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?

  • DankZedong A
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    231 year ago

    I boycotted Chinese shit for a while because of Uyghurs lmao. At least I actually followed up on my vision then, can’t say that for a lot of liberals.

    I feel your thing about reading. I was so smug and thought I knew everything but I didn’t read one news article, paper, book, rarely watched informative channels etc. How can you be so sure if you don’t learn about stuff?

    • @Franfran2424
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      121 year ago

      The biggest success of the liberal propaganda is managing to create people who feel they are informed but are completely unwiling to learn. The sad horror that people have been made to dilike reading by making their brains get used to short bursts of information, so that longer efforts overwhelm it

      • DankZedong A
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        91 year ago

        Which is really sad. I love reading again. I read a lot of books these days, from theory to manga to mindless novels and I won’t ever give it up again. I hope more people rediscover reading.

        • @bobs_guns
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          71 year ago

          yesss I love reading terrible terrible web novels that go on for 5000 chapters. we are living in a time when there are thousands of little Charles Dickens in your phone, it’s incredible

  • Lil Kitai
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    1 year ago

    As a person of colour, low self-esteem and internalized racism.

      • @SunshinerOP
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • @Franfran2424
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          121 year ago

          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

          • MexicanCCPBot
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            1 year ago

            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.

            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.

            • @Franfran2424
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              81 year ago

              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.

      • @fruityloop
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        1 year ago

        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

          • @fruityloop
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            61 year ago

            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

            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).

  • @Magos_Galactose
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    211 year ago

    Are you trying to indirectly murder me by making me cringe of my own past?

    (That was a joke)

    Imagining your main source of ideology was Facebook memes and polandball, and you get half the idea how cringe I was back then.

    • @SunshinerOP
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      71 year ago

      The past is really a killer 😂🤣

      I used to use Tik Tok, then switched to Reddit and thought I was smarter than before. Ohhh the cringe 😭

  • @Arachno_Stalinist
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    191 year ago

    When I was a liberal, I simped for Amerikkka and refused to learn my own country’s language (I am Filipino) and as a result I struggle in speaking Tagalog. (Though nowadays I can read and understand it mostly. My problem’s mostly in pronunciation & sometimes grammar)

    An unfortunate amount of people in this country (especially Liberals) seem to worship the countries that colonized us for some reason.

    • MexicanCCPBot
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      81 year ago

      As a Mexican I can’t believe the amount of people here who want to desperately find Jewish ancestry so they can claim Spanish citizenship and move there. And become Spanish. The ones who put us through slavery and stole all our resources and refuse to apologize to this day for the colonial terror and plunder. Also the ones who still control several key industries in here thanks to neoliberal imperialism.

      Thankfully there are very few US simps, they exist but they’re a particular kind of ignorant.

      • IngrownMink4☭
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        51 year ago

        The ones who put us through slavery and stole all our resources and refuse to apologize to this day for the colonial terror and plunder. Also the ones who still control several key industries in here thanks to neoliberal imperialism.

        And on top of that, the PSOE (my country’s party) refused to apologize for its colonial past, right?

        • MexicanCCPBot
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          51 year ago

          I don’t know if PSOE specifically did that, but the ruling government did when our president asked them. Pretty chauvinist if PSOE did that, I thought they were ML.

          • IngrownMink4☭
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            81 year ago

            If the president who asked for it was AMLO, then yes, it was the PSOE who refused to retract. And no, the PSOE is not ML, it’s not even considered social democratic lol. It’s a socioliberal party, and inspired by the US Democratic party.

            • MexicanCCPBot
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              51 year ago

              Oh, that’s awful. I just read a little about them, seems like it’s a thing that happened to all Second International/Socialist International parties, slowly becoming the most lukewarm of reformists over a century.

    • @SunshinerOP
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      71 year ago

      I’m African American, a Nigerian descent. I’m planning on learning the Nigerian languages to connect more to my roots. It’s such a shame colonizers erased our history and tried to whitewash us completely. Luckily there’s the internet that can help us get back on track. I never knew the Nigerian languages until I looked them up.

  • @Ottar
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    1 year ago

    deleted by creator

    • @holdengreen
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      141 year ago

      “socially progressive but fiscally conservative” I had a girl tell me that and was like ok…

      • @Ottar
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        1 year ago

        deleted by creator

        • @holdengreen
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          41 year ago

          “I also think you are stupid enough to believe I’m not just some reactionary conservative.”

      • SovereignState
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        81 year ago

        just try to warp “fiscal conservatism” as a label into actually supporting a planned economy lol

        “I’m fiscally conservative. I think infinite profit is unsustainable and setting limits on the market in, oh I don’t know, 5 year plans or something is probably the right move.” 😉

        • MexicanCCPBot
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          41 year ago

          “Yeah I’m a paleo-conservative. I advocate for a return to primitive communism, that is.”

  • stasis
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    171 year ago

    a side effect for me was that i didn’t look at capitalist media with a critical eye, especially when it was talking about china, north korea, or any other socialist country, or any state that’s against the US (and demonizing them)

  • @sparkingcircuit
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    161 year ago

    Oh god… Where do I even begin. I guess I’ll go here. A tendency to perpetuate unsubstantiated claims and conspiracy theories. eg. The Ancient Egyptians had electricity and radios, or in North Korea, you vote in front of an inspector, and get “disappeared”, if you vote outside of this “royal” Kim family.

