this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2025
30 points (100.0% liked)

askchapo

23063 readers
173 users here now

Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.

Rules:

  1. Posts must ask a question.

  2. If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.

  3. Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.

  4. Try !feedback@hexbear.net if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I'm at such an intersection of privilege that I don't think I considered politics in any meaningful way until my early 20s when I got hit with the libertarian propaganda and realized that maybe the police and army are political actually.

I always hear of people doing such great work and being so political in their teenage years ago I wonder if it's more common for someone to not engage in politics until adulthood line myself or if it's truly just my position in life that allowed me to be ignorant for so long.

I remember buying a shirt with "fuck politics I just want to burn shit down" when I was around 17 and honestly edginess was I think my entire ideology at the time

(page 2) 39 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] FidelChadstro@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I always loved history, especially 20th century. My parents were apolitical "both sides bad" types they didn't provide any real guidance, but taught me to think critically.

I grew up in an extremely conservative area in the late 90s, where mentioning Michael Moore got you labeled an extremist and I was told the Black Panthers were just their version of the KKK.

The stolen election of 2000, 9/11 fever, and the Iraq war all started to sour me on American politics, but Republicans were obviously worse.

I spent a lot of time with airsoft players, who are ludicrously fascist, and this shaped my view of how the chud mind works.

I started listening to punk music a lot and became a left-lib, theory-avoiding, lazy western ancom through the bush-obama years.

Watching the DNC ratfuck Bernie in 2016 and russiagate finally got me to start unlibbing my mind. Chapo the podcast and subreddit were major influences in pushing me all the way left. A 20+ year journey to figure out everything's fucked and it's not gonna get better. At least now I understand why.

[–] Acute_Engles@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago

Podcasts really pushed me as well. I was still in elementary school when 9/11 happened and my parents just treated it like a spectacle (not American but close) we never talked about it after seeing it on tv

[–] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I ebbed and flowed. Was politically active and radical in my teen years, then entered engineering school and drank the "technology will make everything better bro trust me" kool-aid, graduated and had a pretty good job for a while, before remembering why shit was fucked. Left it all, moved across the world, and now I'm the most radical I've ever been.

[–] Acute_Engles@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

How did you become politically active and radical in your teen years? There was nothing even close to that in my circles

[–] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

It was all random luck. I had a few very good teachers who were passionate and knowledgeable about history, politics, and philosophy, especially my 9th grade history teacher painted such a vivid picture of 20th century History that i couldn't help but see the damage done by the right wing everywhere. I used to hang out with punks and skinheads (the communist and anti-racist kind) so I became an antifascist early, too. My city was having a resurgence of neo-nazi and right-wing groups at the time, so being part of those opposing them put me in contact with a lot of communists and anarchists who weren't shy about punching nazis.

Add this to a very strong sense of justice related to my neurodivergence, and the fact that I was a devout catholic back then and most priests I knew espoused some kind of social justice mixed with their christianity, it drew me closer to liberation theology. I even called myself a christian communist (a real thing) at one point lmao.

[–] Acute_Engles@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I grew up in a small town so I wasn't exposed to much like that outside the odd concert in the city. Very cool path

[–] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 1 points 2 weeks ago

It was cool, but then I spent like 10 years being apolitical, or worse: technocratic, so… I also meant to say that the political journey isn't linear, and that we all start somewhere, or like in my case, we start really strong, and then we kind of fuck off, and then have to pick up from where we left.

[–] ephemeral@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

and drank the "technology will make everything better bro trust me" kool-aid

ugh same. got caught up in the ridiculous tech-optimism of the early-to-mid 2010s. I thought self-driving cars and VR were the frickin' future. it's hard to imagine now but there was so little public criticism of big tech back then

[–] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

It's really insidious. It feeds on the elitism top engineering schools have, too... that smug feeling of "we know calculus we're so special, if engineers ran the world instead of lawyers we wouldn't have any problems". In hindsight... yuck. I would've clowned on my past self so hard that lil' Trashcan would've transition earlier.

[–] Lemmygradwontallowme@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

At around 15, it was the first true descent into the rabbit hole

[–] Acute_Engles@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

How did you fall into the rabbit hole in the first place?

Well, I read, at that age, "Blackshirts and Reds", where I learned that fascism was not a historical aberration but one of the many forms of repression capitalism wields against socialism, and why siege socialism developed the way it did. I was a lib at the time, but a reflexively anti-fascist one.

[–] Owl@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I grew up in a conservative environment so I just assumed I was conservative until freshman year in high school, when the teacher had us fill out a generic left/right politics poll that placed me just right of center, which was the catalyst for me realizing that maybe I have political opinions, and I should figure them out. I was a progressive-leaning lib within a few months of that.

[–] Acute_Engles@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah I remember doing a political compass test with some peers and getting like bottom left corner and being confused at how people could have answered the questions differently to be getting further right

[–] CyborgMarx@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago

Well I thought 9/11 was a scary movie about a smoke monster eating people, so definitely 2003

[–] SorosFootSoldier@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago

The truncated timeline of my journey to communism

kid: no politics head empty

tween: america good

teen: america really good (9/11) but also bush bad, war bad MAYBE (?) but respect the troops oohrah

young adult: typical lib who watches comedy central and think's he's above it all because south park funny

adult: women bad, obama bad, gamergate, antisemitism good, jews all the world's problems

30's -- Now: major life events, holy shit I've been lied to my entire life, we needed a communist revolution decades ago, full tankie, deprograming brain from fash shit

load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›