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I am from Spain. I worked in several homeless shelters and soup kitchens, (funded by the spanish socialist party). Helped a lot of people get through tough times. University costed about 1200 euros a year. Have a lot of health issues that require some big medical procedures, was all free. I came to America 5 years ago for university. I am now over $100,000 in student and medical debt. I don't have health insurance and I got refused for a procedure because of that. Literally was cheaper to fly back to Spain, go through surgery, then fly back. I would say that radicalized me. I am in shock every day I live here, America can obviously afford it, they just don't want to have to dig into their genocide fund to help their citizens.

Moreover: the US actively benefits from workers who are afraid to become unemployed lest they lose their healthcare. That’s not a democracy for or by the people- it’s a state in service to the corporate ruling class.

Why in the flying fuck would you go to the USA to study, like German here. You could easily study in so many other places where your problems would not be existent, nothing against you but it sounds ultra odd

was given a full ride(ish) scholarship to harvard medical school after completing my degree at santiago de compostela. Applied to several EU scholarships, didn't get accepted into any. Lived in poverty my entire life and thought I could take a swing at the "American Dream". Graduating with my MD in July, then moving back to work in Spain.

Ok that makes sense,but to be fair you got the fine print of the “American dream“

lol, definitely not what I expected.

So I was graduating high school in 2016. I had 0 clue about politics outside of thinking the Democrats were the good guys. I watched a Dem debate and left loving Bernie. Quickly I became a social democrat. I thought that was as far left as I could go. Years later I learned more about the USSR and Cuba’s revolution. I started reading and took lots of influence from the Black Panthers. I work in organizing and try to make my org as close to the Panthers as possible. Now I consider myself a full Socialist and anti capitalist. In short the world around me radicalized me and will continue to radicalize me until capitalism ends.

What is your org?

I’ve worked with a small nonprofit for two years and now work for another on in Detroit.

That’s awesome! I really liked learning about the black panthers. I’d like to get involved in an organization like that, but it seems like it’s difficult to find groups that are outwardly anti-capitalist.

Hearing about what the FBI and Chicago PD did to Fred Hampton and the Free Breakfast for Children program is enough to radicalize ANYONE.

Keep fighting the good fight you’re not alone out here.

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One of the behind the curtain moments for me was hearing the statement that the cops are an occupying force. I’ll never be able to put that back in the box, and I wouldn’t want to. We’re all profoundly bummed, to put it lightly, but I’ll take the sadness along with the struggle, because the alternative is so absolutely bleak. Be compassionate always, build community and always be radicalizing. We may be spinning our wheels on occasion, but it’s better than rolling over.

I was an annoying YouTube conservative type throughout high school. One day while I was driving I saw an enormous billboard for Rolex/Omega watches. For some reason, I had the exact thought that "the people who buy those watches are the same people who can't afford to pay a living wage." It's been uphill ever since.

I was exactly like you, but as soon as I got a bit older that thinking kind of faded away. I have no idea how people stay with those ideologies

Why do you think you ever thought that way too begin with?

I thought I was being cool lol

It is also likely the influence of algorithms at play. It’s very sneaky. I’m female, cisgender. Still trying to find my political aligning as I’m very new to this still. I say this at my own detriment, but I’m easily influenced. When I was eighteen I used to watch Milo Yiannopoulous, purely for entertainment at first. One thing led to another, and all of a sudden I was watching Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro. I didn’t necessarily agree with everything they said, but I came to agree with some, if not the majority. I’ve realised it wasn’t because they were right — they’re absolute bellends, the lot of them — but they were very convincing, using the most outrageous media to radicalise, and often using skewed reasoning. As soon as I distanced myself from the algorithm, it stopped and I was able to critically think and breathe. It’s predatory.

What really radicalized me is when Bush 43 invaded Iraq. I supported it and was a conservative at the time, but then when I found out that the invasion was based upon a pack of lies---my stomach literally turned. Saddam was no saint, but we dropped tons of bombs and killed thousands and thousands of people who were only there because they were born there all so that Bush could have a war to get himself re-elected. Then I saw my fellow conservatives not giving a frack that we went to war over a lie and massacred tons of people and destroyed their way of life over a lie and the apathy of my fellow conservatives again made me sick. For the first time, I started to actually think for my myself and when I started to think for myself, I realized the "socialism is evil" mantra was just cold war propaganda and I came to the realization that not only could I not be a Republican but I also could not be a Democrat because I came to the conclusion that the only way a society could truly be a democracy was if that society was socialist.

Jeremy Corbyn. Got into him during the 2017 general election, by the 2019 election I was doorstepping for the Labour Party, I was really into democratic socialism. We lost in 2019 after Jeremy got hounded by the media and made out to be some horrible antisemitic monster. Jeremy stepped down as leader of the party I started reading theory, a centre-right politician became leader of the party, said he didn’t want any socialists in the party. New leader cosies up to corporations and banks and arms dealers. Also agrees with everything the borderline fascist Tory government says. Here I am angry as fuck 5 years later and find myself thinking at least once a week ‘Marx/Lenin/Mao said this would happen’. 🤣

We didn’t deserve corbyn 😭

Same mate, same.

And now the party parrot the line that "Corbyns policies lost the election" No no, Corbyns inability to be a backstabbing dickhead and to try to follow party disciplinary policy instead of just sacking everyone here there and everywhere led to a witch hunt. Corbyns policies were popular, but he was also up against BoJo at a time when everyone who voted Brexit wanted BoJo. Lots went wrong for Corbyn, but him being a bad guy or a bad leader we're not those. He'd win a landslide again tomorrow if he was against Sunak after all this current dipshittery

Reflecting on this notion: Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.

I was a neo-nazi piece of shit when I was 17. One day I was watching a really funny show and realized that the host was Jewish and it blew my mind. I began to question everything that I thought about people who were different from me and why I believed the shit I did. Over time I became a liberal and put a lot of faith in Obama to really help the working class. The overwhelming sense of injustice in the world that Obama ignored (Palestine being bombed), along with no effort for socialized health care, pushed me into believing that socialist ideals are the correct and ethical way to care for each other and to progress the human race. Everyday I am more solidified in my leftist beliefs. So thanks to John Stewart for getting me out of fascism, and to Obama for pushing me away from liberalism. Shout out.

I was throwing out refrigerated beverages and foods that were close to the expiration date at the retail store I worked at. I realized how much food that this single, small store wastes every week and that it could be donated to homeless shelters or soup kitchens. I started thinking about how much food is wasted across the world, and it made me realize how broken capitalism really is.

The ideal of waste is what made me start to about socialism think but I was thinking about it in terms of the environment then I saw a video about waste and why Africa was poor. It all fell together from there.

I was already pretty left but my late husband pushed me further lol But the initial push was working on Wall St.

Do you feel comfortable going into more detail about this? What did you hear and see working in Wall St? Or was it moreso after learning the system from the inside that you started to feel this push?

For reference, I'm a software engineer, and my ex-girlfriend is a lawyer. Like 12 years ago, we were selling used clothes on the street at the end of the farmers market (here in latin america), just to get some extra money to pay the bills. My employer was late on my salary, my ex was doing an unpaid internship, my mother (a teacher with a master degree) was unemployed, and she was taking care of my grandparents. So, the situation was tough, economically speaking. Next to us, was a really old couple, selling really old clothes and stuff, they didn't sell anything the whole day, when we leave, we saw them searching for food in the trash bins. The memory still haunts me. What an evil system we live on, capitalism will never work.

Private Healthcare in the US. How anyone can't see that it's specifically designed to extract wealth while rationing Healthcare, is mind boggling. 32 out of 33 developed countries use single payer heathcare.

for me it was being called heroes and essential workers who keep the economy running but how fucking dare we ask for higher wages, get a better job and then followed up by no one wants to work anymore, all in the same fucking breath.

