I’ll start first: at the height of reddit going absolutely mad and frothing at the mouth I heard r/genzedong mentioned a lot as this evil evil tankie place, so I checked it out. Was a bit overly china fanboy-ish for my taste back then but alright overall and leagues more civil than people on other subs. So I started lurking over there to preserve my sanity until it basically became my most frequently viewed sub. I’ve kinda warmed up to the whole idea of socialism during my stay. And then it got quarantined. I’ve heard of lemmygrad even before the quarantine, so I switched to this place instead. As of this moment, lemmygrad remains my primary source of news and entertainment where I dont have to risk running into some flavour of wehraboo.
I’ve written out long-form versions of my radicalization journey. But I’m realizing that I may have always leaned towards the political left, and simply needed an awakening moment to know it.
Sounds like mine. I was raised on defanged, liberalised readings of Civil Rights leaders; and the more I tried to dig into their works later on in life as an addled, blue-dyed Democrat servant of empire, the more I found the people I was researching… Had pernicious, seemingly ‘missed’ references to being ideologically communist, if not socialist. References and ties that were literally ignored during my time in grade school.
The more I dug into the empire’s lies, the more confused and angry with the empire I became-- and then I got to watch my ‘brothers-in-arms’ resoundingly cheer for a civilian getting blown to salsa shrapnel on a drone feed. That day messily broke something in me, but it also cleanly broke my allegiance to the west, and made me that much more willing to dig into anything that the empire considered a threat. Think it’s been about nine years I’ve been making my reading lists spicier, and five since I started working with local food pantries.
i have a feeling that one inevitably ends up left if they have that “not an asshole” gene. I’m a social worker and like 90% of us are leftists because you either have empathy or become right wing