I always considered myself a leftist. I just didn't know yet which school of socialist thought to advocate.
First I felt drawn to Marxist-Leninism because of its success and aesthetics but then I realized that I dislike violent revolution and state opression so I took a look at anarchism and libertarian socialism but quickly realized that they are violent rioters that destroy things totally aimlessly in practice and are to blame for the bad image of the left.
Then I considered left communism and democratic socialism. I thought that's it. This is what I like. Economically well thought through. 100% socialist and democratic. Freedom! But then the Trotskyites kicked me out saying I was being too "nationalistic" for supporting liking my country's culture and not hating my country or wanting its dissolution.
So I felt lost. I almost considered going reactionary… but then… in my darkness… I saw a bright hand holding a rose! And I followed it. It lead me to the perfect ideology that has never failed before. True social values and no chaos or corruption… Social Democracy!
Now Zig Forums how did you like my story? Anybody got any stories of your political development? :)
Anyway.. Liberal -> SocDem -> Anarchist -> Vague Marxist -> Libertarian Socialist -> Communalist -> Libertarian Socialist again -> Marxist with some communalist or "libertarian" sympathies. Thats my stupid ideological journey. Honestly boxing yourself into a super defined ideology is a bit silly. Looting the supermarket of ideas is ideal.
Social democracy has worked in my country for generations and the most corrupt politicians always were in far right or neoliberal parties. There also is no chaos here lol.
Nice story. Very interesting. I also don't think my development is over yet. I am still young after all.
Neocon=>libertarian=>vague centrist liberal=>Libertarian Nationalism=>alt right=>anti-Spencer Alt right=>Trad cath=>broad socialist=>anarcho-syndicalist
My Dad enlisted after 9/11 and did one tour of duty in Iraq, so naturally I supported him. Fueled by anti obama rage and Ayn Rand I started watching Sargon of Akkad In response to the refugee crisis and the complete and utter ineptitude of the major parties to handle it properly. My libertarian nationalism naturally evolved to full on white nationalism. I was a big fan of Richard Spencer at this point. Within the alt right there is a faction that is opposed to Spencer and his ideas. Most of them are Catholic and Orthodox Christians who think Spencer is too liberal. This section of the alt right focuses less on race and more on traditional European values. At this point I stopped calling myself alt right and just referred to myself as a Traditionalist, I was still a nationalist and still associated with alt righters IRL but only out of convenience. Overtime my capitalist tendencies faded I became a socialist. When you see what capitalism does to people supporting it becomes impossible. At this point I've pretty much thrown off the shackles of organized religion and other spooks, though I still believe in God. I'd be a Marxist if it wasn't so authoritarian, so I call myself a syndicalist for now.
Jordan Hill
The misery and violence inherent in capitalism is so vile that any pacifist leftists must be absolutely numb to the pain of others. The worst reactionary is the rose.
But anyway I guess I'm still at the beginning of being politically engaged >basically a marxist/"communist", now but still trying to get a better view of what exactly that means before I start describing myself as one (I'm gonna read pic related soon)
patriotic SocDem with slight sympathies to the USSR till I was 17 > generic Marxist/Council Communist till I was 19 > Marxist Leninist since today (it's been 7 years as a Marxist-Leninist for me)
Joined Marxist-Leninist party at the age of 21
Grew sympathetic to Mao at the age of 22, then to Hoxha at the age of 23, then I thought they are both stupid, and now appreciate them both equally in their own contributions
Isaac Butler
the really important thing is not to find the right ideology, but to find the right ideology for you
leftism is like a coat, is has to make you look good, so you should def shop around a bit
Nolan Long
Thats about it really.
Samuel Barnes
Should say:
Cooper Morales
Huh now I'm curious, so what is your language? How did it get right wing connotations?
Jacob Sanders
Proto-socdem > socialist > anarchist
mumia abu jamal
Carter Perez
Dutch. Used by the nazis. And also the stalinists who have been demonized, hence the further negative connotation
William Campbell
In German we have a right-wing and a socialist version of "comrade": "Kamerad" is what Nazis use and "Genosse" is what socialists use. But yeah, Genosse also has a slightly negative connotation to it, but even the SPD still uses it.
Adrian Gutierrez
Just know that I fully blame you guys for ruining the word kamaraad.
Noah Lopez
Ik woon in Vlaanderen en hier heeft 'kameraad' totaal niet de connotaties van nazis voorzover ik weet. Bizar
Benjamin Gonzalez
niet verrast
Christopher Hernandez
Well, Dutch is just a form of Low German. My auntie is from Lower Saxony and speaks Low German and I can understand her less than a Dutch person. Not sure if we "ruined" it considering Kamerad was always a word used by right-wingers, I think it originated during the Liberation Wars against Napoleon, used by fraternities like the Lützow Free Corps. It was always associated with the more right-wing tendencies amongst the German unification movement like Ernst Moritz Arndt. As far as I know, Marx and Engels decided to use "Genosse" from the very beginning, kinda odd it didn't get exported to the Netherlands.