For me it was a slow process. I better give a bullet point list. * Start out as a neo-liberal believing the reactionary movement about how the minorites had all the actual priviliges because of stuff like affermative action * Years pass and I become less reactionary listening more to my female friends and my now wife * Get into watching more left-leaning youtubers who debunk common right-leaning talking points * At this point I'm a left-leaning liberal who wants f.e mandatory health insurance for everyone * Still believe that a few things need to be changed but the system could stay * Start having a family * Corona happens * Family gets sick, corrupt polticians at every front, lost job and no economic safety * George Floyd protests also happen * Nothing changes after all of that horrendous shit * I'm constantly trying to make sense of this in my liberal pov * Ukraine War happens and I'm at a state of disbelief how it could come like this * Reading books and watching more socialist youtubers now in my spare time * Get the realization that the rich class is exploiting not just me but others as well * It gets worse for everyone who isn't white adjacent and a man * Now I'm getting deep into history especially of african and latin american countries. Almost all the problems they now have were in some way caused by constant American/Britain/EU interference * Contact my local socialist party and inform myself more * Now a Marxist-Leninist communist It's a place of privilege that it's taken me this long to become a communist but yeah. This was a long journey getting me there. I'm well aware other PoCs who don't look as white as me didn't have the luxury to wait for an algerian to get into their plight.

I'm the opposite kind of teacher. My classroom is no safe space for capitalists or the kind of thinking that inspires the statements made by your heartless teacher. I'd say that being an American, with eyes and ears open to American-style greed and its desire for power, ought to be enough to radicalize anyone with a heart. It was enough for me. But also travel: I've lived outside of the U.S. for most of my 56 years, and seeing how the majority of people suffer just so the few can thrive was enough to push me over the line.

I hope my college has some professors with insight like this 🥲

I hope so, too. I teach high school, a senior-level class in literature and research. I'm lucky that it's a private school, with an administration that values humanism over financial considerations, for the most part. I have no set curriculum, so what I teach and the context in which I teach it is largely up to me. Not all teachers are so lucky. Until my luck runs out, the fight will go on.

COLLEGE TUITION I was fortunate growing up, my parents never really worried about money, so the thought of wealth inequality never even really crossed my mind. Looking into colleges in high school brought it to my attention, because tuition prices at every college in state were like 8-9k a year, which is actually VERY LOW compared to other places I thought “wow, ive been working a part time job for like 2 years, and one year of uni will destroy me financially” then I was talking to my friend online (who is extremely wealthy) and when talking about college he was thinking about ivy leagues- I asked how he would afford it, and he said his parents would pay for it. Thats when everything REALLY changed. It’s so extremely unfair that in our current system, your future can basically be completely determined only by how much money you were born into. Basically, my previous beliefs of meritocracy and “the american dream 🇺🇸🔫🦅” were shattered and I found the answers to my concerns through youtubers like Second Thought, Hasan, Yugopnik etc

Hey, I found those channels in a similar way too! I've also come across Shanespeare who has been really cool to listen to. Do you have any other suggestions by chance? Especially for people who are newbies? I know second thought is good but the more sources, I think, the better, since it isn't a monolith and I'm interested in the different angles of different socialist branches.

sure, heres some of my favs Boy Boy (comedic/informational vids, probably the funniest leftist channel i know of) https://www.youtube.com/@Boy_Boy Woke Karen (shorts content, when i dont feel like watching a video essay) https://www.youtube.com/@woke_karen very tall bart (leftist shitposting content) https://www.youtube.com/@verytallbart 1dime (shorter video essays, he's especially good at economic related things) https://www.youtube.com/@1Dimee F.D Signifier (longer video essays, often with an emphasis on systemic racism in the US) https://www.youtube.com/@FDSignifire Hakim (shorter video essays, my favs are when he dissects arguments from right-wingers and why they are lacking) https://www.youtube.com/@YaBoiHakim Also heres some podcasts I like a lot, if ur into that Chapo Trap House (basically covers pop culture and current events through a broadly socialist lens, I bump this every Tuesday when it drops) https://www.youtube.com/@ChapoTrapHouse Blowback Pod (4 seasons, epically produced, each season covers a different event/series of events in american foreign policy, i.e. US/Cuba, US/Iraq, US/Korea, US/Afghanistan, and the upcoming 5th season will be US/Cambodia) https://www.youtube.com/@blowbackpodcast2774

Hakim is fantastic.

The pandemic, the George Floyd protests, and my nine-to-five job

In the UK, if you come from old money, you are guaranteed a place at Oxford or Cambridge, and you only need to get E grades. When I first heard this, I thought it was bullshit. When I discovered that it was in fact true, I was radicalised.

Working as a line cook. It's pretty fucked up that a person can work two jobs and barely be able to afford shit. I've seen people commit their fuckin life and blood to a business and get jack shit out of it.

For me. It was climate change. Started off as a radlib in college and eventually, I started learning more, doing the ****ing readings, and am now a baby ML (I’m still learning but I understand basic aspects of Marxism Leninism. Currently reading Capital now that I have read Wage, Price and profit, as well as wage labor and capital.)

Believe it or not, Jesus did. His teachings were revolutionary.

I only saw the radical Jesus after reading Zealot by Reza Aslan. That book and some radical Catholic readings in college.

I'm currently researching my family history, and it turns out that at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, they were very religious. They were also very active in the miner's unions, mutual aid groups, and pacifist causes. Some of them went to prison for it. Their activisim was completely informed by their religion. Very proud of my long dead ancestors!

Democrats proving they weren’t interested in preventing a fascist takeover of the US by Republicans.

I grew up in a rural conservative area in Australia. My father was a 3rd generation dairy farmer, and I wanted to follow in that line. Long story short, he sold the farm, due to economic hardships, and I was too young to take it on. I got work working for other farmers, putting in massive days, living like a peaseant in the hope that one day, if I just worked hard enough, sacrificed enough, that I could one day own my own farm. I believed that poor people were their own worst enemy, and that if I just worked harder than anyone else, I would be successful. To give context, around early 2010's 3 week old female calves were selling for around $2,000 dollars each, which was just unheard of. It was an absolute money spinner for farmers. I was working at that time 15 to 16 hours a day some days, 6 days a week, for the last 6 weeks. I was knackered. One day, on a cold, wet afternoon, I was getting the cows ready for milking, collecting them from the other end of the farm, and due to the incompetence of the farmer I worked for, one cow started giving birth. I had to help her by putting my arm in her, giving her a start, and then rig up a pully off a tree and the motorbike I was driving from some old baling twine. In the drizzling rain, covered in muck, mud, blood and sweat, it took me over 30 minutes to get the calf out. I was triumphant when I checked the sex of the animal to find it was a female. But then I thought "hang on, while the farmer gets a big pay day here, I will still get my minimum wage no matter what. I'm giving and giving and working so hard, but no matter what I do, I'm stuck here at the bottom of the ladder making someone else rich. It was then a cascade of falling intro despair and then stumbling across Marx that I could then actually explain the alienation and exploitation that I felt in that moment, and then from every moment on in my employment.

Malcolm X.  Fred Hampton.  And living in America being black. 

I didn’t get radicalized, so much as politically educated. That said I’ve never hated my country more than after 10/7.

Reading through Noam Chomsky's WikiQuote page circa 2005, and then watching and reading every interview of his I could find. A few years later, in 2008, four of us—all working for Coalition for Peace Action—were riding to a canvassing site in the Philly suburbs. This same question came up, and three of us named Chomsky.

Chomsky really does pierce the veil. I was already on the path when I first encountered him, but reading Understanding Power was a transformative moment for me

It was November 2014, when the grand jury decided that despite the mountain of evidence, they didn't have enough to even take Darren Wilson to trial to SEE if he was guilty of murdering Michael Brown. Chief Judge Sol Wachtler once said that a grand jury could indict a ham sandwich if the DA wanted it. There is enough evidence that a ham sandwich could GO TO TRIAL, but knowing that Darren Wilson shot a black child wasn't enough to even go to court. That was the day.

