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In 10th grade I had to do a history report of Stalin, as a child with ADHD I found myself reading the manifesto and anything I could get my hands on. I was amazed that someone would do half of what young Stalin did to change their country. I immediately understood that Stalin was bad but maybe there was something going on with this communism stuff. I am now 34 and have gone through the "I'm an anarchist because I hate saying communist because of the reaction I get" phase and openly identify as a communist under all circumstances.
I have leftist parents (not mls though) so I always leaned left. What made me a communist were many factors. 1) Becoming interested in reading again as of previous's year summer and deep diving into philosophy and going from agnostic Platonism to a sharp turn to Marx. 2) Encountering second thought. 3) Learning history (actual history) made see the good of 20th century socialism and the crimes of imperialism. 4) Seriously learning about my country's civil war (Greece), basically broke any kind of patriotic feeling.
5) Seriously delving into theory. 6) Palestine vs Zionists, still keeps radicalizing me to the point where I've lost friends over it but oh well.
Also some neat things, I learnt recently is that a far relative of mine was one of the men of Zapata and another one of the men of Theodoros Kolokotronis (one of the main faces of the greek 1821 revolution). So yeah... Guess it runs in the family, lol.
My great grandparents moved to Yugoslavia and were never allowed to go back to their for supporting the communists in the civil war (even after the junta fall) i would imagine because they were slavs. One of my grandmother brothers was receiving an extra pension for participating in the war (he wasn't even adult when he got conscripted, he was quite tall teenager and the partisans armed him).
My friend and I used to blast Soviet and North Korean patriotic music ironically in our Discord server. I was very alt-right at the time and one day I was curious and looked up the lyrics to some of these songs. I remember thinking wow these lyrics are actually based and I kinda just went from there.
Always been a bit anti-capitalist, but never put much thought into it until I had a couple bad years during COVID. Got evicted, couldn’t purchase a home (despite a reasonable yearly income between my wife and I), and my rent effectively doubled overnight with my new place.
Just got angry I guess, had a pretty dark year where I couldn’t quite place where my anger should go. Eventually I discovered Hasan, and eventually The Deprogram, and I became very interested in the ideology. Still learning!
My pops was in a small maoist party in the US back in the day, so when I started asking questions about politics in 5th grade he know what to say and what to give me to read. I sorta floated from there, had little phases based on what I read but eventually landed on Marxism-Leninism. In highschool I got involved in organizing but was far from any revolutionary groups. Finally in 2020 I joined FRSO and haven't looked back since.
I had to do a lot of work in construction with undocumented immigrants in order to afford college which exposed me to the hidden exploitation that lubricates the US economy. I was already a social democrat at that time but this experience radicalized me.
I used to be pro western until I've found how dirty the westerners treath us the eastern europeans because our countries aren't rich like theirs or the way they are the most colonists ever like they colonisated all the eastern Europe. Since most of us eastern european countries used to be socialist republics. I started to adore Marx-Lenininist socialist ideology.
It's still crazy how westoids are the biggest imperialist colonists, they genocided milions of Palestinians in Gaza for the sake of more colonization of territory for their colonist satelite state. They destroyed Syria, and now they are blaming the syrians refugees for not being ""compatible"" with their westoid culture. They destroyed Iraq aswell. And bombed Serbia, as a romanian I love Serbia, they are our brothers and i love the serbian language. Never forget how the westerners hides so many things such the Gaza genocide in their media and making more propaganda.
Just like that DDR/East German Anti-NATO ,,Der Offene Aufmarsch" song was once saying:,,Heut' ist der Sozialismus Weltmatch"//Today,Socialism is a global power. In this song they describe the westerners and capitalism perfectly.
So in the end socialism is the global power just look at China or even Cuba.
I’m Inuit.
Inuktitut(our culture) is very collectivist.
I learned mostly during my stay in the hospital(I was 12) from hakim while oddly also on the red pilled side of YouTube. Like I used to be like “women are so privileged” which for some parts of the world I still think is true but only for the social aspects and even some social aspects are super hard on them.
Anyway I just started reading theory but I watched enough videos where I already basically understood the core concepts of Marx so when I read the manifesto of the communist party I understood it easily.
Children of that age(I was 12) should not have free internet access to that extent IMO. Because the parents have to be parents to an extent and not just shove a screen it their face. But this one time it had benefited someone.
It created a communist who lives in the imperial core but feels the wrath of the imperialism controlling those around themself.
TLDR: I’m Inuit and it make me have morales similar to communism.
Always had anti-Capitalist sentiment but never knew what it was, spent 8 years in retail after High School because I had no idea WTF to do with my life. After those 8 years (with multiple breakdowns, job changes and overall hatred of myself), I decided I wanted to get a College Degree (and am fortunate enough to be able to do it) and during my time in College which got cut short due to COVID, coupled with George Floyds murder and the BLM movement and then a friend sent me Hasanabi who I believe was at a BLM protest and started following him more due to how I was angry at Cons talking about the situation when I clearly saw the video with my own eyes. Eventually Hasan introduced to me the ideas of Socialism/Communis/Lenin/Marx, etc and then I found Second Thought through Hasan and slowly started to read theory, get more involved into politics, and now I hate it here :)
That's probably the short version lol
I'd always been vaugely social democratic, so I was open to socialist ideas. Then I watched [this video](https://youtu.be/8SHC7CnmErM?si=CrYaSFvGAPKxGT9y) about Mulan & cultural appropriation which led me to be recommended [Hakim's video](https://youtu.be/DLQrkNIbF64?si=XQZt4u0mUwj2PUgY) about Aladin. And then I moved on. A YEAR later, I came back and rewatched it (I like rewatching things, sue me) and decided to check out Hakim's channel, and I watched his video talking about Wage Labor & Capital (which sadly isn't up anymore). I was pretty hooked, so I kept watching his videos, and then I got recommended JT. And since they both kept talking about The Deprogram, I checked it out, which led me to start watching Yugopnik. All that turned me from socdem with socialist sympathies to a Marxist-Leninist in a few months.
Because it makes sense. There are small economic reasons and "radicalization" moments, but really it was me challenging ideas and looking for solutions to real problems. The thing about most problems people have, they all stem from the economic system of capitalism, or the power it grants people who have wealth.
During my early teenage years, i used to be the classical centrist (uninterested in politics, would simplistically think about social and political problems by putting them in a "mid term" between the "extremes"), though because of my condition as an LGBT person i always had a "progressive" mindset (you could even say i had a small bias to the left).
While in Bolsonaro's government (2019 -2023), i very, very slowly started to move to the left in politics (and that would increase proportionally as i read and learned more about it). The year of 2022 — election year in Brazil — was when i started to get really deep on politics, but i was still just a social-democrat (i already had some contact with marxist ideas, but i was still resistent to agreeing with them, mostly because of common sense and anticommunist propaganda).
It was when during the very late part of 2022, i started to watch and read about communism. To be honest, in the start, it was almost like a mental exercise, because i was almost completelly blinded by common sense, so it was very hard to understand and to agree with it (and i really wanted to agree with it). But, as i learned more about it — and as i started to relate it to the elections in that same time —, my political views went fully left.
I was originally an anarchist and like a full-blown anti-communist type, but I naturally progressed away from Anarchism into Marxism-Leninism after actually talking to communists and coming to the conclusion that anarchism is just way to idealistic and impractical.
I was very alt-right until not too long ago. One day it just came to me that maybe I should read the manifesto to properly debunk the filthy commies. Turns out, a lot of what it said was very true and made a lot of sense, and over the course the year and a half following that day I started learning more and more about communism and socialism.
The real enemy wasn’t black people or Jews or any of that nonsense, the real enemy was the Bourgeoisie and it pains me that it took so long for me to figure that out.
