Personally, I grew up on a single parent home, where I saw my mom get destroyed by her office work. The lack of unions, no external help and general misoginy, made her get super depressed, and became an alcoholic. In my teenage years I was almost lured by the manosphere communities, but got helped by a group of close friends that were left leaning. Most of them were anarchist, so I started with that. Slowly but surely, I started to understand how sick this system is, and it made me furious, but I never found a way to show my ideas. No political party represented my ideas, and I fell deeper in the anarchist rabbit hole. Yes, I was a hardcore anarkiddie, but I bite me back. When I needed them the most, they turned their backs on me, and fell into deep depression. And in seeking psychological help, my counselor recommended me going back to my roots. So I went back to videogames, japanese culture and most importantly, read again after years The Communist Manifesto. I still don’t know how to position myself in the left, but I know that I’m a Marxist, and that I want change. Stay safe, comrades.
Bernie losing the 2016 primaries. I saw a candidate who wanted the policies that the people wanted. He had a record that showed historical commitment and zero corporate donors (bribes). It was clearly shown at the time that the more that voters knew about bernie the more likely that they were to vote for him. But then I saw him lose because of a media apparatus that denied him serious coverage and a party with no interest in actually making the world a better place.
When I saw that I lost all faith in the american system and became an anarchist. I’m more of a big tent leftist now that I’ve learned more about AES. I went from patriotic lib to American hating lefty in a moment. Grieving my nationalism was actually a pretty painful experience.
before
after 
For socialism, it was crazy homeless people. I’m what’s usually considered “crazy” and I’m a person, so we’re only different in that one temporary and easily revoked material condition. Taking Christianity literally also helped out a lot to question our modern “Christian” society.
But for communism it only took reading history in more depth and trying to form my own opinions. Even ancient Rome already has a ton of bad-faith or poorly researched shit being parroted around, so it’d take a lot of naïveté to trust the pop history narratives of things that actually matter within living memory.
Have you read Micheal Parenti’s Assassination of Julius Ceaser? It didn’t interest me that much, but when I read it it seemed like a pretty good telling of Roman history.
I recently got it and only stopped halfway through due to life circumstances, but it was a fantastic book as far as I got and echoed a lot of my own criticisms for traditional Roman historiography.
I have no idea how one can read a single line by Cicero and somehow sympathise with that one instead of all the populares, urban Romans or the provincial non-citizens. “The Storm before the Storm” is also a neat deconstruction of the Social War that addresses the inequality in Rome.
Living in a south global country and having empathy.
Living and growing up in South Africa. The extreme amount of inequality, poverty, the violence everywhere, the racism present in every level of society, the sexism and what feels like a war against women, it’s just everywhere. You can’t escape it or turn it off. It will radicalise you or make you just want to give up on everything.
Red Alert 1 --> Palestinian family --> BLM --> Bernie Sanders --> Breadtube --> Hakim --> Trotskyist Org --> GenZedong --> Breakthrough News
Breadtube and to a lesser degree the Trots were very embarassing in many ways but I still feel like it was a good way to learn a lot of social issues, general political vocabulary, fascism, philosophy to politics pipeline etc. It’s interesting to me how Breadtube, Trotskyism etc is just as often a stepping stone on the way to radicalization as it is a complete and total neutralization of revolutionary potential and transmutation into co-opted shitlibbery. Also interesting how a game fundamentally villifying the Soviets made me from the age of 4 always think the USSR had a cool factor, and how this predisposition might have made a bigger difference in my ability to be amicable to “USSR good” narrative than I would like to admit.
I used to be a left leaning socdem during my early years until early adulthood. My parents had been militant in communist orgs against the military dictatorship in Brazil in the 70s so I was very proud of the that story, which helped build this left leaning tendency. But most former communists had gone socdem in Brazil after the 90s.
I took a firm liberal dive during post-grad studies and after I began working, influenced by economic literature and also by work environment ideology. That was exacerbated by the failures our socdem government. I was still kind of “left liberal” and respectful of my family’s history, but I tended to be the “progressive on social issues, conservative on economics” kind of liberal.
Until we elected an actual fascist here in Brazil.
That started unraveling a mental process that started questioning everything. My belief in liberal institutions took a hit, than electoral bourgeois democracy, than all the bullshit in economics started unraveling. I finally realized that what bugged me about liberal economics was the complete disregard for political processes. Fetishizing the technical aspects without taking into account the political processes behind them, which completely turn the theory upside down.
I went back to reading Marx ann Lenin again and… here I am.
Dê a ordem camarada! <3
I am a history nerd tragic and as a teen I couldn’t stop reading pop-history which was mostly chauvinist and ideologically pro-western / anti-communist.
Then I gradually progressed into more academic works which is when I discovered - to my genuine shock - how dramatically incorrect the popular account of history is and how much ideology shapes it.