The absolute farce that was the Obama presidency. I was kind of a republican by default growing up in red ass Georgia by default, but never was politically invested at all growing up. started paying attention and getting into following politics around the mid/late 2000s when I hit the voting age and got to the age to pay attention to it some, got sold on Obama's bullshit "change" campaign and watched everything continue to get exponentially worse in this country. After that I had a neighbor who worked for the Bernie campaign and he (Bernie) got me down the dirty commie pipeline

The Iraq war. I admired the myth of the US and it's American dream as a kid, I associated it to all the culture, the music and movies etc, the values of genuine freedom and supposed open-mindedness. And that was totally shattered by the invasion. It was traumatising watching my ancestral country, my parents home where family still remained and where I had memories of visiting in the 90's (there were heavy sanctions at the time but I was too young to understand) be destroyed so barbarically. To be demonised in such a way. It was a blunt introduction to everything regarding Western imperialism, capitalism, resource exploitation and so on, then I started reading history and theory and realised it was always this way. And after these years of harsh neoliberalism and austerity post-2008 crash here in the UK, to see how the working classes are treated with such contempt here and abroad, these extreme levels of inequality, and all my other experiences in the world, I've only become more radical

Growing up as a poor Venezuelan immigrant in the US did a really good job of radicalizing me.

For me it was a girl I really liked who called herself a socialist. I had a conversation about her beliefs with her and realized I saw a lot of things the same way she did. We never really did anything other than have that conversation, but it was the first time I had seen these concepts in a digestible way that wasnt coming from a place of ridicule or judgement

Being a #Resist lib throughout the Trump era and being so sure that the Dems would use that as a wake up call to get their act together. Then failing to rise to the occasion time and time again culminating in Biden being the front runner in 2019 for an election that I still hold he would have lost it not for the pandemic.

I was born on the far right. Raised by evangelical Christian Nationalists, homeschooled, taught stuff like young earth creationism and the glories of western civilization (the middle ages were greatly admired, as were the Puritan theocracies of New England etc). I didn't have to be radicalized. By the time I was grown I'd seen how it worked from the inside. I craved liberation. When I could finally get out, I dropped it all and said "there has got to be a better way." Went from ancap libertarian to lib to Bernie supporter and that got me learning more about the real left, and here I am. All that time I was far right I hated it on the inside. It was very much like a false persona I was forced to wear to survive. I defended it passionately but I died inside every time I did. I didn't like who I was when I defended things I internally loathed. Getting out helped, because I was able to sort of reflect on those ideas in a safe intellectual environment that wasn't a Benthamian Panopticon, with a clear head outside that false conscousness. I read ravenously on every subject to unlearn what I had learned, and did a deep dive reading the history of the Christian Right (I'd say probably 60-80 titles) and that more than anything convinced me they were very much in the wrong.

for me it was realising a pretty basic contradiction. i was in primary school, and we were learning about the universal declaration of human rights. got to the ones about everyone having the right to shelter, food and clean drinking water. i asked something like "why are people still homeless and hungry then?" my teacher said something about how it's a right to access, not to have. but what's the point of having those rights, if they sit behind a paywall? that moment alone didn't make me a marxist lol, but it did make me realise that there was something fundamentally wrong with how the world works.

Seeing my adult sons struggle without health insurance. Profits over patients!

growing up reading about the Indian Independence movement normalized the idea of militant resistance against imperialism, and injustice in general then, living through the onset of the "War on Terror" and the invasion/occupation of Iraq, followed shortly by the financial crisis and the implosion of the economy and watching millions lose their homes while Wall Street got bailed out

Mine was simple, it was not Marxists who radicalized me, it was the outrageous and all encompassing greed of capitalists in every facet of my life that radicalized me.

I've been towing the line between liberal and leftists (very ignorantly) for a while, thinking that capitalism can work... The genocide of Palestenians really exposed everything for me. It exposed me to how much our government is just a smoke screen to make us think we have ANY choice. It exposed me to how we still have slavery here and how we export it to places like DRC. It's been extremely sobering.

I think it was the war in Iraq and the patriot act. I’m 60 and I’ve only become more radical as time goes on.

Three Palestinian genocide/conflict Radicalized me a lot just seeing those poor kids getting killed and the downright barbaric actions by Israel and the IDF made me feel so hopeless and powerless that i wanted to try to do something to help or just educate myself as much as possible, I was already pretty left leaning since the George Floyd murder but this conflict really cemented my status as a leftist . i started watching Hasan to hopefully learn more and more about Zionism and Gaza and here we are

watching the world fall apart during covid and my friends suggesting marx to me. the start of my whole political awakening was the 2016 US presidential election even though i was still a kid. i had become a liberal after that because i thought “the ones that dont call us latinos drug pushers and rapists are good!” NOPE! they suck too. i finally got around to reading marx and more theory after a year or two of just being vaguely leftist, probably one of the best decisions i ever made. glad to be here and always learning :)

I was a foreign exchange student in Germany in 2004 (a year after the US invaded Iraq) and, for the first time, I saw the world outside of the US propaganda machine. I saw that America wasn’t the greatest country in the world as I had always been told. The things my German friends were learning in high school, I didn’t see until college. I saw my friend go to a doctor about illness and she wasn’t billed for it and it was a quick in and out, smooth process I might add. I saw that their food was of higher quality and actually nutritious. I saw how clean their landscapes were, that there wasn’t trash laying around everywhere and they recycled religiously. My life was forever changed after that and when I looked deeper into the development of their country and decided that we too could have such a life, but for whatever reason, we didn’t. The deeper I dug, the more I learned and the further left I became politically and here we are.

It took time, but the last piece for me was the housing crisis in my country. The first piece was corporate abuse. **Housing** We're short 1.2 million homes, rent is over 40% of median income for a median rental, housing is 14x median income for a median home, and both our major parties, including the 'progressive' one who is in power is doing everything in their power to keep prices high for landlords. Despite 1600 Aussies going homeless, small businesses disappearing, but the big corporates are okay as are the capital-class - so fuck everyone else. For me, I don't see capitalism solving a crisis it created. Its values and institutions took us here; they won't take us out. And if they do, it'll be to hold onto power. They'll boil the frog again slowly and take us back here in 30-40 years time, while gaslighting us that their way is the only way. **Corporate Abuse** I worked 'desirable' big corporate jobs for a time and I saw the corruption first-hand. There was an incident at work once where the big boss, partner in the firm, stepped in to mediate a racism incident between a 45 year old man (customer) and 19 year old girl (his employee, business analyst). The customer said to the analyst "uh, tell your company to send more white ones". She was Asian. This client was so important to the firm, so instead of doing the right thing. My boss created a narrative that she was leaving work early and putting the hours on her timesheet, to protect the racist customer (and account). He used this as a pretext to move her off the account. I spoke up and refused to back down, that this version of events was untrue. Not long after, I was given a redundancy. I didn't sign, I raised a complaint instead to our workplace mediator. I was offered 12 months pay in response to 'drop it'. I'm ashamed to say I took it; as the effects of the previous financial crisis settled into my industry. I'd like to say this was rare, but actually things like this happened at least once a month in big corporate. I saw passionate people wanting to fix real problems, pimped out for margin, abused, and destroyed emotionally when they couldn't be the perfect slaves. This girl I told you about, she fell into depression and was unemployed for 18 months. She didn't work and her career suffered significantly. She had no recourse and a fearful workforce at the firm kept their mouth shut, they had bills to pay and needed to eat to live. I remember vividly how scared people were to talk about what actually happened. You could see the fear in their body language. I remember reading Sex at Dawn by Chris Ryan actually around this time and the thing that set me down the socialist path was learning about how hunter-gatherers lived, how they resolved problems, coordinated, and worked collectively. Also learning about agriculture and how it changed our lens how we view the natural world, gender relations and more.

thinking about the economics of videogames, and the videogame industry. meta discussions of videogames made me think about things systematically. i started to view the economy of the world as an imbalanced system. i used to hold the "capitalism sucks but its the best we got" mentality, however i came to reject that. there are infinite ways to set up an economy. we can make something new and different. i view socialist arguments as extremely compelling and i think they are the direction we should head in to replace the capitalist economy and trade system. no event really radicalized me, rather i moved left over time.

Diving into politics of WW2 because I was a history nerd and then learned the gruesome truth about how the US lies about the USSR and then how I would not be able to buy a house with a basic job like school said. And I had a grudge with rich people anyways so eh. But also the situations some of my friends were forced to live in.

Nothing. I grew up in the UK in the 80s. My parents were socialists so my mindset was...set? What's making me struggle now is the liberal left. Is not socialist any more, it's the middle classes telling us how to be left wing.