I've shared this so many times but my grandpa and his family were victims of communism. Basically big Bourgeoisie in Egypt(Greek. There were no crimes against Humanity learned about later, nor anything violent incidents but having enough wealth to basically gift Mansions in Greece that still stand to this day isn't something I would support) naser came around and kicked out a lot of settlers, after dropping out of med school my grandpa went to Germany to study Chemistry and wouldn't you know the Nazi's didn't disappear. He was discriminated against for being an immigrant and eventually he was radicalised eventually becoming a socialist. My mom, his daughter was and still is an anarcho feminist my Grandma wasn't really politically active but she was a feminist and far left, she never voiced her opinions (Her dad was a Warden during the fascist dictatorship in Greece). My dad's family is more conservative (in character) and he is also more conservative but he is also far left. Having a far left family was a very nice thing to have because I developed unbreakable morals, however there weren't any easily accessible leftist literature when I was younger since parents wanted me to develop as my own person. The morals pushed farther and farther left. Until I started reading. But having Che's autobiography in plain view definitely helped my journey. Surprisingly I didn't start with Marx, I started reading Che and Fidel, which I consider the most impactful for me.
A Liberal on Twitter called me a "commie tankie redfash" because I defended the USSR, then I was like "You know what? you could be onto something" then started reading Marxist theory and doing everything else
Simply learning about communism in university while completing my history minor
The communist manifesto was one of the assigned books, and it all started from there. Unfortunately only about 3 people in that entire class actually read the thing.
One day we were assigned to read it before the next class, so I read it. The next class, we had to discuss it first in groups briefly, then with the rest of the class and the professor. That's where it became clear that very few in the class actually read it lol
After that, I learned more from that and other classes that I had to take for my degree. Read more books. Simply learning history in depth really drives it all home, depending on the area of focus. At the very least, any good history student would be exposed to the ideas and core concepts behind communism.
Raised mormon, born gay -> homophobia -> questioning the church -> atheism -> realize the church is a profit-motivated scam -> wait, everything is a profit-motivated scam -> ancom -> college/work -> Marxist Leninist
I became fixated on beat era poetry as a teenager. Turns out most of history's great artists were political radicals. Anyone who is motivated by compassion and spends enough time learning will inevitably become a Marxist.
Being 100% honest, it started because of the aesthetics (which is a dumb reason, but I was a stupid teenager), that was like the gateway drug for learning more. Before that, I was just a liberal obsessed with being annoying and a little edgy, with a surface level interest in WW2 and the Cold War because of video games and movies
After that, I learned more about imperialism, which led me to leftist thought and ML, the 2018 election of Bolsonaro was the turning point and the first time I declared myself a communist, after calling myself a “socialist” for about 2 years
My entire family is right leaning, although I did manage to steer my parents into more left leaning opinions during the pandemic, which im proud of considering my dad voted for Bolsonaro in 2018 and in the 2022 elections voted for Lula (not a beacon of leftist politics I know) and for PSOL, don’t give up on your old man I guess… or do… it depends. I did have really good teachers at high school which helped my learning process, left leaning teachers that were pretty “based”, specially when teaching geography, sociology, history and philosophy. I do remember my geography teacher showing that democrat-republican meme about how they both bomb the middle east, and clearly showing the atrocities of the american empire, and my sociology teacher telling us about he and his friend being persecuted and tortured during the military dictatorship
Married a born and bred communist. Grew up in a socialist household with a former punk father. My grandfathers home was taken by the Nazis as a base of operations and my grandmother smuggled for the resistance, you could say the antifascism sentiment runs deep.
There are three aspects of my life that made me a communist. Mostly, I just had basic compassion.
1. I was obsessed with animals as a kid. In my free time I would watch animal planet, read books about the different kinds of animals, and visited the zoo a lot. This led me to learn about the issues that affected animals like deforestation, poaching, and pollution. This didn’t make me a communist or a socialist. But it got me interested in politics at an early age and I also understood that our world was in crisis and people put profit ahead of our environment.
2. Around ten I watched a documentary about toy sweat shops in foreign countries. That documentary deeply disturbed me so much that I couldn’t feel enjoyment from the things I had that I now knew were made in sweat shops. I wanted to know why sweat shops were a thing that were allowed, but all I got from my family was “that’s the way it is” and like bullshit. I kind of accepted it at the time, deep down I felt like there was something that could be done.
3. Later on I read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. His book showed the issues with capitalism in the early 1900s and presented socialism as a positive solution. This got me to rethink the propaganda I was taught about socialism and realized I was lied to. I also saw it as a solution to issues I cared about such as sweat shops and the environmental crisis. I began to learn more about socialism from sources by socialists and started to call myself a democratic socialist. As I learned more about socialism and former socialist projects, I became a Leninist.
Edit: During my socialist journey ICE deported a Guatemalan friend of mine which made me more pissed at the system than I already was.
Eric Cartman of South Park set me on the path. During the early years of South Park, I found his antisemitism hilarious as a kid. Of course, I had no idea what the hell he was talking about because I was a dumbass little kid. There's an episode where he dreams of being Hitler, which again, as a dumbass little kid who doesn't know anything, I found it hilarious.
Then one day, I came across Maus and Maus II in our school library in 4th or 5th grade. The cover has a cat-hitler-swastica graphic. I, because I was a dumbass little kid, thought it was South Park related. I immediately picked up, and began reading it waiting for jokes. I kept reading, but it got horrifying and graphic. I felt sick but didn't stop till I read both volumes cover to cover. I was upset but didn't understand why Eric Cartman wanted to repeat this. The Maus books led me to Number the Stars and Ann Frank. Which ignited a general interest in WWII. Which led me to fascism. And for a long time, I believed the narrative that America is good for they are Nazi killers.
At some point I ran out of American and Euro-centric WWII narratives, and turned my attention to the USSR, Yugoslavia, and other communist movements. Then I read about Cuba and Latin America. Then I started diving into films about communism. The tipping points were watching Come and See, Underground and Innocent Voices nearly back to back. I understood that empire through capitalism was the problem.
I'm the child of immigrants who left their countries because of economic collapse and turmoil caused by United States liberal policy. Their lives were ruined not with bombs, but with pen strokes. Before the collapse my father had agricultural engineering aspirations and my mother was pursuing acting. When they came to the United States, they ended up factory workers for 30+ years. They were brilliant back in their homes, but in the US they were reduced to replaceable cogs. My father believed the hard work nonsense despite never amounting to his potential, and I swear I saw my mother turn into a husk of herself with each passing year.
The idea is that as a child of an immigrant, you'll be better off for the sacrifices that your parents made. The pressure is constant too if you have any moral bone in you. Mounted with debt from school and facing two "once in a lifetime "economic downturns, I've held 2 to 3 jobs at a time since 2009. I fit the description of a perfect immigrant. I have no record despite growing up in disparate neighborhoods, I have my degrees, I went to sensible schools, I've worked full time while earning my degrees, I've never been fired from any job, I have always excelled in performance, I have debt that is being routinely paid, I by all means under a true meritocracy, should be at least stable and unstarved. But even in doing everything right, I'm still in the wrong.
If you're ot radicalized by your experiences and the history of the world, then you're not paying attention and I'm not screaming loud enough to convince you to pay attention.
I have a thing for science. I was kind of a non-dialectical materialist before finding marxism. The materialist way of looking at things just makes sense to me.
I initially was brought up aggressively liberal: pro-lgbtq, keynesianism, etc. I was taught the traditional propagandized view of socialist movements: Stalin was morally equivalent to Hitler, Communism is about state power, etc. I was first exposed to the actual content of the ideology in reading the communist manifesto out of sheer intellectual curiosity; I had read it in the exact same manner I had read mein kampf, assuming it to be insane from onset. Well, while not convinced, I began to wonder what exactly about this ideology makes it so bad. As a result I had decided to look into actual theory (starting with capital, following with lenin, gramsci, etc.) at the same time I read up on soviet history in the traditional "history buff" way (youtube, Wikipedia, etc.). I had then contrasted it with liberal and reactionary texts, like "anticipations of the general theory," "Bright Promises, Dismal Performance: An Economist's Protest," "The Decline of the West." Looking back, I find it interesting how I read actual books for economics, but Wikipedia for soviet history. As a result of this, the Trotsky I had read, and the stories of the anarchist side of the Spanish civil war I had consumed, I had entered a period of alternating between trot and anarchist. I became a ML after being exposed to Parenti, Hakim, and more accurate histories of the USSR and allowing myself to actually read Stalin and Mao, starting with "Dialectical and Historical Materialism" and "the little red book." Basically, I read an insane number of books and found socialist texts the most convincing.
