post your stories about how you became a socialist
me first: i used to bully this socdem guy at school, calling him a commie etc etc, some day i thought it would be neat if i dressed up as a socialist (cuban hat, communist manifesto in hand) and started annoying him all day trating him for "comrad" etc etc then i pretended to be reading the book, and some quotes i found unironically pretty neat, so a good day i read the book and socialism became an option, since my life was shit at the time, studying politics became pretty much like my favourite hobby and after an edgy ancap/"technocrat" phase i evolved into a communist, then into a market socialist
conservative because that's the default ideology when you're a white kid living in a rural/suburban community in the midwest libertarian because that's the intellectual justification for conservatism and I cared about that neoliberal because people on the internet called libertarians dumb and I didn't want to be dumb so I latched onto the closest possible thing nazbol/turd positionist because I had a traditionalist native american professor in college who made some good points reformist ☭TANKIE☭ because I started going to Holla Forums because it was apparently a brocialist board but I actually got truth-bombed about how nationalism was dumb more or less a reformist anarchist after further consideration
Jaxson Williams
Nine years ago far left comrade Hillary Clinton radicalized me by introducing me to Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" during a late night spirit cooking sesh. One year later, I went to university where I earned my degree in Cultural Marxism. With the money from my job at the abortion factory and the paychecks from comrade G.S. I've been funding a project that prevents white men from getting a gf.
Aiden Hall
That is more autistic than I am ready to believe. I was a liberal, a red liberal, a "socialist", and now I read theory. That red liberal phase was the spookiest part, looking back at it. I found Holla Forums literally because some r/Socialism thread with maybe five replies mentioned it. If I hadn't found an archived, obscure thread, chances are I would have never found Holla Forums and never have became a socialist. To give you an idea of my advanced theory I was like an ML/Anarchist (No idea what all the fancy tendies were), because I bought into the "Instant Communism!" meme. Straight up like "Doctors and janitors will be immediately paid the same" and "ANTIFA is revolutionary". I almost bought into the "muh oppression" theory of class, but luckily I was always too much of a shitlord for that. You can tell r/socialism doesn't read just because of how basic there opinions are, but as much as we shit on Holla Forums, it really is the socialist presence on the internet, for better or worse.
Stop switching ideologies and read a fucking book.
Finally, an honest poster.
Brandon Cook
Ancap because corporations in charge of roads was a good idea at the time (when i was young unironically) Was a nice nazi for a while ("i like black people but they don't like me so i'll be distrustful of them") Turned fascist for even longer (groupthink) Became nazbol recently (understood the reasons behind seizing the means of production, still loved my country more than any other) Now i am an internationalist socialist and can be nationalist when it suits my needs (want to end globalism, class struggle is universal, still believe in nations but not that any have superiority over the other, seize the means of production worldwide, want to help socialist countries fight imperialism)
Ian Powell
Only stopped being a reactionary idiot recently. Started off with gamergate dogshit, became a classical liberal/libertarian fucktard till I was half way into being 16. The alt-right emerging kinda spooked me a bit into being a self-rightious centrist. I then found out about turd position shit, along with kinda getting into nationalism, when I was 17 and kinda got into fascism for a bit, but I never really had a major problem with communism or anything. Mosley was my main shit (got into him mainly cause he was the least nuts sounding, and he was originally supportive enough of Irish republicansism), so I ended up reading about his later socialist stuff. Put me on the path to left wing shit. Zizek and leftypol shit on youtube was the last straw I needed to get me away from idpol. Mostly looking towards Connolly, Deleon and other syndicalist-kinda stuff right now, along with some philosophy shit to keep me from wanting to kill myself. Still a nationalist, don't see myself ever not being one, but it's fairly soft and falls into a more "what would Connolly, Larkin and the RA have done" kinda area. Gonna proper look into Marx and shit in about a year.
Thomas Cruz
Philosophy? Why I just so happen to have some.