Discovering that the popular western account of the eastern front was written by Nazi generals was an actual shock to me, and then reading David Glantz made me realize how skewed our account of history is in the west.
That opened my eyes wide open and I started reassessing everything from a perspective of “ok, what really happened?”
👑
I used to be a part of the “skeptic/atheist” crowd back before gamergate. Then when that sort of stuff hit, suddenly all of these “skeptics” and “rationalists” started actively raging against feminism instead of religious fundamentalists. I found this very strange at the time, as these so called “skeptics” were spouting the exact same sort of vitriol against feminists that the religious fundamentalists would. So I ended up no longer associating with that group, becoming a sort of socdem type, interacting with, though never joining a local socdem sort of party, my local representative of the party even went to the US to assist with the Bernie Sanders campaign. I was pretty comfortable in a western chauvinist faux-leftist “Free Hong Kong” kind of mindset for an embarrassingly long time, full breadtube type, thinking that the “tankies” were just authoritarian apologists who liked the aesthetic of these evil regimes. Then I actually spoke with a “tankie” and they called me out on literally every generic “million billion dead” point people make about socialist states, I listened to what they had to say, as I had never heard any of this before, I had only ever heard that Mao and Stalin were horrible and did horrible things, the idea that life expectancy increased for Chinese peasants during a civil war was a major shock to my worldview. As a fan of learning about history, I realised I had never actually examined the history of any socialist states properly, only accepting the western worldview on them, so I learned more about them, and began to actually read theory and became an ML, even tried joining local orgs, but their stance on AES is identical to the one I held before becoming an ML, so they’re just ultras unfortunately. Now I spend too much time online talking about Marxist stuff because I don’t really know anyone irl who I can discuss things with. People open to education, sure, but I don’t want to be the one doing the educating all the time, I like to learn too.
I used to be a part of the “skeptic/atheist” crowd back before gamergate. Then when that sort of stuff hit, suddenly all of these “skeptics” and “rationalists” started actively raging against feminism instead of religious fundamentalists.
“Elevatorgate” and especially Dawkins’ “Dear Muslima” letter made me step away from atheism as any organized movement. I’m still not religious, but the idea of standing with that bunch of euphoric reactionaries was unbearable by that point.
Yeah, I thought I had found a like-minded group of people who just wanted to understand the world better and educate people out of ignorance. Turns out they were far more interested in using their atheism as a way to be superior to everyone else.
“Atheism+” for all its faults was a sincere attempt to stand for something other than pretenses of smug superiority. So the reactionary “nonpolitical” assholes shot it down and stamped on its ashes.
I am actually in Atheism+
“Elevatorgate” and especially Dawkins’ “Dear Muslima” letter made me step away from atheism as any organized movement.
the idea of standing with that bunch of euphoric reactionaries was unbearable by that point.
Exactly the same for me. Well, I would say I stuck with the movement a little longer, but only as part of the sliver that had no choice but to shift the focus of criticism towards our former atheist “allies,” the reactionaries and sex pests, which in turn made us the evil enemy SJWs, the fanatic feminists, the beta cucks, and the cringe white knights. While it was shocking how elevatorgate suddenly revealed this giant gaping rift in the community, and how full the entire atheist movement had been with the most disgusting of reactionaries, it was one of those things where in hindsight, all the misogyny, racism, white supremacy, etc. had been visible just beneath the surface all along, but had been easy to overlook as just a nasty patina sticking to the broader movement. Nah, turns out it was actually deeply intertwined with it.
I still think Rebecca Watson is cool (for anyone who doesn’t know but is interested, “elevatorgate” centered on her because she dared to say “guys, don’t do that” when referencing being hit on by a stranger very creepily when alone in an elevator at a convention, and was subsequently hounded, harassed, ridiculed, and derided even by the famous Dickie Dawkins). She still to this day puts out some banger videos sometimes. I will always have a soft spot for PZ Myers and his Pharyngula blog that I spent so much time on, finding community there because even then it was clear how ugly and toxic so much of reddit was. Pharyngula was like the last bastion where social justice was recognized as good and necessary, rather than demonized as something that needed to be snuffed out.
I’m also still an atheist. But that movement is dead, just as it fucking should be. Amusingly, but also sickeningly, the larger fascist-adjacent majority of it kind of morphed over time into things like Jordan Peterson’s cult, at least the parts that didn’t just fizzle out into the background noise islamaphobia and generic chuddery.
I should confess too, reading Christopher Hitchens (one of the “four horsemen”) was definitely a big stepping stone on the path towards my own radicalization. Though I wince to say it now, I did admire him back then and he wrote about being, or having been a Trotskyist, which was one of those little epiphanies that showed there were actually political positions to the left of “as left as it gets” liberal. Wanting to find out more about that is eventually what lead me to Lenin.