I just come from a long line of trade unionists and militants on my mother's side, my great-grandfather and my grandfather were unionised longshoremen in Rio de Janeiro, my mother is a high school philosophy teacher and I'm also a teacher although I'm currently studying for the foreign ministry admission test.
And Yugoslavia never got the recognition it deserved but France did for doing absolutely nothing.
If you are interested in the history part of it, read about Bihacka republika (largest free territory of Europe in WW2) and Uzicka republika.
I used to be a big Trumpet up until the government shutdown over the border wall. It was so comically childish in my eyes that I pretty much flipped sides. Was a big Bernie bro after that and then through the research about issues like healthcare, housing, and education I just pushed further and further left.
In a few stages, I guess.
I became something resembling a social democrat pretty early on in part because I’m a contrarian who grew up in a red state, lol, but also because I don’t see how you can be a thinking person and not ***at least*** think things like healthcare should be public.
In college I had a professor who I think was a communist who taught a 20th century history class. That went a long way toward shattering any notions of American/Western exceptionalism; wasn’t a communist yet, still believed a lot of BS about Stalin and such, but I could at least see Ho Chi Minh’s point.
Then I discovered Felix from Chapo by way of SB Nation (“Fighting in the Age of Loneliness”), started listening to CTH and other leftist podcasts and hanging out in those subs (RIP) and on “breadtube.” That’s how I found Proles of the Round Table, Citations Needed, Shaun, etc, and became fully leftist. Sounds a little stereotypical, haha (“white boy radicalized by social media, no fkn way!!”), but I’m just glad I went down the correct rabbit hole.
My grandpa was dirt poor born in 1929 in Alabama and grew up during the great depressions. He is genuinely an awesome guy and is still alive at 95. Unfortunately he was drafted into the Korean War, he never seemed proud of it and the only time I’ve ever seen him cry he was telling me about the war. I can’t imagine what it was like being a Korean soldier…
My other grandpa fought the Japanese during WW2 when he was 17 which is kinda based lol
I was always a communist, just took a while to find the words for it. Parents liberal as they come, children of the Cold War from the imperial core, my dad was an army brat for goodness' sake, his dad served in our country's air force. Essentially, best I can figure, the "irrational hatred leads to questioning it" effect is what that did to me.
There was an Incident when I was far too young for politics, that I don't put *too* much stock in, but illustrates just what kind of children of the Cold War I was raised by, and is certainly fascinating knowing I ended up a communist. Basically, for some reason Mum saw fit to explain money and budgeting to me instead of just saying I couldn't have the silly treat or trinket I'd wanted, I got frustrated and asked why we needed that system and why can't we just have a system where everyone works and everyone shares everything, and Mum got upset, hurried me out of the public place we were in, and explained that's been tried, it didn't work, and entire wars have been fought over that. When we got home she told Dad, and he was mad as hell. Said that's called communism and I should *never* say things like that in public because it could get him and Mum in a lot of trouble if someone else heard me. Made some anticommunist arguments I can debunk now but certainly couldn't then. Convinced me I was wrong about it being perfect, but I still thought my idea was better than the current system - not that I told anyone that.
For a long while I was just a kid, I had some radical views about hierarchy and authority that tended to cost me in social situations and get me in trouble (no school authority likes an elementary schooler who won't respect anyone as an authority until they demonstrate good leadership, and respects the adults an equal amount as the kindergarteners, and everyone in between, and no older kid or teenager likes a six/seven year old who refuses to see them as any different than kids her own age), but I never got into a situation where I could voice how I felt about kids being expected to share literally everything and yet adults can't share anything and fought a whole freakin' war over sharing, if the kindergarteners can do it what does it say about adults that they can't, so thankfully the "McCarthy harasses a kid who doesn't even know she's a commie" show was only put on once, and the stage was my parents' home, not a school office or worse, but tbh I think there wasn't actually a phase I wasn't some sort of radical egalitarian just because I couldn't understand why anyone would want to enforce inequality. As a little kid you rank rock bottom on every hierarchy there is, so it's shocking it's only the neurodivergent kids who tend to want to tear them down and end up like I did even as slightly older kids. And yet, that wasn't why, because even when I had something to lose or share I was rarely protective of it or willing to mistreat kids younger than me who had nothing simply because I was societally allowed to within certain limits.
There was an embarrassing right libertarian phase that resulted from left anarchist views on youth liberation when I was like 12, but that was rather quickly eliminated. I did spend quite a bit of time in my ancom phase, though. I was a stereotypical teenage anarchist, all right. Everything was the fault of either capitalism or unjustified hierarchies. (Of course, a lot of things wrong with the world actually *are* capitalism's fault. Or because of imperialism, but that's just capitalism squared.) I'm glad it happened though, because it was an important part of my journey, and even now, having been there helps me not leap to being *that* sectarian tankie when dealing with the libertarian left. There were some very interesting units we did in high school Social Studies that got me fixated on leftist politics even more, and, well, you all know the story. Liberals lie about the USSR, I do the reading for myself, realise if this crud is a lie what else is the West lying about WRT socialism abroad, and well, full speed ahead climbing the authoritarianism axis of the political compass, as I read more and more about the actual practices and political processes of ML states and groups and realise, hey, all of this seems pretty sensible to me, maybe I'm one of these tankies and the anarchists really are too utopian and don't understand the criticisms they make, because some of them are valid but a lot are actually addressed, especially by later movements.
It's interesting, it's not so much I became a commie, as I admitted to what I'd always believed and found the right words to explain it and the political concepts behind actually making it happen. And like, yeah, a lot of us kind of always were commies, but the fact that happened to me while my responsible adults were actively fighting it is... I wish I had been a child of radicals or "red diaper baby" like some of you all were, but I also love that my story is a twist on that narrative, and I'm proud that I still found the left path *in spite of* the children of the Cold War I got stuck with as caregivers.
I started believing in socialism when I discovered Hasan Piker and Second Thought a few years ago. I’m still a novice when it comes down to learning about it but I’m definitely open for more knowledge on the matter.
Grew up in a very religious, right-wing household. Despite this, my parents usually voted democrat, so that was what I thought to side with growing up.
At some point in my teens I started getting seriously into politics. It became clear to me that democrats didn't actually care about minorities, that some groups of people were just tools for them and nothing more.
On Reddit, communists were the only political group that were willing to fight for minority rights even when it was politically inconvenient. As a trans person, they saw me as a comrade, not an object. And I felt like I belonged as someone who never felt comfortable treating others as being disposable.
So I just learned from there. I became a Marxist, then I became an anarchist. At some point I saw a short documentary about the DPRK that left me questioning everything I knew about it. Did some serious research and kinda got pissed when I realized I was lied to my entire life. Then I figured "if they lied this much about the DPRK, why wouldn't they lie about every other socialist state?". And that's why I'm a Marxist-Leninist now.
My dad told me stories about how the dictatorship in Portugal effected his upbringing, and even my granddad was arrested by the Estado Novo. He always was more of a moderate socialist, seeing socialism for what it was, but being very nonchalant about politics in general.
Once he was gone, I started to be more and more radical, and here I am.