German Army still uses the word "Kamerad" though.
Christopher Anderson
ik heb in deze draad al tegen iemand anders duidelijk gemaakt dat ik niet effectief een anmiem ben, kees-henk. Maar misschien moet ik gewoon maar stoppen met de miemvlag te gebruiken
Eli Davis
Well as far as I know in Flanders support for the NSDAP was pretty low compared to the Netherlands. The Netherlands had quite a lively NSDAP chapter
Easton Watson
It got right wing connotations because the NSB (nazi collaborators) used it, before that it was mostly left wing.
dat was ik ook, jean-luuk
Sebastian Gonzalez
(ik heb trouwens een goudvisgeheugen, ik dacht dat dat een andere draad was)
Gabriel King
Tito was the nicest Communist dictator and I like how he resisted Stalin. Bu that's about it.
I also don't see how your pic is related to me Sir Yugoslavia flag.
Interesting story friend!
Wtf man?
Eh. I don't see how there is state opression in any mostly social democratic countries these days. Could you at least name an example? Also: violent revolution is no option. It is something people only will consider in the worst times and we should never let such harsh times come about again so that thousands have to die in a revolution.
Oooh. I see. Interesting. I am kinda like you were as a 17 yo right now.
Damn there is sure lots of Socialist theorists I still have to learn about to consider their points. Your development sure is interesting too.
Lenin was too radical and violent in my opinion. But still 1000 times better/nicer than Stalin of course.
And sorry. I am not really knowledgeable about African left wing movements I admit. So I can't tell if this guy was nicer.
Colton Flores
I have no clue vuilnisbakmensen veel plezier
Nicholas White
Yeah, I'm not gonna justify stuff like the Hanging Order like tankies probably would. He was absolutely committed to the improvement of the Soviet people's conditions though and was generally a great leader and theorist, so I still admire him for that. And I don't think Tito was less brutal or repressive than Lenin? Also can we all agree that c**sescu and pol p*t were probably the worst of all "communist" leaders. I like Mao more than them
Landon Peterson
I was an actual neocon who was really into Christopher Hitchens and shit like that. I see a lot of similarities between myself then and the Jordan Peterson / Sargon / "skeptic" crowd today. If I was 20 years old today I would be all into that stuff.
Now I'm a generic reformist social democrat in actual practice but am reading Marx, David Harvey, Paul Cockshott, etc. I'm sure I'll be the creepy guy in his 40s in a couple years handing out copies of the Spartacist League newspaper.
Brody Harris
Quoting myself. The one thing I'll say is that while reading about the various state-socialist leaders of the 20th century is interesting, and I want to dive into it at some point, when I see left-wing chats online it immediately gets into all this feuding about them. I am seriously not interested in that.
The only people who have any idea who Hoxha is around where I live are Albanian immigrants who work in auto repair shops.
Aiden Turner
Agreed. We should analyze the different state socialist regimes critically, see what can be preserved and what can be done better in the future. Not idolize them
Blake Hernandez
Probably because Sankara's regime was a military junta and the syndicalists wanted democracy. I tried looking it up but couldn't find much in English. Maybe someone speaking French could research it, I suspect you could find more resources more about it in that language.
christian social conservative (fell for the religion meme and was bullied by t*rkish classmates 12/13/14 yo) => monarchist (admired my country's former glory and was mad about its current weakness 15/16yo) => radical centrist (hated all radicals rising around me, left and right 16/17) => left nationalist/str*sserite and NazBol sympathizer (noticed that capitalism is cancerous for my nation and all right wingers are neolib faggots economically, start browsing /lef*pol/ 17/18 yo) => patriotic social authoritarian (started broswing Zig Forums, read leftist theory and studied more history economy wise 18 yo)
Interesting story! Kinda relatable.
Already read the *Communist Manifesto*, an excellent critique of *Das Kapital*, *Der Weg zum Sozialismus* and *Germany tomorrow*(which disappointed me and made me drop str*sserism, not authoritarian enough). *Towards a new Socialism* sure might be worth a read too. Never read anything Muke tier before.
Josiah Johnson
My French is decent i guess, so when I have time I'll actually do so
Luis Ramirez
Please do, I'd love to actually understand what happened there.
Dylan Ramirez
Yeah sure! Nobody is entirely bad and I admit that Lenin also made some great reforms. And yeah /p*l/ pot truly was the incarnation of AnCap's fantasies of what your average leftist leader looks like. Horrible.