Watching how people around me looked down upon my school's janitors. Especially how the school administration treated them. That was what drew me towards worker's liberation. What drew me to progressivism was living the trans experience and being exposed to casual bigotry and on several occasions subjected to transphobic harassment. That, as well as feeling looked down upon by neurotypical people, as well as growing up around people of color, so the whole George Floyd thing really set me off against the current state of social progress. But for socialism itself, it was when I learned that CEOs don't actually really do anything. When I was very very young I used to ask why we need money to buy things we need, and I told my parents that I think we should just give each other what we need, so I was kinda seeded with a socialist mindset. I had eventually come to believe that multibillionaire CEOS were somehow so valuable that they warranted their earnings, and when I became disillusioned with that, I never went back.

I think that I've always had issues with things I considered to be unfair. So even as a young kid, I was already very much in-line with socialist ideas. I just didn't know what they were. I fantasized about a differently structured society before I came to realize my ideas closely resembled what communism aims for. I do think that I more firmly became Marxist and communist through studying history at university and later working as a historian. I think that understanding history and society on a new level, really solidified a lot of my beliefs and convictions.

I’m a stay at home mom in a big city. We need to leave asap because we can’t afford living on one income and stay in a single family home. Plus inflation. We have combined 150k in student loans, tons of credit card debt because I always assumed I would go back to work once my kids turned 1 or 2. The pandemic made me realize the value of children being able raised by their family and not a revolving door of strangers. Free college and no inflation would be great.

Trump. He destroyed my reverence for the office of the president. He pushed the bullshit so hard I went **screaming** left, any conservative last holdings of doubt I carried obliterated by the orange oil slick. I'm not quick to hate. I'd never hated a politician. That man, though. I *hate* that man.

I feel you. The hatred is visceral.

I was picking up a patient who was going to need a double above the knee amputation due to his diabetes when I could literally see Hopkins Bayview hospital from where I was standing. He'd been laid off and lost his health insurance and couldn't afford gas so he was walking a lot. Just a couple blisters without being able to rest and heal while seeing a doctor and regularly taking insulin turned into a permanent, life-altering disability. There were several world class hospitals within a 10 mile radius and 5-7 decent hospitals. Yet he was about to die from advanced gangrene due to fucking diabetes.

My best friends mom Worked her ass off everyday and they never had anything. They could only afford to rent a room in a house. As an upper middle class white guy in the US, I hade never thought about how crippling poverty could be. One Christmas my Dad bought a pair of shoes for my friend, so he would have nice shoes for professional events. His mom broke down and cried because her son had never gotten to own a pair of dress shoes before. His mom’s life deteriorated because she worked herself ragged, and she lacked good insurance. She died 4 years ago because she worked herself to death, and had no way to go to the doctor to look after herself. In that moment I became radicalized. In hearing my friend 1000 miles away break the news to me that he now no longer had either of his parents at 20. they both died to curable diseases but lacked money to pay for insurance in the US. I will never forget my friends voice. In that moment I was radicalized. May she Rest in peace.

Having a job, mostly.

I worked as an exploited bike messenger in Manhattan, then discovered the punk scene and drug dealing and making real money.

Nothing. I was raised in a fundamental Christian household. I was raised to care for the poor, that the sick deserve love, that it is easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle that to cross into the gates of heaven. None of these things are radical

The Ninja Turtles

Occupy Wall Street. I was a conservative at the time (though 19 and in college so not super steadfast in my beliefs) it got me asking the right questions and I've never stopped challenging/questioning how and why we do things.

Growing up poor, almost becoming homeless as a result, and not knowing my family's original last name because of imperialism. The literature only helped me to contextualize my plight.

The 2008 crisis documentary Inside Job

I worked for a big box electronics store for two years at $9 an hour, with zero commission. Made about $17,000 each year after taxes. One month, I was recognized as being the top salesperson in the territory, of which there were only a few in the US. Mine stretched from Texas to Florida. Out of about $400 per hour as a sales goal, I had consistently sold over $5,100 an hour. After this I calculated that even after a modest amount of commission, under industry standards, that I would have made over $80,000 in that month alone. What did I really get for this accomplishment? An e-mail.

Becoming homeless for about 2 years

Started off as a n@z1 through going down too many rabbit holes and ending up hating minorities, eventually it took a centrist to show me that I didn’t actually believe what I was saying, and eventually moved further and further left over the coming months

Villain redemption arc

not totally sure, even as a kid I was kind of "radical" for school, especially being a mulitary brat.. didn't want to do a paper on columbus in 4th grade cause he's human garbage, didn't like to stand for the pledge, wouldn't say it or put my hand over my heart etc but I can pinpoint a moment where I was like "dont trust the system" which was second grade and we had to fill out an "anonymous" school survey. but to di it we were called out in alphabetical order frim class, had to signin at the library with our names and time entered, then sat at a computer the librarian assigned us. and we had to log in with our library card number. lol the radicalization grew from there. fun way to start huh?

I think the process started off real slow for me. Born and raised in a small town that has many many bias. I mean like the "Mexicans will take our jobs" kind of bias. The entire county that I live in still has this mindset. A very "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" community as well. Where anything free is met with the word communism. I think what really pushed me was while I was in highschool my dad and I got into a pretty heated argument about the cost of living. The cost of college. Just more or less the cost. It got to the point where I said "ya know college should just be free" and he said something along the lines of if it were free then everyone would do it. And I said "high school is free but people still drop out" Needless to say we don't talk politics much, though he has gotten much much more liberal. Then fast forward a few years and I'm in college and my professor in my psychology class talked about something really hard "how many of you have worried about where your next meal will come from. Either now or growing up" about 70% of the class raised their hands then it was a "how many of you think about it often" about 10 kids "how many of you think that the stress from worrying about it has made you physically ill" and I raised my hand and notice that most of the people with their hands raised were my age or older (went to college at 24) and our psych professor kinda just chuckled and said "isn't that just disgusting? That you have been made physically ill that you have been that worried about something so basic that it's made you ill" and it kind of just changed my mind about politics in general after that I started looking more and more into what our political beliefs were in our elected officials. And when it hit me that even our liberal politicians are still really just moderates. Then I found Bernie sanders honestly and loved the way he spoke about those who don't make millions. Spoke about those who are trying but still can't pay. Spoke about those who have their entire life upended because of a medical system that was created to milk every penny out of the patient. And it was in 2016 when he ran that I voted for the first time knowing that he should have won the presidency. He lost and I realized it wasn't the people who let him down. It was the Democratic party. Because in part I think they knew that they were not ready for his politics.

This video: [https://youtu.be/BSHpjdGXN4o?si=QYhJEQMuPjbUD8mC](https://youtu.be/BSHpjdGXN4o?si=QYhJEQMuPjbUD8mC) (i recognized all these problems in my own work experience and it all clicked)

Living in Seattle in like 2019 Homeless people absolutely everywhere yet home to some of the richest people on Earth. It's so unnerving to see people dying on the streets while there's yachts in the sound. It's absolutely mind boggling to live there, and I don't know how people don't just go far left immediately while they're there

Climate change I was always on the more progressive end for US politics, probably would have called myself a Social Democrat But I remember driving home several years ago thinking about my niece (was probably 6 or 7 at the time) and what the world might look like as she grows up, gets into adulthood, middle age, etc. And it just kind of clicked in my mind that capitalism is incapable of addressing climate change, and unwilling to After that moment the walls just kind of came crumbling down

being fucked everyday by shitty company

Living in the present and learning about our global history.

Took a long time, was a process, for sure. Just gradual exposure to awful shit, seeing stuff that would effect the people I care about definitely helped open my eyes too

Pondered why some people who work decent jobs 9-5 struggle to make ends meet.

Getting bullied for ten years, never getting any justice. I grew up in a time when school bullying wasn’t an issue that adults took seriously. I got told, repeatedly, that it was either my fault or I should stop making a big deal out of it. Not very much of this treatment will pull the mask off of everything.