Nathan Lee
I was your typical internet nazi(Holla Forums didnt exist yet, but for example stormfront did maybe) who thought nazi=socialism with very rational hate of foreigners and healthy obsession of ARYAN MUSCULAR OILED ROMAN MEN, but I had recently accumulated very good immigrant friends of all sorts of ethnicities and cultures by accident, and in the process I was getting disillusioned with the race part of that ordeal. But then I would only be left with swastikas and oiled men? No thanks! I think there was a big flamewar between nazies and "communists"(our catch-all term for everyone who werent nazies before culture marxism and cuck became memes) on a forum I frequented. When I started asking very innocent questions in hopes of some fellow nazi reassuring me back to racism, instead I got branded as a commie and banned from the group that was my whole identity. This was a forum where you register, so my avatar of the last X years was now deemed as an undesirable by everyone who's opinion mattered to me at that point . If they didnt ban me and threaten me and call me with names, without the total identitycrisis that came as a result, who knows how long it would have taken for me to really ditch the stupid ideology, even when I had straight up contradictions in my real life(the immigrant friends who just broke every stereotype I had in mind) I still wanted someone to tell me that its allright and teach me advanced mental gymnastics to dodge that reality check. Today Im so glad there were no mental gymnastics advanced enough. I dont want this to sound like a shopping network commercial but I decided to get in shape afterwards, lost my virginity, and have been in relationship for around 3 years now, and have actual self esteem thats not dependent on online fame or any other fake reason for pride like "ze zuperior arryan zenes!" But It took it's sweet time to get back on my feet after my entire identity, my entire personality got taken away. I tried to find myself from the mirror but the superhuman aryan was gone, and instead there was some chubby push-over type character. What the fuck did you do to Gustaf the Holocaust Hedgehog, you fucking fatty?? Bring the Mr. Natural Selection back! 1/2 because BODY TOO LONG OR SOME SHIT, IN PLAIN ENGLISH GO TO BED YOU ARE DRUNK
Henry White
2/2, not that anyone reads this but its not like I would ever write something so personal sober anyway~
its not easy to just make a 360 and walk away when It was your whole identity, it's like having to let go of your body. I mean, you got to think that you are among the 1% of absolute best in the world, because of your super genes. You were always right because you had the racial advantage almost always, and you were also supporter of a 4th reich, so you were spiritually connected to the roman and greek gods and you will be in the next pantheon of gods yourself when the day of ropes come. I had a lot of good friends there too even though the only thing that connected us was the nazism. You got to be edgy as fuck and have very powerful and masculine imagery, that was a big thing for a young adult with low self-esteem. When you couldnt get laid, better job, or cant get in the school you wanted, it was always some sort of conspiracy against all you ubermensch. I got stripped out of all these delicious privileges when I got banned from the community. Now what? First year went in some sort of depressive nihilism, I felt as good as dead. But maybe that was some sort of obligatory transforming phase after pretty much waking up from a hypnosis. The feelings of nihilism and ambivalence really made me question everything, like why should I follow any morals or laws when I didnt even want to be born in the first place. I had a lot of free time because I stopped going to any discussion forums, because I didnt feel like I had any opinions about anything, and reading other peoples opinions felt even more useless. So I spent all that time reading books about philosophy, Nietzche first, of course. I had never really read a book other than at school, so I just googled pretty much "philosophy" and consumed all sorts of people from Aristotle to fucking Hitchens. Then I started reading this Das Capital by some dude named Karl Marx. Had never heard anything about it so I really had no opinion at approx. 21 years old about this man. Seemed pretty fucking badass though, he had the same ideas that I had in highschool, worker gets to keep the profit himself, no boss or government to take it from him.. I bet Penn Jillette loves this guy! I admit, I didnt read the whole book the first time, the math in it was too much for my brain that was still sort of fucked from the nazi conditioning. I still liked the author's ideas though, so I read his wikipedia and WHAT THE FUCK?! C-C-COMMUNIST MA-MANIFESTO? WHY I NEVER.. and the rest is history. What am I today? I dont know. If Marxist-Leninists were in charge, I would be pretty fine with that. If anarchists ran the shit, I would be fine with that too! Im really done with carrying any sort of labels(besides the download flag) on me ever again, the nazi phase was kind of more than enough. I learned that we are such a stupid and emotion-driven mongoloids, that you can literally give yourself a label and somehow get enslaved by that inanimate fucking thing. Writing this shit took like 3 hours, Im pretty well hydrated with the glorious spirit of russia.
Gavin Davis
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Adrian Gray
I started out life as a liberal since my parents were liberals. Around the time of occupy and the Arab spring I became more left-leaning, although I still didn't have any concrete sense of what I believed. I was young and reddit was mainly what I used to discuss politics. A little bit later I got caught up in the whole "libertarian" thing that swept through reddit, and I identified as that for about a month. I stopped posting on reddit and mostly posted on Holla Forums for a couple years, and I was mostly apolitical around this time (although I had a period of about a week where I self-identified as fascist, lel). It was at this time that one of my friends got really into Nietzsche, and explained the concept of resentement to me, and I felt personally attacked by it since it sounded like he was describing me in vivid detail. I lashed out at him and we had a huge argument. I ended up crying like a bitch. Needless to say this woke me up, and I started reading Nietzsche, which led to me going through a weird identity crisis. I was just starting high school at this point.