    • @SunshinerOP
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      71 year ago

      and the can’t get k pop boy haircuts cause you’ll be cuter than kim jong un 🤣🤣🤣

  • Free PalestineA
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    151 year ago

    I’m not entirely sure if the question is “what do you do now because of past liberalism” or if it’s “what did you do while you were a liberal” so I’ll answer for both.

    To the first, I find myself going down rabbit holes consuming all of the information i can on a topic before I form an opinion on it. In the process of my radicalization, realizing that I had been holding mistruths so close to my chest just because someone I trusted said it really opened my eyes to how much absolute bullshit the far-right conned me with.

    To the second, When I was liberal, I was an anarcho-capitalist (see: priviledged & disenfranchised white cis-male teen). My major sources for anything were facebook meme pages, reddit, and conspiracy theory youtube channels. It feels like liberalism wants its followers to go to the least accurate sources as their “bible”, the entire system seems to be loosely tied together by this. Hell, every time MSM wants to push absolute hogwash they’ll get a tabloid like DailyMail to run something, just so they can quote it as a source.

    • @SunshinerOP
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      111 year ago

      Goodness! An ancap? Man, your story of converting really gives me hope for people!

  • DankZedong A
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    151 year ago

    I want to add to my Uyghur boycott comment that I got flamed by fellow libs for it because I was making my life difficult and one man can’t change shit. They continued buying China made products.

    Now that I’m on China’s side of this story I get flamed by the same libs for being a genocide denying shithead.

    You can’t win in this game of idiocracy it seems.

    • MexicanCCPBot
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      121 year ago

      I got flamed by fellow libs for it because I was making my life difficult and one man can’t change shit. They continued buying China made products.

      Well, you literally demonstrated in real time how liberal praxis is a sham: you listened, you believed, you tried to “vote with your dollars” and “consume different”, then realized how difficult it was and how inconsequential it was going to be in the grand scheme of things, and when you told other (I guess louder) libs about it, you found out they didn’t even do it themselves because of how impractical it was for a consoomer to avoid everything made in China, which made them really angry because of cognitive dissonance.

      I had similar interactions and realizations as I was radicalizing myself.

      • DankZedong A
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        151 year ago

        Liberal praxis is to be mad and do nothing. Maybe tweet a mean tweet, give Reddit gold to a post and change a twitter handle. C’est tout.

    • @SunshinerOP
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      71 year ago

      I noticed hypocrisy a lot with liberals. One day they’re cancelling someone for being racist, but as soon as that racist makes a good song, they’re back to listening to them. It’s crazy. They’re miserable, tiring people.

  • @201dberg
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    151 year ago

    The biggest side effect I experienced didn’t come till after I grew the fuck up and realized all the bullshit. It’s an extreme feeling of cringe, shame, and disgust at myself. It’s also a source of hatred for the people that made me that way and also I have trouble not reacting aggressively towards anyone that spouts that nonsense in my presence now.

  • 陈卫华是我的英雄
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    141 year ago

    I could never understand why stuff happened. Like, everything was superficial “dictatorship” and “democracy” BS without any solid sociological economic analysis. Now, I got DiaMat and HistMat, and it’s like a blind man being able to see

  • @fruityloop
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    1 year ago

    Sorry for this massive list of cringe, there’s more stuff but that’s what I remember now.

    • I’ve always liked reading news and fiction works but I actively avoided reading any books on political theory or philosophy because the jargon can be pretty heavy. I still prefer audiobooks but at least I’m reading marxist books now lol.

    • Conflating socialist “dictatorships” with actual dictatorships because I live in one and mistakenly thought that there would be no change from that. That pushed me in a socdem corner for a few years despite being unsatisfied with that ideology.

    • Self hatred because I thought only Europeans were capable of “true democracy” and having a secular state. I had an anti-theist phase because I thought religion was the source of all woes and that getting rid of it would produce an ideal world. To be fair it is a source for a lot of problems but not the primary contradiction, I still don’t like organized religion because of how it negatively affects my life and others as well. I’m aware religion can be used for revolutionary purposes as well as reactionary ones so I’m no longer anti religion as long as reactionary tendencies are curbed.

    • Wishing America would come “liberate” us from everything bad in my country… Yeah that was mega cringe and I don’t look fondly on that time at all, very glad I’m no longer like that.

    • Briefly believing rainbow capitalism could improve our situation in my country and also buying into Israel’s pinkwashing and very briefly considering moving there. Egyptians leaving for Israel is considered treason by nearly everyone here.

  • @CountryBreakfast
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    121 year ago

    Are we telling on ourselves?

    I glorified the military and would get into arguments about how we should have continued the Vietnam war, how nuking Japan was necessary, how much of the world should be begging us to invade them. I was a climate change denier, a creationist evolution denier, was pro choice, chuavanist and bigoted in every conceivable way, and I voted for war criminal John McCain in 2008.

    I knew that someday a time would come when I was called on, just as every patriarch in my family had been, to defend the empire and save the world and I was desperately ready to asnwer that call. (Talk about colonial trauma amirite)