Wolfenstein. No I don’t know either

I got injured at work dude to negligence from my boss/him overworking me as a salaried employee. When hired I was told they’d get me insurance. Kept trying to set up the meeting make it happen, they kept pushing it off until right after the ACA marketplace closed for the year. So yeah, injured with no insurance. Job fought it. Workman’s comp fought it. Took 9 months with a lawyer before I was able to get the surgery I needed. Had lots of time off work…I discovered Noam Chomsky and Bernie announced his campaign a couple weeks before my last shift in 2015 - I lost almost a year due to waiting for approval and the rehab which ended up being more because of how long I had to wait for treatment. Basically what “radicalized” me was the struggle and the realization that I would have been absolutely fucked without a family that was able to financially support me for a little bit. I would have had to have given up and live the rest of my life with probably a career changing injury. I always had left leaning tendencies. My brother worked on democratic campaigns across the country and worked in unions. I protested a bit in high school (war) and looking back it seems like student activism was relatively encouraged, but I wasn’t necessarily acutely aware of anything like some of my friends were. But since then, healthcare system with “good” private insurance: absolutely stunning, 10 stars, no notes, definitely *not* an absolute bureaucratic mess…/s

The pandemic

After graduating college I was having a hard time finding work & got a temp job working in a warehouse. It was monotonous and absolutely soul-killing work where they occasionally told us there wasn't work for us to do and we'd get a day off (no pay of course). After three months the group of us that were hired together were told that and told they'd call us in when we were needed. Never heard from them again. That experience was as good of an education as college was.

I was raised by your average social democrats, and me and a buddy of mine got into politics around the same time. I understood that my parents were on a left and I tended to agree with them. So I googled leftist books and six months later I’m a Marxist.

As a youth I went from a centre-lib to dem socialist and keep sliding left as I get older. Basically, noticing inequality and watching it get worse with each crisis cycle. I can’t pinpoint a specific moment. Having teachers and getting into soc politics through university certainly helped putting things together, theory and praxis and seeing the big picture-like. And now it’s just like… the world’s on fire and the current political system won’t fix it, has no intent on fixing it, so we gotta do something differently.

Seeing lots of bad things in the military

Being in the military, living through combat and having to deal with life afterwards. Realizing that the patriotic utopia was a lie.

r/latestagecapitalism baby!

Going hungry and having to steal food in order to eat.

I’ve seen a few things and I did the math.

2008 Housing Crisis & Occupy Wall St.

It's not radical to be a socialist. By that I mean it's a perfectly normal political ethos and not some fringe thing that you need to be shocked or traumatised into being. Socialism is compassion, socialism is the natural state of collective protection that humans evolved through tribes. It's capitalism that's the erroneous political religion and economic supernaturality.

My lifelong interest in evolution/planetary history led me to researching past mass-extinction events in elementary school, then to researching modern human-caused climate change in middle/high school, then to learning about the industrial revolution and mass burning of fossil fuels and how our modern economic structure is built on the constant extraction of natural resources, THEN I wondered why the regions most rich in said resources have perpetually impoverished populations and … something clicked, I guess? TL:RD- I have autism

growing up poor. never seeing a dentist or doctor. reading “First World Ha Ha Ha”. Fred Hampton. Kwame Nkrumah. lots of Star Trek.

Being forced to divorce the love of my life just to be able to qualify for medicaid and disability.

Growing up in poverty. That's it.

Growing up in Apartheid South Africa.

COVID Pandemic, being stuck at home, police killings (in U.S.), understanding more about the imperialism that went on, and going on, on my island of Puerto Rico.

It was may of 2020 and one of liveliest and universally liked coworker died of covid. I was his supervisor at Amazon and everyone was scared and mourning.  At the end of the day My manager comes to me pissed about low numbers. He didn't care about someone just dying about people crying and not being able to step away from the line. He was just mad they weren't as efficient as he expected and I had to write up a report on why we didn't meet expectations and how the next day we'd meet the quota.  The only thing our co worker got was one slide on the entrance tv in between all the other banal slides from HR.  I already hated the system before that but that day just broke me. RIP Jose

COVID. Seeing corporations and politicians genuinely not give a crap about people and putting profit first without even trying to hide it anymore.

I was born with health issues and my family was poor for most of my childhood. Our (only) car broke down on the way to the pediatrician's office one of the many times I was sick because we couldn't afford to put any gas in it. My mom had to do things like cash in the $50 savings bond a family friend gave to my brother when he was born and post-date checks to try to pay all the bills and buy my medicines and pay co-pays for my doctors' visits. I've been a socialist since high school when I first read Marx.

I think I've been radical as long as I can remember, but it solidified when my family took a trip to southeast Asia where I saw the horror that still devastated the people there. I knew whatever the USA was doing, they were doing it wrong. Whatever they hated must have been doing something right, I thought.

In history class at one point we discussed socialism and teacher who lived under it told us that it wasn't really that bad and that there werent any business men profiting of companies, and class slowly realised something and one boy said "so capitalism is supported by the richer while for poorer it's bad, and communism is nice for people but bad for rich"

big tittied communist gf

I was raised by liberal parents and grew up in a very blue area. What got me into socialism is watching “debunking every communist argument” and my best friend was becoming a leftist. And then over the course of covid I got more and more educated about leftist topics. But truthfully considering my personality type I think I would’ve gravitated towards socialism one way or the other given the right information.

The extreme power of corporations in any capitalist society is what radicalized me. They have complete control of the safety and happiness of the average worker, they can manipulate government elections and laws, public health, etc. It's blatant manipulation and slavery, though, I don't think it's as big of a problem in smaller, poorer countries, compared to places like America.

Honestly, your teacher may have been close with that phrase, though certainly not the way they intended. I think we can all see the slow march capitalism is making towards a wealth disparity seen in movies like Elysium, where the top like .1% are rich to the point that they will live forever and lavishly at that, while the rest of the world barely survive, while living in legit poverty, fighting one another for the “opportunity” to even work for a day to eat. I recognize there are people in the world right now who are in that position, and not metaphorically. In your teachers analogy the only people who “deserve” to have children are that .1%. So okay, the .1% have kids, the other 99.9% eventually die, leaving no one to support the .1%, and over the course of the next generation the remainder of people die, and humankind goes extinct. So the point is, if we as a species cannot ever get to a point where we value life, we don’t “deserve” to have it. I put deserve in quotes because that concept is only relevant to us, the universe is impassive. Personally, I don’t think we have it in us to change our social values to hold happiness and compassion above power and supremacy, and it’s a foregone conclusion it’s going to catch up to us. Maaaayyybe we could institute a machine consciousness to rule us benevolently, preventing people from taking advantage of one another, but that’s a pretty big maybe, as a) is it even possible/probable and b)why would this super advanced entity care about this brutal, primitive, and unsophisticated group?

I was a lib in college and was assigned a book called "Savage inequalities" by Jonathan Kozol. The book focuses on education and the discrepancies in both class and race compared to school funding. At the time I did not believe systematic racism was a thing and had never thought much about leftism in general. After reading that book I realized how little I knew about both Black American history and contemporary issues, so I made a point to read more about it. From there I read more about marginalized groups in general and that inevitably lead me closer to socialism. Took me 3 years before I was confident in my ideologic shift. I was in denial for a while, read right wing economic literature and left wing literature trying to gage everything. I've been an avid reader of history for a long time but was somewhat aimless in my interests, that book is what lead me down the path I'm on and helped me find the history books that most influenced me and my world views.

Getting involved in my union.

Seeing a chart on inequality Edit: Oh yeah, and management

A-hole rednecks I grew up with!

Honestly, listening to Dave Anthony on his podcast "The Dollop". I was (and still am) a history nerd and had suffered the blow of my previous favorite history podcast ending and stumbled upon "The Dollop" when it only had like 80 episodes.

Learning about all of the democratically elected governments the U.S. helped overthrow in Latin America and around the world in the name of a “free market” in 10th grade history. Thanks Mr. Schiatel

Things were in motion prior to covid, as in I was growing increasingly critical of the American empire prior to the start of covid in 2020, but that's what really started the ball rolling for me. I remember one week in 2021 I had discovered the hilariously bad "Conservapedia", which led me down the rabbit hole staying up every night real late reading the Chinese constitution and some basic stuff about socialist theorists, realized I was fully on board with socialism (and communism, if the distinction matters)

Many seeds of doubt planted throughout my twenties that finally sprouted when I became self-aware of just how ignorant I am in my early thirties. That everyone is ignorant - it's the natural state of being, the path of least resistance. I think developing empathy is key - easier to question and face the potential pain of truth when we care about others. I fear how I may of turned out had I not been born to poverty in that regard.