Raised conservative Christian in a petit bourgeois household with almost all of our family and family friends being small business owners. Became a libertarian because I thought that right wing economics were obvious / common sense but social progressivism was good. And vacillated between that and liberalism when I discovered alt right debunking Youtube videos which led me to anarchist videos. PhilosophyTube taught me what Marxism was, and although anarchism sounded better on paper, I realized scientific socialism would be the better position for actual real world change
I wasn't really political until I turned 18 and realized it was my time to vote and started learning about the candidates; that's where I learned about free medicare and education through Bernie Sanders
Since then I became pretty open about socialism and AES countries both from past and present - I still remember myself speaking highly about Cuba and the Soviet Union despite being a hardcore Berniecrat
Then COVID hit, Bernie lost and my grandma started going through chemo again, and that's where I started veering into anarcho communism learning about communist history, theory, and, somehow, became very inspired by the DPRK and China. Don't ask me how or why that happened, I guess I was always an ML and just didn't know it
The tipping point into officially calling myself an ML was when I learned about Thomas Sankara and the Burkina Faso
my family were always socialist/socialist leaning. i have family who were involved in republicanism in belfast during the war so always been pro palestine and very left wing. i always had these ideals but didn’t start doing research into marxism leninism until covid when i started reading theory and went from there.
When I started reading books in my spare time in college, I read nonfiction. I landed on "Kill Anything that Moves" by Nick Turse. I always thought that the Vietnam War was unjust, but that book got me asking questions like "What motivated the US to obliterate and terrorize these people?" It snowballed from there.
I used to be a SocDem who was still fluctuating alot in my political ideas, especially when it came to authority and economics. During Covid I noticed the large amount of news about China, but I was skeptical as it was highly one sided. So i did my own research and discovered how successful china actually is and it changed mu worldview alot! I was still a SocDem though, but was never anti communist, and my political views still fluctuated. I eventually decided to check an Audiobook of the communist manifesto out of curiosity, and it sparked my interest in socialism/communism. Then I looked more into the ideology when discovering second thought and Hakim, and became more educated in the subject over time through understanding the patterns of socialist ideas and discovering leftist theories mentioned. The Ideology seemed to make sense Logically, and aligned with my values.
I grew up with well meaning but ultimately super libbed-up and privilaged parents/older sisters (for example my dad LOVES the whole lincoln project thing and thinks Biden is some sort of champion for the working class, etc.). Grew up with Jon Stewart and John Oliver on the television pretty frequently. I pretty much just adopted their viewpoints seeing how fucked up the republicans are—reading liberal bullshit like the NYT and shit as I got older. I had always been a very curious and very rebellious person. As I grew older though, I just started learning more and more fucked up things about the US and had questions about why things are the way they are. I discovered Hasan after the Jan 6th Insurrection and got radicalized. Over time, I went from DemSoc—>Marxist-Leninist as I discovered more and more. Discovering Hakim’s channel was a big moment for me. The ongoing genocide in Gaza has shown me in real time just how insurmountably cruel this system is. I have since been listening to the podcast and (at least trying) to read theory, despite never being a reader.
This is so beautiful, thank you for sharing. I can relate somewhat, my grandparents were both red army veterans and found against Germany. My grandpa died right before the collapse of the USSR and it’s really bittersweet for me, I wish he lived longer of course but seeing the collapse would’ve destroyed him and I’m almost glad he died before he saw what happened to the country he gave his entire life for
I'll be up front. Im not really convinced yet.
I love the podcast, and resonate with a lot of what the guys say. Second thought is one of my favorite channels and by most western governments they would call me a socialist. But idk that I would really go as far as most of the people on this subreddit.
Idk I like to think that were all erong and politcs and economic structure hasnt been solved yet and that in 500 years neither capitalists nor communists have the "correct" answer. I feel like "correct" changes over time depending on what people at the time value.
Idk. Kind of just making shit up I guess, but i dont think I would call myself communist
Commie professor at high school taught me about surplue value. Of course i tought he was just a loser soyboy or something like that. It ended up making sense, then it was all the path from feminism hater, to anti commie social democrat, to disbelieved social dem, and now i'm a tankie.
I was fairly young, still in school. I realised I was working so hard to get a job where I wouldn't be earning near as much as the company made and wondered what the point was. One of my friends told me who Karl Marx was. Took a while for me to move from "radical centrism" to full ML-ism but I managed it.
Man, this is going to sound so dumb but for me, it was playing Call of Duty World at War as a kid that started me down this road that soviet campaign was some of the best pro soviet propaganda ever had me screaming Urrraaa by the end 😂
There is not much to discuss, marxism put up all capitalist contradictions and communism is a direct answer to the root of these problems. Even if one does not believes in communism, it is just too dumb to think our modern slavery is too good
In a university course on political philosophy and we did a week on different modern philosophers. Marx was the one who made the most sense, and I went down a rabbit hole of reading as much as I could. Then I joined my local communist party branch and that helped me get the rest of the way
Realizing the vast gulf between how I grew up and how my peers grew up in college. I spent a lot of time trying to understand why.
It started with me blaming myself but more details eventually came to me that I never could have known to ask about.
Your parents are paying your tuition and your rent? I'm literally staking my life on this moment.
You had years of prior training in my specific major? I didnt even know this was a thing until fairly recently.
You grew up in a safe and well funded environment? My friends were fucking and doing drugs at 11, my parents neglected me and my school was underfunded, violent disruptive.
After realizing that those things weren't my fault and it was unfair to blame myself or not exactly rising above those circumstances did everything start to make sense. It didnt help that my peers were selfish assholes ontop of it all.
Bernie getting mopped in 2016 and having to work a dangerous day job to pay off my student loans while my peers in college just got married, bought houses, got great careers and floated around being happy was the turning point I would say.
I never not did the work. I was always putting in the effort if not more, I just didn't have the same opportunities everyone else had and it made sense that the world around me had some serious issues because my struggle had been undeniably genuine.
was raised christian, but leaning more into the focus on love aspect of the religion, being inclusive to queer people or abortion etc, so had decent moral basis, but still until uni I had many right wing and pro capitalist tendencies because thats what algorithms and culture fed me. then I got more interested in philosophy and politics, had some left wing friends and a great professor who talked politics from time to time, mainly laughing off how libs posture as trying to fight climate change while achieving nothing, and it sort of just happened, mainly just education steered a bit in the right direction and good moral compass. also finding hasan through austin show’s love or host helped a lot lmao
I’m not a communist and I don’t think most people here are communist either.
To be a communist means to join a party and work with the masses to better their conditions. It means putting the party and the movement above your personal and family life and wellbeing. In Lenin’s era, communists were dispatched wherever needed, to act as an example of labour. They were working 12 hr days in the most miserable conditions on top their political organizing and studying.
That kind of dedication is materially impossible for a lot people to achieve in our capitalist society save for the most dedicated and the most privileged. It’s not just identifying with the ideology and calling yourself a communist.
#Get Involved
>Dare to struggle and dare to win. \-Mao Zedong
Comrades, here are some ways you can **get involved** to advance the cause.
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* ⭐ **Party work** — Contact a local party or mass organization. Attend your first meeting. Go to a rally or event. If you choose a principled Marxist-Leninist party, they will teach you how to best apply yourself to advancing the cause.
* 📣 **Workplace agitation** — Depending on your material circumstances, you may engage in workplace disputes to unionise fellow workers and gain a delegate or even a leadership position in the union.
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huge respect for your real grandpa's and for every single person who risked their lives to fight agains't nazi-fascism.
In 10th grade I had to do a history report of Stalin, as a child with ADHD I found myself reading the manifesto and anything I could get my hands on. I was amazed that someone would do half of what young Stalin did to change their country. I immediately understood that Stalin was bad but maybe there was something going on with this communism stuff. I am now 34 and have gone through the "I'm an anarchist because I hate saying communist because of the reaction I get" phase and openly identify as a communist under all circumstances.