Many unions (not all of them ofc) in Burkina Faso under Sankara were pretty much just puppets for the West / other enemies. There is also how many anarchists refused to co-operate.
Christopher Perez
There where def some democratic elements to Sankaras regime. The Revolutionary Councils where very directly democratic. In fact, id say one of Sankaras faults was that he wasn't authoritarian enough (or authoritarian in the wrong places). He was way to reluctant to purge dissenting members of his government. He knew they where planning a coup but did jack shit because "muh principles".
Cameron Smith
It sure is angering and frustrating at times but I try to act like an adult and not let my emotions overlow and escalate them into violence that probably wouldn't help to change things for the better or make them worse for me even.
Lol. This Unruhe guy is funny. I thought he was just a larping memer at first. But yeah I focus on my own direct environment mostly and try to change things with conversation and open discussion. I can't hope that somewhere far away the first steps to solve problems in my society will be done. Even tho I wish there was a better more peaceful way forward for the third world too.
Jason Parker
I knew it was really about you. You are so divorced from the working classes that you really don't care if your social democratic system is the system that will free us. And you are acting on emotion - on cowardice.
Asher Watson
He is a larping memer that doesn't know he's a meme.
Logan Rogers
Yeah, holding show trials to get back at your neighbour that you held a grudge against is not really what direct democracy is about. Sankara got into power by a coup, he couldn't purge his government because they were his only support. The trade unionists were much more popular and he made sure to destroy them. Sankara's biggest failure was that he wasn't a revolutionary, he was just another specialist of power.
Grew up in a religious household and went to catholic school. Never drank the koolaid and became an atheist at a young age. Hated republicans.
Wasn't a fan of Obama, but didn't want to side with republicans. Settled on Libertarianism cause it was cool at the time among my friends. Became disillusioned after actually reading Ayn Rand's awful horseshit.
Spent a few years not really paying attention to politics/ distancing myself from my old online spaces. Had to read some excerpts from Marx for a class. Ended up reading the Manifesto and Conditions of the Working Class In England in my own spare time. Didn't have a huge impact on me then, but it began to sow the seeds for my later ideological shift.
Tried to become politically active on campus and became incredibly disillusioned with neoliberal identity politics. No one actually gave a shit or believed in anything. It was all performative politics in the pursuit of gaining popularity or getting laid. Dworkin and Jeffreys resonated with me because their words described a lot of what I had observed. Discovered DGR a short while after and felt the only way forward was voluntary human extinction and the total destruction of industrial civilization.
Dropped out of school. Worked a shitty backbreaking job 50-60 hours a week. Seeing the way my coworkers were living and the Sandman's rise in popularity made me start thinking that perhaps humanity was worth saving.
Dove back into theory, went back to school, and discovered leftypol around this time last year. And now I'm here.
Zachary Rodriguez
I am trying not to act on emotion. People who resort to needless violence are the cowards that can't keep themselves under control good sir.
Didnt really get interested in politics until Obama became president. I was just hyped to have a black guy in office and have the troops come home from the middle east. Fast forward some years as I slowly become more aware and angrier at the state of the world. Sanders starts to run for president, he says some shit I like but I think to myself. If he says this surely we can do even more. Skip ahead and now I spend my time shitposting and complaining to my friends about how the rich fuck us all over and how police are class traitors. Been reading alot of political theory and slowly trying to convert my Sanders supporting friends to full on leftists. Its worked for a few but the others are slow to follow because of how "scary" Communism seems.
Connor Roberts
Russian here
Hitler did nothing wrong, everyone except me is a stupid degenerate. Going to church every weekend is the real rebellion! Pseudo-intellectual rebellous teenager phase a decade before Zig Forums became cool.
America is da best, Putin is the devil. Everything America does is right. Oh, say can you see… Disproportionate reaction to Russia ramping up its anti-Western propaganda.
Something is rotten about the system, but it can't be capitalism, because America is still the best. It must be crony capitalism! We should just abolish the state and the invisible hand will sort everything out!
The prevalence of aut-right faggots in the libertarian movement pushed me away (I was a strongly pro-fun libertarian) and I ended up on Zig Forums as the only place on the internet not infested by aut-right worms. I basically accepted the social views and Stirnerite arguments but wasn't ready to accept the economic leftism, so for a while I didn't think much about politics. Was just there to laugh at nazis and the cognitive dissonance was too strong.
Me after reading more books and getting completely disillusioned with libertards
All the killing Rosa memes aside, I have no problem with OG social democrats such as Lassalle, Bebel and Eisner, they don't pretend to be orthodox Marxists so they are fine in my book as long as they still want to bring about socialism.