I started growing up and migrated to /mu/ as my primary board, and I got really into punk. I was an anarcho-liberal. After Moot left I migrated to Twitter and found I became a red liberal. This was probably the most spooked I ever got. Defended Stalin, downplayed the holodomor, defended the DPRK, and bought into retarded "anti-imperialism". It was during this period I found leftypol and got de-spooked. Thanks guys, I've learned a lot from you. Thanks for reading this if you got through it, lmao.
Daniel Thomas
I had a similar experience to you, except I never got quite as far-right as you did tbh.
Evan Allen
I was baiting some anarchist who went on a fascist community to debate. He started talking about Kropotkin and I, mockingly, asked for recommendations. He recommended the bread book, I looked up if there were any physical editions in my language but only old copies existed, so that was that. Fast forward a few months later, I was randomly looking at books in my book store and I see Anarchist Morality in a shelf so I bought it and read it all. That's what started the whole process really. I still haven't found a bread book copy though.
Charles Reed
When I was 14 years old I questioned the religion I was raised with (Lutheran). I watched several documentaries proclaiming religions are scams. To satisfy my ideological lack, I read articles and books about how religion is an instrument to manipulate society. Philosophy became my new opium. So I read many main works of the European philosophical history. Heraklit and Engels were my favorite since they convinced me the most. The 11th Feuerbach thesis "Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it." finally convinced me to go full commie. And so my destiny as a militant, provocative pupil began.
Eli Thompson
This is a fairly one-sided understanding of Marx's "opium of the people" phrase. Recall it in its full context:
"
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
Marx acknowledges that religion is an "instrument to manipulate society" - but also that, at the same time, it is a "expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering". Religion, as with all things in commodified society, has a bifurcated character - it is simultaneously a method of social control and a palliative for intolerable social conditions.
Zachary Bell
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Dylan Wright
Grew up poor. Dad had to work in the meatworks all the time and he'd always complain about it, so I always saw bosses as arseholes. Dad was always a Labour voter and Mum would vote Greens, which instilled a deep hatred of the Liberal party in me. I was raised Catholic and would focus on the bits of the Bible that talked about giving to the poor. One day, my parents buy a second hand copy of Red Alert 2 (only the Soviet disc) which I would play constantly. So I really love the Soviet Union and Russian culture. Mum also tells me that she's related to Tito (my great, great grandfather was his nephew or cousin or something, Grandma's maiden name is Broz) and Mum would tell me all these cool stories about Tito and how he fought the Nazis. When I found out Communism was about sharing and equality, I quickly started calling myself a Communist. I started watching LibSoc Rants and became an SJW Anarchist for a little bit. One day I went to look for some stuff about Tito, I stumble upon GETchan's Youtube channel, found some leftypol memers like Socialism or Barbarism and here I am.
Brandon Sanchez
liberal until bernie ran so I became a socdem. The over time I found Holla Forums (I had already know about it for a while) ) became a pseudo socialist until some leftcoms teased me into reading Marx so now I'm a Marxist but people call me a leftcom.
Jaxon Harris
Muke?
Jayden Harris
No. I've actually read capital.
Jaxson Gomez
I was born one
Adam Morales
This, just without the nazbol bit
Parker White
Back when I was a kid I grew up as a liberal and was one of the most obnoxious types. It didn't really help that my family only had a passing interest in politics but over time I started trying to see things from other people's perspectives. Eventually I became more and more interested in politics - it started off with trying to find information from North Korea to understand their life, then the Russian revolution and so on and so on. Eventually I drifted to Holla Forums when they had their daily communist threads so I could see things from that POV.
Didn't take long for me to fall for the "nazis are left wing" meme as I was digging into their propaganda to try to see their viewpoint without a critical lens as I was never taught how to tell if something's propaganda. I think the main reason I stuck around there was because it felt like I was free of propaganda. "I can't be brainwashed because I chose who to believe!"
Then three or four years back I started to realize Holla Forums was treating itself like a fucking fandom and that pissed me off because I wanted to take politics seriously. Daily coming out as a nazi threads (pic related) full of "I told my sister I'm a nazi and now she hates me??" shit. I figured I couldn't trust what people this pathetic say and so I started digging into political literature and teaching myself how to actually be critical of information and fact check it. After a good deal of reading I eventually settled on being a post-leftist.
Christopher Morgan
I worked at a gas station.
Owen Edwards
I stepped into that shit for a brief second, does any of it amount to more than lifestylist wank over insurrectionary methods? Found it to be the weakest praxis over constant critique of interpretations of Marx and the like.
Anthony Foster
I was a libertarian since I first started caring about politics. I thought it was the ultimate freedom and that if the government backed off we could live in a capitalist utopia where everyone would be well off and happy or whatever. I really truly believed that to be the case and it was the only way anything would ever be okay. I had a distrust in government from years of my dad sharing conspiracy theories with me starting at a young age. At some point I started thinking that maybe the government should step in in some places to make the market more free, and almost went the enlightened centrist/neoliberal route. But right around that time I was reading some debates from an ancom on reddit and started asking him questions and really flipped my world upside down. It took me a little bit to work off my spooks, but I became obsessed with anarchism/communism, found Holla Forums and here I am, a Marxist. But that one conversation completely turned around everything i had believed in.