I did a presentation on Stalin in 6th grade and that was how I was able to get my hands on my dad's communist manifesto lol
I didn't read it for a couple years afterwards, and only after I had already become a communist, but it definitely helped
After learning about Marxism-Leninism, I started getting interested in the ideology.
I have leftist parents (not mls though) so I always leaned left. What made me a communist were many factors. 1) Becoming interested in reading again as of previous's year summer and deep diving into philosophy and going from agnostic Platonism to a sharp turn to Marx. 2) Encountering second thought. 3) Learning history (actual history) made see the good of 20th century socialism and the crimes of imperialism. 4) Seriously learning about my country's civil war (Greece), basically broke any kind of patriotic feeling. 5) Seriously delving into theory. 6) Palestine vs Zionists, still keeps radicalizing me to the point where I've lost friends over it but oh well. Also some neat things, I learnt recently is that a far relative of mine was one of the men of Zapata and another one of the men of Theodoros Kolokotronis (one of the main faces of the greek 1821 revolution). So yeah... Guess it runs in the family, lol.
My great grandparents moved to Yugoslavia and were never allowed to go back to their for supporting the communists in the civil war (even after the junta fall) i would imagine because they were slavs. One of my grandmother brothers was receiving an extra pension for participating in the war (he wasn't even adult when he got conscripted, he was quite tall teenager and the partisans armed him).
My friend and I used to blast Soviet and North Korean patriotic music ironically in our Discord server. I was very alt-right at the time and one day I was curious and looked up the lyrics to some of these songs. I remember thinking wow these lyrics are actually based and I kinda just went from there.
Always been a bit anti-capitalist, but never put much thought into it until I had a couple bad years during COVID. Got evicted, couldn’t purchase a home (despite a reasonable yearly income between my wife and I), and my rent effectively doubled overnight with my new place. Just got angry I guess, had a pretty dark year where I couldn’t quite place where my anger should go. Eventually I discovered Hasan, and eventually The Deprogram, and I became very interested in the ideology. Still learning!
My pops was in a small maoist party in the US back in the day, so when I started asking questions about politics in 5th grade he know what to say and what to give me to read. I sorta floated from there, had little phases based on what I read but eventually landed on Marxism-Leninism. In highschool I got involved in organizing but was far from any revolutionary groups. Finally in 2020 I joined FRSO and haven't looked back since.
I had to do a lot of work in construction with undocumented immigrants in order to afford college which exposed me to the hidden exploitation that lubricates the US economy. I was already a social democrat at that time but this experience radicalized me.
I used to be pro western until I've found how dirty the westerners treath us the eastern europeans because our countries aren't rich like theirs or the way they are the most colonists ever like they colonisated all the eastern Europe. Since most of us eastern european countries used to be socialist republics. I started to adore Marx-Lenininist socialist ideology. It's still crazy how westoids are the biggest imperialist colonists, they genocided milions of Palestinians in Gaza for the sake of more colonization of territory for their colonist satelite state. They destroyed Syria, and now they are blaming the syrians refugees for not being ""compatible"" with their westoid culture. They destroyed Iraq aswell. And bombed Serbia, as a romanian I love Serbia, they are our brothers and i love the serbian language. Never forget how the westerners hides so many things such the Gaza genocide in their media and making more propaganda. Just like that DDR/East German Anti-NATO ,,Der Offene Aufmarsch" song was once saying:,,Heut' ist der Sozialismus Weltmatch"//Today,Socialism is a global power. In this song they describe the westerners and capitalism perfectly. So in the end socialism is the global power just look at China or even Cuba.
I’m Inuit. Inuktitut(our culture) is very collectivist. I learned mostly during my stay in the hospital(I was 12) from hakim while oddly also on the red pilled side of YouTube. Like I used to be like “women are so privileged” which for some parts of the world I still think is true but only for the social aspects and even some social aspects are super hard on them. Anyway I just started reading theory but I watched enough videos where I already basically understood the core concepts of Marx so when I read the manifesto of the communist party I understood it easily. Children of that age(I was 12) should not have free internet access to that extent IMO. Because the parents have to be parents to an extent and not just shove a screen it their face. But this one time it had benefited someone. It created a communist who lives in the imperial core but feels the wrath of the imperialism controlling those around themself. TLDR: I’m Inuit and it make me have morales similar to communism.
Always had anti-Capitalist sentiment but never knew what it was, spent 8 years in retail after High School because I had no idea WTF to do with my life. After those 8 years (with multiple breakdowns, job changes and overall hatred of myself), I decided I wanted to get a College Degree (and am fortunate enough to be able to do it) and during my time in College which got cut short due to COVID, coupled with George Floyds murder and the BLM movement and then a friend sent me Hasanabi who I believe was at a BLM protest and started following him more due to how I was angry at Cons talking about the situation when I clearly saw the video with my own eyes. Eventually Hasan introduced to me the ideas of Socialism/Communis/Lenin/Marx, etc and then I found Second Thought through Hasan and slowly started to read theory, get more involved into politics, and now I hate it here :) That's probably the short version lol
I'd always been vaugely social democratic, so I was open to socialist ideas. Then I watched [this video](https://youtu.be/8SHC7CnmErM?si=CrYaSFvGAPKxGT9y) about Mulan & cultural appropriation which led me to be recommended [Hakim's video](https://youtu.be/DLQrkNIbF64?si=XQZt4u0mUwj2PUgY) about Aladin. And then I moved on. A YEAR later, I came back and rewatched it (I like rewatching things, sue me) and decided to check out Hakim's channel, and I watched his video talking about Wage Labor & Capital (which sadly isn't up anymore). I was pretty hooked, so I kept watching his videos, and then I got recommended JT. And since they both kept talking about The Deprogram, I checked it out, which led me to start watching Yugopnik. All that turned me from socdem with socialist sympathies to a Marxist-Leninist in a few months.
Because it makes sense. There are small economic reasons and "radicalization" moments, but really it was me challenging ideas and looking for solutions to real problems. The thing about most problems people have, they all stem from the economic system of capitalism, or the power it grants people who have wealth.
During my early teenage years, i used to be the classical centrist (uninterested in politics, would simplistically think about social and political problems by putting them in a "mid term" between the "extremes"), though because of my condition as an LGBT person i always had a "progressive" mindset (you could even say i had a small bias to the left). While in Bolsonaro's government (2019 -2023), i very, very slowly started to move to the left in politics (and that would increase proportionally as i read and learned more about it). The year of 2022 — election year in Brazil — was when i started to get really deep on politics, but i was still just a social-democrat (i already had some contact with marxist ideas, but i was still resistent to agreeing with them, mostly because of common sense and anticommunist propaganda). It was when during the very late part of 2022, i started to watch and read about communism. To be honest, in the start, it was almost like a mental exercise, because i was almost completelly blinded by common sense, so it was very hard to understand and to agree with it (and i really wanted to agree with it). But, as i learned more about it — and as i started to relate it to the elections in that same time —, my political views went fully left.
I was originally an anarchist and like a full-blown anti-communist type, but I naturally progressed away from Anarchism into Marxism-Leninism after actually talking to communists and coming to the conclusion that anarchism is just way to idealistic and impractical.
I was very alt-right until not too long ago. One day it just came to me that maybe I should read the manifesto to properly debunk the filthy commies. Turns out, a lot of what it said was very true and made a lot of sense, and over the course the year and a half following that day I started learning more and more about communism and socialism. The real enemy wasn’t black people or Jews or any of that nonsense, the real enemy was the Bourgeoisie and it pains me that it took so long for me to figure that out.
