politicians were fake and boring as fuck. year 2004 and 2008
left-social-democracy is awesome
left-socdem ideas were/are very appealing

These "I am a former Holla Forumsyp" posts always sound too good to be true. But if it is possible to clean the brains of reactionaries purely with good ideas, that's pretty fucking hopeful.

not getting laid in high school probably

Holla Forums is doomed, they're their own worst enemies. Their stupidity is their undoing.
The mess that is Holla Forums is what is going to make Holla Forums win in the end. Holla Forums is a bookclub, Holla Forums is complaining for the sake of some ideology.

sounds great

That's a pretty good story, user. Did you get a better job?

we ban them until they have the knowledge of minimum 10 books we recommend.

Red Alert
not even kidding

I was a bow-tie campus libertarian and virulently hawkish conservative throughout much of the mid 2000s. I quietly went anti-war as Iraq turned out the way it did but not even 2008 pulled me out of my market worship and hatred of the poor.
It's embarrassing to admit, but actually volunteering and interning for right-wing activist organizations was what started my drift to the left. It was horrifying for me to find out just how hollow most movement conservatism really is. Backstabbing and naked ladder-climbing were par for the course. Moral values and chastity didn't exist except as buzzwords. Plus clubs and research institutes would openly game university grant systems to funnel thousands of dollars towards electioneering activities and "research" conferences.
I really couldn't reconcile my participation in a movement that fought for the taxpayer while nonchalantly getting the same taxpayer to pay for plane tickets and hotel suites for party conferences. It snowballed from there.

Keep the door open for us, but don't expend too much resources trying to turn us when you could be out radicalizing many more people who are apolitical or dejected

tankies smh

A mixture of my childhood, my mother's view, and art, as odd as that must sound.

I was born to my young mother and runaway (Later I learned) Reactionary and Pettie Bourgeoisie father. My mom was hardly an adult, so I was obviously pretty poor, but tbh at a young age I hardly even noticed it. Though as I got older, my mom got more hopeless and even went a little crazy and right before I hit my teens I started to talk to her about her beliefs and philosophy and such. She expressed some weird New Age stuff, but what interested me most was her rhetoric about the people "Being blinded and ignoring the power they truly hold over the rich". Though after this my dad sorta wormed back up, and got custody of me, which obviously emotionally damaged me and made me hate him. So around this time, being a teenager, I started focusing on my art (Mainly pony and furry shit at the time) and reading and isolating myself, and I happened to find a copy of the Communist Manifesto. Was pretty basic obviously, and looking back, I was sorta too focused on ideology and pretty spooked but it gave me somthing to cling to and oddly enough remember my mom by. After a few years I got sent back to my mom's after a hospital visit caused by my father. Though, he had my college money, so I was fucked. An shortly after my GF left me. I retreated into books and faggoty art as per usual, and I started to read Anarchist Theory and talking to my mom a lot. So I read everything I could on Syndicalism and Anarchism, and discussed it with my mom, and figured out that Capitalism had nearly directly fucked over my mom's life and my life via my porky father. Around the same time I started to see that art cannot flourish or even truly exist in Capitalism. Now Im a faggot with a sketchbook, too many books, and a dead end job. But hey, maybe the revolution will let me animate shit some day, that's all I really want.

tl;dr A hippie, living with a porky and far too much reading and art

You sound like the exact kind of guy Holla Forums thinks we all are.

Pretty much

Luckily, I'm far less cringy these days and more focused on my lack of college, shitty apartment and job. But yeah, when I was a teenager, I could've slip my way into a "cringe thread" pretty easy.

Did your art get better user? Are you the source of every cringe pony/furry commie picture?

sketchbooks when you reach the last page

I've only "posted" projects in high school in my drawing and animation class. I keep everything to myself because it's mainly for personal enjoyment, and I'm incredibly insecure about it.

Besides, I don't really draw art with communist stuff in it, only the ocassional shitposty doodle.

Are you telling me you don't use your drawfag skills for the good of the Holla Forums collective? You're not a very good comrade…

I wanna see your art

This.
I honestly don't think of myself as someone working towards communism, I just want to be around people who see capitalism has failed. I don't think communism will materialize, because the material conditions of industry will soon disappear due to resource depletion. I'm more worried I'll die in a famine than anything else, and I fear a return to feudalism.

nice arrow

My favorite musician was a communist so i started to study it. Culture is the best form of propaganda and this is why we need artists.

whats his name?

youtube.com/watch?v=2YPYcwXidwo