Joshua Ortiz
I was an edgy socdem before I knew what a socdem was. I stumbled upon Marx and was interested after reading some stuff, but my first encounter with marxists turned me off. A while later I end up reading the bread book and eventually became an anarchist. No embarassing nazi phase, but I did get depressed and fat which took a lot of effort to get back in shape.
I just got tired of the stupid fucks on Holla Forums insisting it's all about race when it's clear as fucking day it's about economic conditions. Was leaning towards liberal but I didnt know much about politics in general so I'd argue I was more non-aligned than anything. Wasn't sure which world view fit me the best until I visited Leftypol thinking it was an SJW shithole and stayed for a while, reading and learning until I became a pinko scum.
Gabriel Clark
I'm just going to greentext it. I don't feel like typing out paragraphs this hungover
Adrian Thomas
Wow, that's pretty recent then!
Eli Powell
Yeah, I'm still pretty disillusioned with my ideology. I thought leftists were living in a fantasy land, truth is that the materialist world view is the most depressing. Turns out I was the one in fantasy land. I wish I could go back to nazi posting on Holla Forums blaming everything on refugees. I was more ignorant and happier about the world where I thought the totality of human conflict was us vs them. Still trying to despook myself but it's a process
Ryder Reed
I was born in a left-leaning part of the city i used to live, so pretty much i've always been around anarchists and socialists individuals. I really wasn't interested in politics and economics untill recently though and honestly im still stuck between unironic socdem and cool dude ansyn; im still learning though so i'll probably change again. pic related, actual posters you could see years ago on the walls, just a few steps away from where i used to live
Jaxson Murphy
what kind of magnificent place is that?
Easton Fisher
Pretty self explanatory
James Price
San Lorenzo, a zone in Rome which is now sadly know as just the place "where you can get weed dude lmao".
Austin Brooks
It's easy to get socialism across to stoners. Why haven't you been redpilling those stupid stoners that come for tourism reasons user?
Colton Allen
I think I'm older than most of you here. I was politicized in high school, debating on forums about whether to invade Iraq. I was retarded and brainwashed and argued for the invasion (also defending Israel). When no WMDs, I recanted, and joined college libertarians who were against the war. Studied a lot of Austrian economics, decided to switch majors from engineering to economics after a particularly bad semester where I got a 1.8 GPA. I was obsessed with justifying the foundations of the NAP, studying political philosophy, and ultimately found out it was bullshit and had no justification. Likewise with Austrian and neoclassical economics, and the Objectivist Ayn Rand circle I had started to get drawn into. I started asking too many questions, and got alienated from my libertarian friends. I got curious about actually reading Marx, after all the Austrian thinkers I read shit on him so much. I didn't actually read him yet but I did read about Ha Joon Chang and other Marxist-influenced thinkers who challenged the libertarian/free market world view. I went to grad school specifically seeking a school specializing in heterodox economics, Marxist and post-Keynesian. I got into one but it was neoliberal as shit and all the heterodox thinkers had been pushed out. I dropped out, moved back in with my parents, and started to explore some more radical stuff like Che Guevara's bio and met with my school's chapter of SDS (this was before Occupy).
I got sick of politics, didn't really feel like there was a place for me, and decided to focus on playing guitar for a few years. Suddenly I had a new political awakening that began with reading the anarchist FAQ and checking out the anarchist bookstore near me. Made some good leftist friends, got into a discussion group that met weekly focused on theory. Finally read Marx as well as a lot of other stuff.
Fastforward to 2016, I had a somewhat reactionary phase where I really detested SJWs and I could detect these tendencies in my social circle. Seeing all leftist spaces infested with this idpol garbage, almost made me quit politics again. Heard about leftypol from the Zero Books podcast, faith in leftism restored (more or less).
Brandon Nelson
1) I actually prefer books to pills 2) I dont live in Rome anymore
I got fed up about the Trumptards at Holla Forums so I started lurking here. I then became interested in Rohava and the Y.P.G., and realized most people here aren't SJW liberals. Then I started reading, and I've been here ever since.
>>>/reddit/
Alexander Young
you're realy a new fag
Xavier Edwards
Fucking neck yourself faggot
Brody Garcia
Cmon man
Dominic Phillips
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Jonathan Lee
You'll be a Asserbot in no time!
Jordan Turner
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Jace Diaz
was originally a neoliberal stooge like many others, gradually slid left by reading and observing the world