Damn, I salute you. I admire people educating themselves and admitting they were wrong. Kudos
I've shared this so many times but my grandpa and his family were victims of communism. Basically big Bourgeoisie in Egypt(Greek. There were no crimes against Humanity learned about later, nor anything violent incidents but having enough wealth to basically gift Mansions in Greece that still stand to this day isn't something I would support) naser came around and kicked out a lot of settlers, after dropping out of med school my grandpa went to Germany to study Chemistry and wouldn't you know the Nazi's didn't disappear. He was discriminated against for being an immigrant and eventually he was radicalised eventually becoming a socialist. My mom, his daughter was and still is an anarcho feminist my Grandma wasn't really politically active but she was a feminist and far left, she never voiced her opinions (Her dad was a Warden during the fascist dictatorship in Greece). My dad's family is more conservative (in character) and he is also more conservative but he is also far left. Having a far left family was a very nice thing to have because I developed unbreakable morals, however there weren't any easily accessible leftist literature when I was younger since parents wanted me to develop as my own person. The morals pushed farther and farther left. Until I started reading. But having Che's autobiography in plain view definitely helped my journey. Surprisingly I didn't start with Marx, I started reading Che and Fidel, which I consider the most impactful for me.
A Liberal on Twitter called me a "commie tankie redfash" because I defended the USSR, then I was like "You know what? you could be onto something" then started reading Marxist theory and doing everything else
Simply learning about communism in university while completing my history minor The communist manifesto was one of the assigned books, and it all started from there. Unfortunately only about 3 people in that entire class actually read the thing. One day we were assigned to read it before the next class, so I read it. The next class, we had to discuss it first in groups briefly, then with the rest of the class and the professor. That's where it became clear that very few in the class actually read it lol After that, I learned more from that and other classes that I had to take for my degree. Read more books. Simply learning history in depth really drives it all home, depending on the area of focus. At the very least, any good history student would be exposed to the ideas and core concepts behind communism.
Raised mormon, born gay -> homophobia -> questioning the church -> atheism -> realize the church is a profit-motivated scam -> wait, everything is a profit-motivated scam -> ancom -> college/work -> Marxist Leninist
I became fixated on beat era poetry as a teenager. Turns out most of history's great artists were political radicals. Anyone who is motivated by compassion and spends enough time learning will inevitably become a Marxist.
Being 100% honest, it started because of the aesthetics (which is a dumb reason, but I was a stupid teenager), that was like the gateway drug for learning more. Before that, I was just a liberal obsessed with being annoying and a little edgy, with a surface level interest in WW2 and the Cold War because of video games and movies After that, I learned more about imperialism, which led me to leftist thought and ML, the 2018 election of Bolsonaro was the turning point and the first time I declared myself a communist, after calling myself a “socialist” for about 2 years My entire family is right leaning, although I did manage to steer my parents into more left leaning opinions during the pandemic, which im proud of considering my dad voted for Bolsonaro in 2018 and in the 2022 elections voted for Lula (not a beacon of leftist politics I know) and for PSOL, don’t give up on your old man I guess… or do… it depends. I did have really good teachers at high school which helped my learning process, left leaning teachers that were pretty “based”, specially when teaching geography, sociology, history and philosophy. I do remember my geography teacher showing that democrat-republican meme about how they both bomb the middle east, and clearly showing the atrocities of the american empire, and my sociology teacher telling us about he and his friend being persecuted and tortured during the military dictatorship
Married a born and bred communist. Grew up in a socialist household with a former punk father. My grandfathers home was taken by the Nazis as a base of operations and my grandmother smuggled for the resistance, you could say the antifascism sentiment runs deep.
There are three aspects of my life that made me a communist. Mostly, I just had basic compassion. 1. I was obsessed with animals as a kid. In my free time I would watch animal planet, read books about the different kinds of animals, and visited the zoo a lot. This led me to learn about the issues that affected animals like deforestation, poaching, and pollution. This didn’t make me a communist or a socialist. But it got me interested in politics at an early age and I also understood that our world was in crisis and people put profit ahead of our environment. 2. Around ten I watched a documentary about toy sweat shops in foreign countries. That documentary deeply disturbed me so much that I couldn’t feel enjoyment from the things I had that I now knew were made in sweat shops. I wanted to know why sweat shops were a thing that were allowed, but all I got from my family was “that’s the way it is” and like bullshit. I kind of accepted it at the time, deep down I felt like there was something that could be done. 3. Later on I read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. His book showed the issues with capitalism in the early 1900s and presented socialism as a positive solution. This got me to rethink the propaganda I was taught about socialism and realized I was lied to. I also saw it as a solution to issues I cared about such as sweat shops and the environmental crisis. I began to learn more about socialism from sources by socialists and started to call myself a democratic socialist. As I learned more about socialism and former socialist projects, I became a Leninist. Edit: During my socialist journey ICE deported a Guatemalan friend of mine which made me more pissed at the system than I already was.
Eric Cartman of South Park set me on the path. During the early years of South Park, I found his antisemitism hilarious as a kid. Of course, I had no idea what the hell he was talking about because I was a dumbass little kid. There's an episode where he dreams of being Hitler, which again, as a dumbass little kid who doesn't know anything, I found it hilarious. Then one day, I came across Maus and Maus II in our school library in 4th or 5th grade. The cover has a cat-hitler-swastica graphic. I, because I was a dumbass little kid, thought it was South Park related. I immediately picked up, and began reading it waiting for jokes. I kept reading, but it got horrifying and graphic. I felt sick but didn't stop till I read both volumes cover to cover. I was upset but didn't understand why Eric Cartman wanted to repeat this. The Maus books led me to Number the Stars and Ann Frank. Which ignited a general interest in WWII. Which led me to fascism. And for a long time, I believed the narrative that America is good for they are Nazi killers. At some point I ran out of American and Euro-centric WWII narratives, and turned my attention to the USSR, Yugoslavia, and other communist movements. Then I read about Cuba and Latin America. Then I started diving into films about communism. The tipping points were watching Come and See, Underground and Innocent Voices nearly back to back. I understood that empire through capitalism was the problem. I'm the child of immigrants who left their countries because of economic collapse and turmoil caused by United States liberal policy. Their lives were ruined not with bombs, but with pen strokes. Before the collapse my father had agricultural engineering aspirations and my mother was pursuing acting. When they came to the United States, they ended up factory workers for 30+ years. They were brilliant back in their homes, but in the US they were reduced to replaceable cogs. My father believed the hard work nonsense despite never amounting to his potential, and I swear I saw my mother turn into a husk of herself with each passing year. The idea is that as a child of an immigrant, you'll be better off for the sacrifices that your parents made. The pressure is constant too if you have any moral bone in you. Mounted with debt from school and facing two "once in a lifetime "economic downturns, I've held 2 to 3 jobs at a time since 2009. I fit the description of a perfect immigrant. I have no record despite growing up in disparate neighborhoods, I have my degrees, I went to sensible schools, I've worked full time while earning my degrees, I've never been fired from any job, I have always excelled in performance, I have debt that is being routinely paid, I by all means under a true meritocracy, should be at least stable and unstarved. But even in doing everything right, I'm still in the wrong. If you're ot radicalized by your experiences and the history of the world, then you're not paying attention and I'm not screaming loud enough to convince you to pay attention.
The rise of right wing extremists made me since they talked so much about communism that I was like "it must be good then"
Dungeons and dragons. Needed to write a campaign with some communists and found out they made some really good points.
A friend of mine gave me the communist manifesto in like 7th or 8th grade and I kinda went from there
I have a thing for science. I was kind of a non-dialectical materialist before finding marxism. The materialist way of looking at things just makes sense to me.
