Sorry if the title is a bit weird, I’m curious about what made you believe what you do. Mainstream leftism usually doesn’t go any further than trans rights or maybe UBI in some places, at least from what I know, so what made you go beyond that? You can answer generally or talk about a specific belief, just wanna see what caused the more radical opinions in you
I’m particularly curious about what changed your opinions about the USSR and China, most people think they’re awful, but in here they’re really liked and defended, I’ve even seen a lot of posts denying the Tiananmen massacre and the Holodomor and stuff like that, what made you go to such lengths?
Mostly a lurker here and not in the mood to go into detail, esp since it gives away too much personal info, but it’s been a painful, fumbling 20+ year process to get to this point. For a tiny bit of context, I come from a different class bg (specifically, one of my parents did) than most of Hexbear, and I’m also in the upper half of the age range. Also not white.
Let me just put it this way. It starts with trivial inconsistencies that you notice in your day-to-day life. Things as simple and seemingly innocuous/“apolitical” as the way society talks about your culture vs. your actual lived experiences. One by one, these tiny hypocrisies and contradictions start piling up. Small lies or even “innocent” misconceptions from trusted authority figures, from textbooks, from people you love and care about, people you don’t want to doubt. It is madness inducing. Just an endless cycle of disbelief, disgust, confusion, undirected anger, denial.
Eventually there came a point where I just couldn’t paper over the cracks anymore. Also, the older I get, the more I realize just how damn much I don’t actually know – and how confident I was in my own ignorance at many points in my life. Once it’s obvious just how many lies you’ve been exposed to your entire fucking life, all you can think of is “what else?”
tl;dr the “radical” left was the only place offering sober, logically coherent analysis of the state of the world and honestly, after COVID any last lingering doubts I may have had were utterly demolished.
This is exactly where I’m at right now.
And 100% yes about being the only place with logically coherent analysis, I’ll never forget the feeling of the world starting to make sense for once.
I went through the same period of seeing how everything was wrong but not understanding why, and no one else seemed to resonate or agree with me as much. I do think the left is really the only place that has a proper model for how things work and an explanation of what’s happening that’s, well… true. the right just keeps jumping on narratives, it’s always the fault of the current boogeyman, it’s always the immigrants accompanied by first the blacks, then the gays, now it’s the transes, in some places it’s the jews, it’s always the fault of someone else and the idea is that if they go away everything will be magically resolved. when it doesn’t, then they just immediately blame the next thing. and then any suggestion on how to actually improve things is shut down because if it doesn’t go against the market then it’s against human nature, whatever that even means.
basically I’ve always rejected those kinda narratives and looked at the systems that cause things, and that just automatically placed me in the left even if I didn’t know what it was because no one in the right ever does that, I don’t know if I’m a full blown communist though, never really looked into these things until now