Hello, baby Marxist here!
Personally mine was reading.
When I was a liberal I loathed reading and found it hard to even read a short article. I rarely researched everything I heard, and as a teenager, I was like every other liberal, getting my news off social media.
Now I make sure to research everything, however, getting into theory is a bit hard. Most of the information I learned about communism was through fellow comrades, because like before, I got my information from other people’s comments.
Currently I’m restoring my motivation for reading by starting small. Reading long comments from comrades helped a lot. I’ve now moved on to reading information from leftist sources without effort, and I’m starting on reading the communist manifesto.
Enough about me, what were your side effects?
As a person of colour, low self-esteem and internalized racism.
Bro I used to think I’m white European lmao
As a black person we were often lied to and told that we were “part native-american.” I don’t know why… I guess it’s true because most people in the south do have a little native american in them. Doesn’t mean they’re “part” that though, only a fraction.
God, the US obsession with their ancestors as a way of coping with the lack of US culture and neutering of their immigrants past roots is so weird. Like, if your your parents raised you in irish traditions, you don’t need to bump your chest about irich ancestry, you were raised in a pseudo-irish culture, so you can be OK with being an american-irish
I’ve always wanted to talk about this more. I mean it’s alright to be proud of your culture as diaspora, but people living in the US have a very unique tendency to turn their cultures into reductionist, degraded, Disney-esque caricatures of themselves. I guess it’s a side-effect of living in a consumerist, pop culture-addicted society.
Correct on both. I like people wanting to tie to their ancestors, but the way they do it is usually a weird imitation, and it sometimes rings a bit obsessive.
I have people in my family wholeheartedly believing that they have Turkish ancestors (Egypt was part of the ottoman empire then ruled by a foreign dynasty until it was overthrown for those who aren’t aware) just because they have colored eyes.
Well, it’s not an uncommon thing to happen in ex ottoman empire countries, there were Kouloughoulis (half north africans half turks) in Algiers Tunis and Tripoli, so I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of Egyptians have Turkish ancestry, But “for having colored eyes” thing is fucking bullshit
I haven’t heard of that term before but yeah this type of mixed ancestry is definitely a thing here too.
I was commenting more on the obsession with having any proximity to Europe by claiming that based on flimsy reasoning because they think it’s better than having only Egyptian ancestors. This also ties into a general obsession with any “white” features and dislike of “african” features (idk how else to describe it).