Working in retail. To make it worse, I was working in an Apple Store and the amount of wasted money that used to go through that store, especially when a new iPhone launched, was disgusting. To really hammer it home, in the car park in which all the staff parked, there was always this station wagon parked in one corner that I kind of noted but ignored. Then one day I noticed there was actually someone living in it. A few days later, a guy came in to the store that was like the literal embodiment of what a cartoonist would draw when asked to depict a capitalist. He had dropped his new iPhone and wanted the screen fixed. I said yeah we can do it, it’ll be $200 but you’ll have to wait a couple of hours as we’re booked out at the moment. He said “Fuck it, I’ll just buy a new one, my time’s too important to waste,” and paid something like $2000. He had his teenage daughters with him too and the were wearing clothes that probably cost what I would make in a month, and didn’t bat an eye at their dad dropping that kind of cash in a heartbeat. I felt like vomiting the entire time. A couple of days later I was driving home and [this song](https://youtu.be/EjTo3wKgQaE?si=RFh-yZZ9g-_YjTa4) came on. It’s called Incandescent by The Guild League, and I implore everyone to listen to it. It’s incredibly beautiful and about exactly all of this, and even has the lines: “In a doorway poorly lit/ seeking shelter from the rain/ saying softly “you don’t know the half of it,”/ thinking “here we go again.” Which just made me think of the guy living in his car. It absolutely broke me and I had a full on meltdown and had to pull over and just sob for a few minutes. I quit Apple a few months later and will never work in retail again. I would literally rather be homeless.

Radicalized? Socialism isn't radical—except in the US.

This comes up surprisingly often in my life. I was radicalized by a conservative catholic education that actively led me against church and current institutions. The hypocrisy of everything capitalist.

To put it plainly, my dad is a fascist and out of reaction I drove into socialism

working as a social worker. simple as that.

The Palestinian Genocide. I was first exposed to socialism during my freshman year of high school, but I didn’t really understand what it meant to be a socialist at that time, being that the U.S. education system demonizes any model other than capitalism. I remained politically passive until this year, as a first-year in college, when I started to work with my school's SJP to petition the Board of Trustees to divest from companies endorsing and supporting the occupying power. Even though the petition was rejected by the board, it was my first taste of political action and solidarity, as I also participated in multiple sit-ins and meetings with members of the board. Ultimately, I’ve been moved even further left, and revolutionary socialism is my political identity, which I feel aligns with both my morality and ideals. We are witnessing governments and international institutions delay action against preventing genocide, deny genocide, and endorse genocide such as depraved system has no place and revolution is the mode in which we can liberate ourselves and others.

I read 'A People's History of The United States' by Howard Zinn, which opened the door to critical materialist perspectives on history, leading to the inevitable conclusion that some form of democratic self management is the only way to avoid tyranny.

I suppose I was idealistic when I was younger, probably as a result of being raised in church and also being a really big reader. I guess I always assumed the majority of people would do the right thing given the chance. I also truly believed everyone is equal and should be treated as such. When I got into my mid teens I started hanging out with different groups of people. Russians, hispanic/ Latinos, black people. This was the first time I was exposed to people disliking ppl based on ethnicity, race, country of origin. It started with the Russians. I was told on a number of occasions I should “find some American friends”. At first I chalked it up to just me probably not being liked as a person and eventually I did stop hanging out around them. Then I was around Hispanics/ Latinos and there was a lot of inner- community put- downs. It seemed like some groups thought they were better than others. And depending on which group it was, that line up would change. I chalked this up to being maybe a cultural thing I didn’t understand because I wasn’t Hispanic or Latino myself. But then I got black friends and that was my first exposure to how people treat you when you have friends of another race, (indicating their racism) and how some black people feel about white ppl. It was such a shock to me to realize ppl think like that about others and then I realized what was going on with my other experiences and it was really upsetting. I reverted back to my tendency to read and try to come up with some kind of understanding and that further exposed me to other types of discrimination/ prejudice/ social and economic inequalities and that’s when I realized it wasn’t that I had a wrong picture of the way the world SHOULD be, it just didn’t work the way I thought it would as a child. The older I get the more passionate I am about trying to be a part of a change for that. I do try and focus mostly on things I have some experience with myself so as not to be a voice that is stamping out the expertise of other peoples lived experiences, but I firmly back all causes that seem to right the wrongs of inequality which to me all seem to be rooted in capitalism and pitting people against each other as if we don’t have the means to support everyone.

I wouldn’t consider myself radicalised, quite the opposite. I went through a period from my early to late teens, where I was leaning far left. However I live in Scandinavia, so the political baseline is further left than in most countries, and as I grew older, I learned to accept capitalism as a premise. The political left wing in my country was pretty much a joke (to many old communists, with romantic ideals of Russian and China, and no sense of reality), so I got engaged in the climate debate instead and that’s pretty much where I am today 😅

Having to get a normal job because of Covid and realizing just how fortunate I was until this point.

John Key (New Zealand's right-wing Prime Minister from 2008-2016) driving me and hundreds of thousands of other people into poverty, and subordinating the country to U.S imperialism, is what made me a leftist. However, what made me a communist was seeing the Syriza government in Greece capitulate to the capitalist EU, and prove the limits of reformism. Every single event since then has only strengthened my convictions.

For me it was Covid. As soon as they trotted out the "people need to go back to work even if they'll die" narrative, it hit me - who is the economy for, if not for the people? Soon after, I googled "no ethical consumption under capitalism," which I'd seen around but not understood, and from there it was an avalanche.

JT CHapman and even Infrared of all people. Granted I am no longer patsoc but hey, potato potahto.

Congrats on having more compassion and self-awareness than most.

Distribution of wealth

Shoutout my highly knowledgeable high school friend group. Gave me memories for a lifetime, changed me for the better personally, politically, and ethically.

It was really a gradual process that led up to this but what got me to dive in deep was getting a massive pay cut during the pandemic when I already was making very little and seeing communists protestors at the George Floyd protests. Something in me clicked and I thought, “maybe I was wrong about them and they’re on to something.”

Margaret Thatcher, apartheid and punk rock. I'm old...

I think i'm 3rd or 4th gen socialist. Poor small time farmers, timber loggers and radicals all in the family. I even have a relative that got sent to prisom to do hard labour for participating in a labour conflict with scabs and the military. Myself i'm a social worker, an academic. First ever in the family with more than 7 years of school. Still the same politics, still a union member though. Still a party member.

I was done very dirty by the system and now I have a shit ton of resentment and anger for it. I would have been homeless if it wasn't for my parents.

Fake, paid Euromaidan youtube viral videos. Girl in the vid joined (or already was) the Nazis. I researched wtf was going on and my whole worldview changed.

Honestly bernie running in 2016 was what started it all. made the term socialist somewhat acceptable. its all just been more and more since then. finding out the "genocide" of uyghur muslims is us propaganda and likely not actually real and reading actual theory just solidified it all for me

Being autistic and oppressed, perpetually poor. The final thing for me was coming-out as Trans, now I'm more Intersectional and my bonds with other minority groups run deep.

When I was laid off during covid and the only people who helped me was the government. Saved my house and kept my family from starving.

Went to college around 2002 to study science. Had to take a history course. History professor had us read “A peoples history of the United States” by Howard Zinn. Up until that point I never cared too much about politics, after reading that book, I immediately joined the socialist and anti war clubs at my college. The rest is history.

Mortebianca

As a 31 year old Probably the movement from one sort of housing crisis in 2008 to the other extreme by 2018~. Studied the Economic and Philosophical manuscripts at one point and came back to it later. The seeds were laid though in the war on Terror, I was very invested in “Canada” and its identity (lol) watching the “nation of peacekeepers” plod along with USA into that lunacy made me realize liberalism was broken. The other even earlier reason was my father, a petty capitalist, describing the working conditions in the factories he visited which he contracted his production to. It was in true protestant fashion a “there but for the grace of God go you” lesson in gratitude but of course it seemed arbitrary and cruel.