To be clear, I’m not saying that’s what radicalized me, though it was a small part of it. I’m mostly just commenting to respond to the New Atheist part of the discussion.
I still think Rebecca Watson is cool (for anyone who doesn’t know but is interested, “elevatorgate” centered on her because she dared to say “guys, don’t do that” when referencing being hit on by a stranger very creepily when alone in an elevator at a convention
Sometimes when I brought that up, years later, someone would come out of the woodwork and rage at me about how that was “nothing” and “hysterical” or some other typical misogyny-coded belittling of the person creeped on in the elevator, and usually it’s paired with some crybully concern trolling about how it’s “it was just a proposal to get le coffee” which piously pretends that there’s no creepy context to timing or body language or position of the incident, and even after it’s pointed out a thousand times, it’s always “just to get le coffee” and totally not a thirsty Reddit New Atheist wanting le sexy sex with ungrateful le feemale that should have accepted the sex transaction because of superior intelligence genes and satisfactory bank statement.
Even bringing up Elevatorgate is like an invitation in a lot of online places to draw those creeps out. It’s like flypaper.
I’m pretty privileged. I got really into Bernie in 2016, met and hung out with some anarchists who were my first proper introduction to leftist ideas, and then got “radicalized” when I got around to reading Lenin.
John pilger documentaries and also not originally being from America or western imperialist country also helped.
Oh and seeing the Iraq war play out and abu ghraib in particular.
It happened in stages.
Seattle in 1999 (if you were there, you know
) was the start, but when 
gate became a thing and the “Pied Piper” ratfucking strategy handed the election to 
soon after that, at some point I came out the other side a leftist.EDIT: The western response to covid then Jokerfied me.
Then China giving in and lifting restrictions because of treat-hungry boomers of its own was an extra layer of Joker makeup.
Iowa caucus made me intellectually realize, blm/ covid helped me actually see
These aren’t the right words, but its close to what I mean idk
I guess mostly just from searching for solutions to problems in the world. I grew up in an poor urban area and am extremely working class so I’ve seen a lot of suffering. I feel like I’ve also always been inclined to think of things in a dialectical manner even before I knew what that was, so Marxism-Leninism just naturally made the most sense to explain things.
I’d also specifically highlight the NATO invasion of Libya as rocking my world view, as it quickly became so incredibly obvious what the true nature of the “intervention” was and anyone paying attention would have to be blind not to have seen the contradictions as they unfolded.
Thanks for sharing your story, comrade.
Mine is a bit complicated. For a long time I was just a liberal that considered myself right of center. I’ve been terminally online for a long time, but only very recently I started interacting online, before I would just lurk 99.99% of the time. Somehow I didn’t become a raging ancap or some other shit, but instead I, slowly through the years, became aware of my prejudice, the inequalities in society and started questioning the world.
I think 7 or 8 years ago I got to know the group of friends I had until earlier this year when I decided to get out, the reason being that at least 2 members are actual unironic fascists, and I mean this, they talk about it proudly, and one of them was my best friend. For a long time I was ignorant enough to tolerate them, mostly because I couldn’t physically bring myself to confront them about it and because I didn’t have enough knowledge to confront their ideas, I also thought for a long time they were only joking because almost anything they said was in an obvious ironic tone. The one that was my best friend knew how to stir any discussion or conversation their way, it was impossible to convince him he was wrong. After I got out of the closet to them, all I received was the usual dismissive talk you’d expect and at that point I was already a left lib. As time passed I tended more to the left and they became even more open about their bullshit ideas, to the point I couldn’t take it anymore and after some confrontation and multiple plea for them to change I just left after telling them how wrong they are and that I wouldn’t take this shit anymore.
Of course this helped make me hate the right even more alongside the usual bullshit I was already seeing on the internet all the time.
Shortly after I was playing War with my brother and his friends and we started discussing politics (I was the only leftist there), that triggered me to start searching about socialism/communism where I started watching some podcast episodes that hosted debates of Marxist-Leninists against some big liberals here in Brazil. After that I started watching ML youtubers and basically became radicalized this way. Now I’m trying to read theory and I’m watching even more ML content to learn.
I lived in Italy when the great recession hit. The blatant imperialism by Germany, the heavy handed approach to SYRIZA’s mild attempt to rebel from the Troika, my mom being unable to find a job for like 5 years and moving to Germany during the Syrian Refugee Crisis + still having parents being subject to exploitative work practices.
I read the Communist Manifesto once when I was bored and forced to go with mom to her job while I sat around, and became an anarchist despite opinions on Socialist Poland being fairly neutral in my family. Eventually, I got organized in a demsoc party and drifted further left.
It’s not exactly going great, but then again what is?