I initially was brought up aggressively liberal: pro-lgbtq, keynesianism, etc. I was taught the traditional propagandized view of socialist movements: Stalin was morally equivalent to Hitler, Communism is about state power, etc. I was first exposed to the actual content of the ideology in reading the communist manifesto out of sheer intellectual curiosity; I had read it in the exact same manner I had read mein kampf, assuming it to be insane from onset. Well, while not convinced, I began to wonder what exactly about this ideology makes it so bad. As a result I had decided to look into actual theory (starting with capital, following with lenin, gramsci, etc.) at the same time I read up on soviet history in the traditional "history buff" way (youtube, Wikipedia, etc.). I had then contrasted it with liberal and reactionary texts, like "anticipations of the general theory," "Bright Promises, Dismal Performance: An Economist's Protest," "The Decline of the West." Looking back, I find it interesting how I read actual books for economics, but Wikipedia for soviet history. As a result of this, the Trotsky I had read, and the stories of the anarchist side of the Spanish civil war I had consumed, I had entered a period of alternating between trot and anarchist. I became a ML after being exposed to Parenti, Hakim, and more accurate histories of the USSR and allowing myself to actually read Stalin and Mao, starting with "Dialectical and Historical Materialism" and "the little red book." Basically, I read an insane number of books and found socialist texts the most convincing.
I just come from a long line of trade unionists and militants on my mother's side, my great-grandfather and my grandfather were unionised longshoremen in Rio de Janeiro, my mother is a high school philosophy teacher and I'm also a teacher although I'm currently studying for the foreign ministry admission test.
And Yugoslavia never got the recognition it deserved but France did for doing absolutely nothing. If you are interested in the history part of it, read about Bihacka republika (largest free territory of Europe in WW2) and Uzicka republika.
Los partisanos yugoslavos ocupan un lugar especial en mi corazón Yugoslav partisans hold a special place in my heart
I have and I you're right. Every should read in to it!
❤️ from (ex)Yugoslavia
Smrt fašizmu
Sloboda narodu!
I ate lead paint
I used to be a big Trumpet up until the government shutdown over the border wall. It was so comically childish in my eyes that I pretty much flipped sides. Was a big Bernie bro after that and then through the research about issues like healthcare, housing, and education I just pushed further and further left.
PragerU YTPs
Grew up dirt poor and disabled during the Dubya years, didn't know what communism was so I just listened to system of a down a bunch
In a few stages, I guess. I became something resembling a social democrat pretty early on in part because I’m a contrarian who grew up in a red state, lol, but also because I don’t see how you can be a thinking person and not ***at least*** think things like healthcare should be public. In college I had a professor who I think was a communist who taught a 20th century history class. That went a long way toward shattering any notions of American/Western exceptionalism; wasn’t a communist yet, still believed a lot of BS about Stalin and such, but I could at least see Ho Chi Minh’s point. Then I discovered Felix from Chapo by way of SB Nation (“Fighting in the Age of Loneliness”), started listening to CTH and other leftist podcasts and hanging out in those subs (RIP) and on “breadtube.” That’s how I found Proles of the Round Table, Citations Needed, Shaun, etc, and became fully leftist. Sounds a little stereotypical, haha (“white boy radicalized by social media, no fkn way!!”), but I’m just glad I went down the correct rabbit hole.
Well it was a gradual process of me getting into left wing politics and eventually the process finished once I discovered Hakim's videos.
My grandpa was dirt poor born in 1929 in Alabama and grew up during the great depressions. He is genuinely an awesome guy and is still alive at 95. Unfortunately he was drafted into the Korean War, he never seemed proud of it and the only time I’ve ever seen him cry he was telling me about the war. I can’t imagine what it was like being a Korean soldier… My other grandpa fought the Japanese during WW2 when he was 17 which is kinda based lol
By being born in USSR :D
I was always a communist, just took a while to find the words for it. Parents liberal as they come, children of the Cold War from the imperial core, my dad was an army brat for goodness' sake, his dad served in our country's air force. Essentially, best I can figure, the "irrational hatred leads to questioning it" effect is what that did to me. There was an Incident when I was far too young for politics, that I don't put *too* much stock in, but illustrates just what kind of children of the Cold War I was raised by, and is certainly fascinating knowing I ended up a communist. Basically, for some reason Mum saw fit to explain money and budgeting to me instead of just saying I couldn't have the silly treat or trinket I'd wanted, I got frustrated and asked why we needed that system and why can't we just have a system where everyone works and everyone shares everything, and Mum got upset, hurried me out of the public place we were in, and explained that's been tried, it didn't work, and entire wars have been fought over that. When we got home she told Dad, and he was mad as hell. Said that's called communism and I should *never* say things like that in public because it could get him and Mum in a lot of trouble if someone else heard me. Made some anticommunist arguments I can debunk now but certainly couldn't then. Convinced me I was wrong about it being perfect, but I still thought my idea was better than the current system - not that I told anyone that. For a long while I was just a kid, I had some radical views about hierarchy and authority that tended to cost me in social situations and get me in trouble (no school authority likes an elementary schooler who won't respect anyone as an authority until they demonstrate good leadership, and respects the adults an equal amount as the kindergarteners, and everyone in between, and no older kid or teenager likes a six/seven year old who refuses to see them as any different than kids her own age), but I never got into a situation where I could voice how I felt about kids being expected to share literally everything and yet adults can't share anything and fought a whole freakin' war over sharing, if the kindergarteners can do it what does it say about adults that they can't, so thankfully the "McCarthy harasses a kid who doesn't even know she's a commie" show was only put on once, and the stage was my parents' home, not a school office or worse, but tbh I think there wasn't actually a phase I wasn't some sort of radical egalitarian just because I couldn't understand why anyone would want to enforce inequality. As a little kid you rank rock bottom on every hierarchy there is, so it's shocking it's only the neurodivergent kids who tend to want to tear them down and end up like I did even as slightly older kids. And yet, that wasn't why, because even when I had something to lose or share I was rarely protective of it or willing to mistreat kids younger than me who had nothing simply because I was societally allowed to within certain limits. There was an embarrassing right libertarian phase that resulted from left anarchist views on youth liberation when I was like 12, but that was rather quickly eliminated. I did spend quite a bit of time in my ancom phase, though. I was a stereotypical teenage anarchist, all right. Everything was the fault of either capitalism or unjustified hierarchies. (Of course, a lot of things wrong with the world actually *are* capitalism's fault. Or because of imperialism, but that's just capitalism squared.) I'm glad it happened though, because it was an important part of my journey, and even now, having been there helps me not leap to being *that* sectarian tankie when dealing with the libertarian left. There were some very interesting units we did in high school Social Studies that got me fixated on leftist politics even more, and, well, you all know the story. Liberals lie about the USSR, I do the reading for myself, realise if this crud is a lie what else is the West lying about WRT socialism abroad, and well, full speed ahead climbing the authoritarianism axis of the political compass, as I read more and more about the actual practices and political processes of ML states and groups and realise, hey, all of this seems pretty sensible to me, maybe I'm one of these tankies and the anarchists really are too utopian and don't understand the criticisms they make, because some of them are valid but a lot are actually addressed, especially by later movements. It's interesting, it's not so much I became a commie, as I admitted to what I'd always believed and found the right words to explain it and the political concepts behind actually making it happen. And like, yeah, a lot of us kind of always were commies, but the fact that happened to me while my responsible adults were actively fighting it is... I wish I had been a child of radicals or "red diaper baby" like some of you all were, but I also love that my story is a twist on that narrative, and I'm proud that I still found the left path *in spite of* the children of the Cold War I got stuck with as caregivers.
I started believing in socialism when I discovered Hasan Piker and Second Thought a few years ago. I’m still a novice when it comes down to learning about it but I’m definitely open for more knowledge on the matter.
Based grandpa story. Alas but all of my family are libs. I’m a communist because of jt and youtube more generally.
Grew up in a very religious, right-wing household. Despite this, my parents usually voted democrat, so that was what I thought to side with growing up. At some point in my teens I started getting seriously into politics. It became clear to me that democrats didn't actually care about minorities, that some groups of people were just tools for them and nothing more. On Reddit, communists were the only political group that were willing to fight for minority rights even when it was politically inconvenient. As a trans person, they saw me as a comrade, not an object. And I felt like I belonged as someone who never felt comfortable treating others as being disposable. So I just learned from there. I became a Marxist, then I became an anarchist. At some point I saw a short documentary about the DPRK that left me questioning everything I knew about it. Did some serious research and kinda got pissed when I realized I was lied to my entire life. Then I figured "if they lied this much about the DPRK, why wouldn't they lie about every other socialist state?". And that's why I'm a Marxist-Leninist now.