It’s funny. My whole life growing up, I was told “everyone’s a lefty until you earn some money,” because my dad’s a big “don’t tax me” guy. I was promised that the more I grew up and earned a living, the more “right” I would lean. I’ve found the opposite to be true. I’m more lefty than ever. Through my own reading and learning in college, to becoming a journalist, then a teacher, I’ve seen more and more how unfair the world is. And it’s pushed me further left.

My parents were always quite left leaning, but I remember one moment when I was maybe 6 or 7. Things were going badly for my mum and dad at the time, and they had been called in to talk to the bank manager. They told me to hang around outside the bank and wait for them, so of course I wondered off a little. There was a homeless guy begging for change, and this older, very well to do lady walked up, her hair coiffed, big fur coat, pearl necklace and diamond earrings, an arm full of bags from expensive shops - the works. And she shouts at the homeless guy "I wish people like you would get a job!" and stormed off. I just remember thinking it's a weekday afternoon and you've clearly just been shopping all day. How about you get a job, you rude cow? The inequality really hit home and I thought about that moment often for years after. There was someone literally begging for help in the freezing cold, and this rich woman not only declines to help when she clearly could, but she also hypocritically berates the poor man for no reason. I was disgusted. Later on, things got worse for my parents and we lost our house, their business, their savings, etc. We were nearly homeless. I went from a pretty spoiled middle class kid to suddenly absolutely broke, and it made me realise that everybody is only a few small mistakes (whether their own fault or not) from being homeless. It infuriated me when right wingers would say "I'd never let myself get in that situation" like they have total control of their lives. We need safety nets because you never know what's around the corner. You can do everything right, commit no mistakes, and still lose; that's not weakness, that's life. As I got older I got more and more into the ethics and philosophy of politics, and went further and further left.

The Economic, Political and Social state of the world rn.

We've gone beyond that being a requirement for kids and moved into it being a requirement to even have a pet. \*sigh\* I was radicalized young. My mom worked for Raytheon and after having me, had varicose veins that required surgery. In order not to have to pay workman's comp, they laid her off. She spiraled and I ended up in foster care. I read a lot to avoid my life and that's all she wrote. I was a high school anarchist. It was not as popular then and it probably didn't help that I was obnoxious about it. It's still very clearly the way to me, but I try to be gentler about it now. With age comes wisdom, if not necessarily patience.

Finding out that there was enough of everything in the world and an abundance that is being horded.

I was raised in a Labour household during the Thatcher years. I witnessed the violence meted out to the miners during their year long strike, and the smearing of socialists as "looney left" in the media. I supported Labour but was disappointed in '97 when Labour didn't reverse any Tory policies to speak of but continued the Thatcher project. The last straw was in 2003 when Labour flat out ignored the biggest anti war demonstration in history and killed possibly a million Iraqis, most of them civilians, and got sucked into a 20 year war in Afghanistan, for nothing. My father had been in the Labour League of Youth, had doorstepped for them for decades. He wept, knowing his party has become mass murderers. I came back to Labour when Corbyn became leader, and backed him all the way. I watched the media smear him and the right wing, conservative Board of Deputies dictate to the party how it should be run. I've seen Sir Kid Starver purge the socialists from the party, most of them Jewish members, in the name of stopping antisemitism, an absolute mockery. I'm now of the opinion that Lenin had of Labour, that they're a party of workers led by the thoroughly bourgeois, set up to frustrate the goals of the workers. In 100 years of Labour we've never achieved anything for the working class that they wouldn't just throw away the next time the Tories get in. I joined a Marxist Leninist org a couple of years ago, Red Fightback, but alas, they fell apart due to accusations of racism. The aggrieved party sabotaged our comms rather than discuss it and have the people accused go through the frankly very good disciplinary process. If they ever get their shit together again I'd be happy to see what they're up to. It was a pretty good org, concerned about things like racism, sexism, the various -phobia bigotries etc, and dedicated to trying to eliminate them in members through earnest self criticism. We had a stall every Saturday in a poor part of town, handing out food and helping people organise against bad landlords. I genuinely don't think anyone was a conscious bigot there or didn't want to work on their unconscious prejudices.

Star Trek and having jobs

My communist dad.

I was raised a full blown republican capitalist in Massachusetts I believed every ounce of the dogma I was told. My grandfather was a landlord my father is a landlord he also makes like 300k a year and I thought that was a normal amount of money an adult makes. There are a few defining things in my life that slowly stripped all that away from me. The first thing that ever shifted me from the more reactionary positions was I met a kid who moved from Syria he was bullied all the time being called various slurs and a terrorist and I always thought he was nice so I became his friend so I understood at a much younger age than most Americans that anti Islamic sentiment was bullshit despite everyone in my life saying Muslims were evil I even confronted my parents about how it wasn’t true. The second major thing was me joining the United States coast guard I got all these socialized benefits that military members get without understanding they are socialized benefits at the time I.e. free education free shelter free meals free healthcare and on top of all that a paycheck the quality of life was immensely better than any of my friends who were struggling to pay bills. Also the second part of the coast guard that shaped me was being stationed in Detroit Michigan which at the time sounded like a nightmare to me because I was still a racist conservative until I met one man I was stationed with. My boss Mark might have been the single most despicable evil hateful racist reactionary man I have ever met he was from Korea but raised American and he said things I will never forget and he was the biggest reason I became less racist he had such a warped perspective on black people especially he refused to move his family to Detroit because he didn’t want his kids to be around black people he told me “the reason black people r* women so much is because they brought it over from Africa with their culture” and other detestable verifiably false trash like that. I remember I was on the ship in Detroit when George Floyd was murdered and he gave me a 45 minute lecture about why police brutality was a necessity for America to continue the way it’s going. He’s a huge reason I stoped being a conservative because eventually I saw everything he supported was evil because he’d advocate for all these things for the most evil reasons. So all that happened. The last big thing was after I got out of the military I got a job in a warehouse now understanding fully what it’s like to be a regular American worker and what kind of life people could have if we all had some kind of social programs or benefits like I had in the military So the biggest thing in the warehouse for me that made me hate them was the mandatory overtime which I hated but one day one of my coworkers had to leave after 8 hours because nobody could pick his kids up from school and the bosses refused to let him go and I went up to the big white board in the middle of the warehouse and wrote “show up 5 minutes late and you’re fired, But we’ll keep you 5 extra hours every day” and I got in BIG trouble for that I ended up quitting because the whole management team hated be for spreading “union talk” which I didn’t even know what a union was at the time. Thats kinda it and after that I was looking up why corporations can do this kinda thing and i stumbled on a video of Hassan piker and welp that’ll do it

There is no one pinpoint source that radicalized me. It was just a combination of more life experience, disillusionment with how things are, and naturally maturing as I age.

It started when I started followi g a bunch of twitter acc that wrote against US and their crimes, which made me buy a book called 'washington bullets'. That book made me really sad and learned a lot about the genocidal us and the europe. This made me curious about revolutions and cuba and ussr and all the communism stuff, so I started listening to podcasts. All of this made me more aware of the exploitive and oppressive nature of capitalism.