There is no difference between democratic socialists and social democrats.
Christian Stewart
Awesome story comrade lol.
Well, I won't deny he did something wrong when he allied with reactionaries instead of other leftists. But if we look at it rationally we see that Social Democrats commited way less violence and caused the most minimal death tolls out of all serious left movements. :)
Yay. It's rare to see an ML support our existence. They were great thinkers ineed. My personal favourite SocDem is Otto Bauer tho since he was the greatest Marxist writer in my country.
Well, these days the lines between SocDems and DemSocs have become blurry. I don't think one can say we are identical but we have strong similarities, yes. But as a social democrat I consider democratic socialists to be the best allies!
Isaac White
My story: ML → Nazbol → Well read ML → Well read nazbol
Caleb Rogers
Disgusting
Jose Foster
Rotfront wasn't NazBol, you walking embarrassment
William Ramirez
Socdem → Narkiddie → Just a Communist that likes Direct Democracy
William James
Eat me.
Nolan Mitchell
lib to socdem to demsoc to marxist to ancom
funnily enough you lot were what turned me from lukewarm demsoc to marxist. It was after Charlottesville and my interest in politics was rekindled, and while I knew what Zig Forums had to say about that I was curious what Zig Forums (which I knew off but never visited, I only saw the leftypol thread on half/pol/) would say abiut that, and when that's when I got sucked in
This. I would rather be uncommitted to any given ideas and constantly question myself than be dogmatic about my favourite book from the 20th century.
Ryder Gray
Kill yourself
Owen Long
My bogus journey:
>"There were all those classified briefings that we were given that showed WMD sites in Iraq, and now they can't even find one? They lied to us–to US, the people who fight their damn wars! All these good men and women were sent to some place to kill people who never did anything to us for no other reason than that some rich fucks could get even richer. Oh yeah, politics matter alright. Sons of bitches must pay."
I am older than this dude's father. That's fucked up.
Lincoln Roberts
Technically you can enlist anytime up till like 35.
Christopher Mitchell
Yeah, but you need to get certain waivers, and they don't like to give those out. An old E-3 is a little too close to getting higher tenure and a quarter-retirement just by failing NCO tests. Besides, I was already in my twenties. "The world is peaceful, and President Gore probably isn't going to start anything," I said.
Liam Murphy
You wouldn't happen to be the angrycat whose kids had some health issues would you?
Adrian Ward
No, I never had kids. Home is for drinking, video games, and lazy sex–all things that children would interfere with.
Robert Flores
As I enjoy all three so I see your point but for some reason feel the desire to knock up a qt but I'm worried about that dude given his wife was on the verge of going anti-vaxxer last time I saw his posts. And just like OG Marxhead the replacements using his flag on Zig Forums were generally shit.
anti-bush 13 yo>allende/socdem-sympathizing liberal>lolbertarian>libertarian socialist>sjw/feminist-sympathetic demsoc>still empathetic with idpol but full marxist socialist no-war-but-class-war
Nathaniel Cooper
Stalin publically executing thousands of "potentially dangerous" people without giving anyone any fair trials wasn't really part of a revolution in my opinion lmao.
Libtard to socdem is one hell of a leap. How did you make that transition?
Samuel Smith
I started to learn about the Nordic model of Social Democracy and I came to the conclusion that it could work in the US. I also was starting to learn about how capitalism was bad for people. Then around last year I read some marx and became a full on Socialist.
Austin Russell
Hahahaha. Really makes you think what the Autism Level of grown up Lolberts must be.
James Rodriguez
Grown up lolberts are either complete retards, mentally ill, or aspiring feudal lords who mask their desire for domination under a guise of freedom.
Kayden Torres
Yeah, Grown up lolberts tend to be that or just greedy assholes who want some reason to justify it.
Gabriel Reyes
liberal -> sjw-y liberal -> socdem -> marxist -> titoist
Jason Powell
Wow, reading really does change people's minds. That is reassuring.
Elijah Turner
I’ve always been libertarian minded and anti capitalist. As far back as I can remember. I was probably more of a soc dem for most of my life though, while I distrusted the govt I argued at least there is some semblance of democracy in the govt and people have some power (albeit not much). So I was willing to support govt regulation over the economy vs free market fantasies. However I was very libertarian when it came to every day life, keep govt out of our private lives, our homes, ect. Then I was a Bernie-tier progressive. Dove deeper into Marx and kropotkin after growing frustrated with the establishments treatment of Bernie, which fomented in my radicalization. Started browsing leftypol in late 2015 and was a big part of this. Eventually rejected the notion of parliamentary reform and our perverted form of democracy, which led me to where I currently am, a libertarian socialist. I think revolution is the only way tbh