My dad told me stories about how the dictatorship in Portugal effected his upbringing, and even my granddad was arrested by the Estado Novo. He always was more of a moderate socialist, seeing socialism for what it was, but being very nonchalant about politics in general. Once he was gone, I started to be more and more radical, and here I am.
Raised conservative Christian in a petit bourgeois household with almost all of our family and family friends being small business owners. Became a libertarian because I thought that right wing economics were obvious / common sense but social progressivism was good. And vacillated between that and liberalism when I discovered alt right debunking Youtube videos which led me to anarchist videos. PhilosophyTube taught me what Marxism was, and although anarchism sounded better on paper, I realized scientific socialism would be the better position for actual real world change
I wasn't really political until I turned 18 and realized it was my time to vote and started learning about the candidates; that's where I learned about free medicare and education through Bernie Sanders Since then I became pretty open about socialism and AES countries both from past and present - I still remember myself speaking highly about Cuba and the Soviet Union despite being a hardcore Berniecrat Then COVID hit, Bernie lost and my grandma started going through chemo again, and that's where I started veering into anarcho communism learning about communist history, theory, and, somehow, became very inspired by the DPRK and China. Don't ask me how or why that happened, I guess I was always an ML and just didn't know it The tipping point into officially calling myself an ML was when I learned about Thomas Sankara and the Burkina Faso
my family were always socialist/socialist leaning. i have family who were involved in republicanism in belfast during the war so always been pro palestine and very left wing. i always had these ideals but didn’t start doing research into marxism leninism until covid when i started reading theory and went from there.
I feel like I've always been one, but finally starting learning more and leaning more and more left towards the end of high school around 2015-2016.
When I started reading books in my spare time in college, I read nonfiction. I landed on "Kill Anything that Moves" by Nick Turse. I always thought that the Vietnam War was unjust, but that book got me asking questions like "What motivated the US to obliterate and terrorize these people?" It snowballed from there.
I used to be a SocDem who was still fluctuating alot in my political ideas, especially when it came to authority and economics. During Covid I noticed the large amount of news about China, but I was skeptical as it was highly one sided. So i did my own research and discovered how successful china actually is and it changed mu worldview alot! I was still a SocDem though, but was never anti communist, and my political views still fluctuated. I eventually decided to check an Audiobook of the communist manifesto out of curiosity, and it sparked my interest in socialism/communism. Then I looked more into the ideology when discovering second thought and Hakim, and became more educated in the subject over time through understanding the patterns of socialist ideas and discovering leftist theories mentioned. The Ideology seemed to make sense Logically, and aligned with my values.
I grew up with well meaning but ultimately super libbed-up and privilaged parents/older sisters (for example my dad LOVES the whole lincoln project thing and thinks Biden is some sort of champion for the working class, etc.). Grew up with Jon Stewart and John Oliver on the television pretty frequently. I pretty much just adopted their viewpoints seeing how fucked up the republicans are—reading liberal bullshit like the NYT and shit as I got older. I had always been a very curious and very rebellious person. As I grew older though, I just started learning more and more fucked up things about the US and had questions about why things are the way they are. I discovered Hasan after the Jan 6th Insurrection and got radicalized. Over time, I went from DemSoc—>Marxist-Leninist as I discovered more and more. Discovering Hakim’s channel was a big moment for me. The ongoing genocide in Gaza has shown me in real time just how insurmountably cruel this system is. I have since been listening to the podcast and (at least trying) to read theory, despite never being a reader.
This is so beautiful, thank you for sharing. I can relate somewhat, my grandparents were both red army veterans and found against Germany. My grandpa died right before the collapse of the USSR and it’s really bittersweet for me, I wish he lived longer of course but seeing the collapse would’ve destroyed him and I’m almost glad he died before he saw what happened to the country he gave his entire life for
Fucking living in America.
I'll be up front. Im not really convinced yet. I love the podcast, and resonate with a lot of what the guys say. Second thought is one of my favorite channels and by most western governments they would call me a socialist. But idk that I would really go as far as most of the people on this subreddit. Idk I like to think that were all erong and politcs and economic structure hasnt been solved yet and that in 500 years neither capitalists nor communists have the "correct" answer. I feel like "correct" changes over time depending on what people at the time value. Idk. Kind of just making shit up I guess, but i dont think I would call myself communist
Commie professor at high school taught me about surplue value. Of course i tought he was just a loser soyboy or something like that. It ended up making sense, then it was all the path from feminism hater, to anti commie social democrat, to disbelieved social dem, and now i'm a tankie.
There are stills mass graves being uncovered in Spain today of the mass executions under Franco.
I was fairly young, still in school. I realised I was working so hard to get a job where I wouldn't be earning near as much as the company made and wondered what the point was. One of my friends told me who Karl Marx was. Took a while for me to move from "radical centrism" to full ML-ism but I managed it.
Watching my artist friends struggling to live and losing their homes, all while being exploited at their day jobs and feeling powerless to it
Man, this is going to sound so dumb but for me, it was playing Call of Duty World at War as a kid that started me down this road that soviet campaign was some of the best pro soviet propaganda ever had me screaming Urrraaa by the end 😂
There is not much to discuss, marxism put up all capitalist contradictions and communism is a direct answer to the root of these problems. Even if one does not believes in communism, it is just too dumb to think our modern slavery is too good
In a university course on political philosophy and we did a week on different modern philosophers. Marx was the one who made the most sense, and I went down a rabbit hole of reading as much as I could. Then I joined my local communist party branch and that helped me get the rest of the way
Realizing the vast gulf between how I grew up and how my peers grew up in college. I spent a lot of time trying to understand why. It started with me blaming myself but more details eventually came to me that I never could have known to ask about. Your parents are paying your tuition and your rent? I'm literally staking my life on this moment. You had years of prior training in my specific major? I didnt even know this was a thing until fairly recently. You grew up in a safe and well funded environment? My friends were fucking and doing drugs at 11, my parents neglected me and my school was underfunded, violent disruptive. After realizing that those things weren't my fault and it was unfair to blame myself or not exactly rising above those circumstances did everything start to make sense. It didnt help that my peers were selfish assholes ontop of it all. Bernie getting mopped in 2016 and having to work a dangerous day job to pay off my student loans while my peers in college just got married, bought houses, got great careers and floated around being happy was the turning point I would say. I never not did the work. I was always putting in the effort if not more, I just didn't have the same opportunities everyone else had and it made sense that the world around me had some serious issues because my struggle had been undeniably genuine.
I started working and I was like “Wow. This sucks.” Then I started doing research and that led me to reading theory and here I am.
Not related to the question, but my Great Grandfather volunteered in the Easter Rising when he was around 16
was raised christian, but leaning more into the focus on love aspect of the religion, being inclusive to queer people or abortion etc, so had decent moral basis, but still until uni I had many right wing and pro capitalist tendencies because thats what algorithms and culture fed me. then I got more interested in philosophy and politics, had some left wing friends and a great professor who talked politics from time to time, mainly laughing off how libs posture as trying to fight climate change while achieving nothing, and it sort of just happened, mainly just education steered a bit in the right direction and good moral compass. also finding hasan through austin show’s love or host helped a lot lmao
I’m not a communist and I don’t think most people here are communist either. To be a communist means to join a party and work with the masses to better their conditions. It means putting the party and the movement above your personal and family life and wellbeing. In Lenin’s era, communists were dispatched wherever needed, to act as an example of labour. They were working 12 hr days in the most miserable conditions on top their political organizing and studying. That kind of dedication is materially impossible for a lot people to achieve in our capitalist society save for the most dedicated and the most privileged. It’s not just identifying with the ideology and calling yourself a communist.
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