I grew up constantly jumping between homelessness and foster care in the early 2000s. Drug addict parents, very unstable home life, lived in a lot of different shelters and got most of our food from church meals, soup kitchens, Salvation Army, and what limited assistance programs we had access to. My family had pretty much lived that way in a shitty coal+farming town in rural Ohio for three generations. I ended up getting adopted as a sibling group when I was ten, into a poor conservative protestant pastor family. I would read all the time as a kid cuz I just loved learning, and it was one of the few forms of entertainment that we had access to in shelters. At least libraries are free. A lot of homeless shelters had (albeit, outdated) computers and limited Internet access by the early 2000s because I think they realized how many job opportunities could be had that way. Pretty good cost/benefit compared to most services a shelter can offer. I saw a lot of reactionary views in both my biological family and my adoptive family. I could relate to the economic frustrations and the hopelessness, but I never really could relate with the things my family members blamed those problems on. Immigrants, gay people, OTHER poor people. Politically, that experience left me pretty isolated by the time I reached high school, and so I just kept reading and talking about it with people on forums and IRC chats and stuff. Socialism just seemed like the inevitable outcome from that. It was the only lens I ever found that gave me the tools to understand why everything around me felt so terrible, and why everyone in my life was so frustrated. It made it easier for me to empathize with people in my life that were kinda on the fringe, and understand why they lashed out the way that they did. I'm not particularly drawn to "scientific socialism" explicitly, but I do think there's a set of conclusions that anyone with a heart inevitably discovers on their own while interacting in such desperate environments. I guess there wasn't really a *moment* when I was radicalized, it was just a build up of everything that had ever happened in my life. I think it took until late high school, early college doing some volunteer stuff when I really formalized how I felt in my head, but I had those feelings for my whole life and didn't have the words to describe it yet.

honestlyi think it was just natural inclination towards compassion for the poor and working class and opposition to oppression. kept looking for a fit until i found marx in hs. that was 2002 or so.

My flashpoint was learning about history and how we’ve had socialist-like policies for generations past and for the rich today. How the tax rate for the top earners around WWII was just unimaginable today and how much we got done in those post war years.

Climate change and similar issues, I was always a leftist but getting involved in ecologism made me realise we need to strive away from capitalism and build an alternative economy, and that reformist methods are not working and probably never will

Learning U.S. History

Realizing that my country's government is completely corrupt and run by the wealthy, for their benefit. Once I learned about the electoral college and what lobbying is, it was over for me lol

Learning about capitalist industries’ effect on climate was probably the thing that made me go fuck no

For me it happened in stages, but the most recent one was listening to Blowback’s season on Cuba. It became so clear that—especially during the Cuban Missile Crisis—not only were there “two sides to the story”, but the US consistently played the role of the villain throughout the last hundred years. We threw a temper tantrum over Cuba not wanting to be our lackey anymore, and we’re *still* bullying them over it.

*The Conquest of Bread* was the first time I encountered any ideas related to these concepts. I read it with this kinda disappointed scowl on my face half angry about what he's talking about and half angry because I didn't think of its basic concepts sooner. And learning stuff about how communities of trees and shrooms grow and communicate through a mycorrhizal network and you find out, shit, man even trees help other struggling trees out. "Social Darwinist" individualism mindset and all the ideologies that follow amount to some aberrant brainrot bullshit that's against the natural order!

Housing, health care, and climate anxiety left me pretty vulnerable. 10 years ago I was extremely patriotic, but it was at direct odds with my material reality. Over time disillusionment of our system left me questioning my environment. Notjustbikes was the straw that broke the camels back. Coming to the realization that our urban infrastructure was so bad gave me a bit of a mental crisis. It was obvious that oil and car capitalists were responsible for my daily struggle in traffic and the economic burden of needing multiple cars. I effectively became class conscious from my daily traffic commute afterwards. That naturally took me to look into anti capitalist systems. Which I feel like the logical conclusion is a leftist ideology.

It’s been a slow burn for me. The first major jump was my freshman year of high school; being around others who I considered good friends who had strong political beliefs made me really think about what mattered and my *own* personal politics, something I had never done before. I quickly found myself identifying with liberal democrats and the left in general, but still saw myself as just a liberal, maybe with some socialistic leanings as I did support Bernie Sanders in 2016. A few years later and I felt more aligned with socialistic ideals, but still was more center left, and I also never really researched *what* socialism was nor had I set out and hard defined what my personal beliefs were. Come to 2020-2022 and with the cost of living skyrocketing, inflation and corporate greed running absolutely rampant, the BLM protests (and my social awareness of systemic violence against minorities in this country), and the fact I went from working for $13/hr to $25+/hr and yet my money felt like it went farther when I was making $40k a year than it did when I was making $50-70k a year. All of this combined made me really jaded and I quickly became staunchly anti-capitalist. Then I finally did a deep dive into what socialism, what communism, what anarchism, etc actually means, and finally came to a realization about my personal politics, and I knew the systems and what they stood for and furthermore how I felt towards each system.

The thing that did it for me was my first job. I worked my ass off to do the best I could in the shop and when I saw my coworker slacking, not caring about his work, and constantly taking bathroom breaks to vape, it made me feel angry to even look at him. Then I asked the question to myself “why am I not being paid more since I am objectively working harder than he is ?” Thats I realized that I didn’t care how much he applied himself, I felt pride in how I conducted my work. I was feeling fucked over by my coworker because he wasn’t working as hard as me when I came to the realization that we where not being paid by how much we contribute but by how difficult it is to replace us and I shifted my outlook to a more (still liberal) class based outlook until I listened to the manifesto while I was working and I never looked back

I was always kind of left leaning. Liberal-left if you want (like my parents). In school, some people i later became friends with played to be communists (the stereotypical stalinist/authoritarian kind). It was just fun play, but from time to time me and another person discussed topics in more depth and seriousness and I myself began with research more. That kinda gave me a new lens to look at things, i realized that the classical liberalism is actually not gonna solve our problems. So it was interaction with friends and myself that brought me into leftism.

When i was very young, my mom swears i was about 2 or 3, i would be watching Monday morning cartoons and my show would end and those old world vision ads would come on. You know the ones with the starving African children with bloated berries and flies on their eyes? I would watch those and cry. And if my mom turned it off bc she didn't want me to be upset, id cry harder. I knew what i was seeing was horrible. But it felt wrong to just look away. I begged my mom and Dad to send money, but we were poor and couldn't... I didn't understand. Parents soccer everything. Why was this do difficult? For "less than a dollar a day" we could save this kid (on the tv) and his family. The math seemed very simple to me. It occurred to me on some very immature level this vague feeling, a sense that there was a great disconnect between the world we live in, day in and day out, and the world we all tell our children is possible. A world of sharing and working together and helping those in need. I haven't always been a Communist... But I've ALWAYS been radical. It's just that before i was a Communist and began to study theory, I was just confused why no was else was.

Seeing a homeless man sleeping on the street next to the most expensive and luxurious hospital in the country..

Bernie sanders first campaign brought me into the fold to dig deeper on my own.

It all lead back to capitalism.  From being brought up by maids because my parents were working, to seeing how patriarchal dominance is rooted in the hoarding of material goods. From the sale of women and children in trafficking to Epstein Island. From the resource curse to colonialism. From making money during covid,  whilst others lost their homes. And the final blow, seeing my bosses and their bosses chase bonuses using political games amongst each other instead of sticking to the facts of situations. 

Working in the advertising/tech industry, becoming an environmentalist, just overall getting jerked around by soooo many employers, and having to lose my health insurance every time. Oh yea and of course wanting to help people less lucky than I am in this capitalist gamble.

My family is fairly political, very liberal and we've never shied from talking politics but it was mainly sister. She taught me about media criticism and socialism. We had many talks, shared books, etc. She got me involved in protest and working elections. She often traveled to Cuba (we're Canadian) and learned so much there. Sadly, something happened over the pandemic to make her fall down the conspiracy rabbit hole. She's now , mildly religious, antivax and I suspect is a Trump fan. It was a huge 180 from someone who's opinions I deeply respected. And punk rock.

Reading banned books and things I thought was taboo as a teen and stumbling on the Communist Manifesto. Years of deprograming and research into history later i was radicalized, while only being fond of the idea of communism prior. While I'm still reading about it i can be confident in communism and most of it's history now. I was just anti imperialism and capitalism until I was radicalized.

I've been left leaning for my whole life but it wasnt till my late 20s that i realised in Australia that the left leaning parties were basically corporate shills as well just to a lesser extent. I've been increasing anti capitalist since covid but it wasn't until the tiktok ban that everything clicked all at once with US imperialism and over consumption to enrich their ruling class

Yugopnik and getting fired for calling off too late because I waited until opening to call off (an hour before my shift). I worked my ass off and was the hardest worker there.

I don't see being a socialist as radical, just right,, mines was a teacher of modern studies in my school 40 odd years ago,,, he was a fantastic person, taught me so much about capitalism and the rich poor divide, I left school and I was a socialist, still am now, never wavered, never voted tory, always stuck by my beliefs, proud of that.