Studying MLK and Civil Rights Movements while watching the BLM movement struggle against the same adversity and inequality in real-time, almost 60 years later.
Yep my parents are conservative christian and told me to be kind and considerate when i was growing up. Who knew that automatically made me a socialist by today's standards. very odd
Right there with you. Conservative private high school and college, and wow, we had people from other countries with non-Christian beliefs going to class with us. The GOP merger with Evangelicalism changed everything.
All the kids cartoons that told me to be nice to people, followed by all the violence I was subjected to by everyone from police to teachers to bosses to the feds for trying to be nice to people. And yet they're continually shocked by radicalization.
I realized that Optimus Prime would be disappointed in me if I behave like capitalism demanded and that was pretty much where I took a hard left towards Communism.
Well, Luke Skywalker was kind and respectful towards all kinds of alien people no matter how different they were, and I couldn't square that with American society, and if you ask a 12 year old bullied child to choose between America and the Force he's gonna choose the Force.
Jesus loves the little children / all the children of the world / red and yellow, black and white / they are precious in his sight / Jesus loves the little children of the world.
When someone tried to justify why people on welfare were a drain on society and resources.
I benefitted from the welfate system. My parents had SNAP and WIC benefits. They also are two of the most hardworking people i know. And Im scared for their retirement because Gen-X got screwed.
I was raised southern baptist. terrified of burning in hell forever. so I took what jesus said really serious, which alienated me from other american christians and slowly over decades turned me into a marxist/humanist/radical.
I lived through the government sponsored murder of JFK, Waco, KC Bombings, Christmas Day Nashville explosion, Las Vegas Shooting, 9/11 and on and on the list goes. 65 years of government nefariousness.
I'm not sure about radicalised, but watching Fern Gully as a kid definitely sent me down the path of wanting to protect animal rights, which in turn led me to environmental protection. I think I might have been pretty central politically otherwise.
my girlfriend recently introduced me to the argentine saying "el que tiene y no convida tiene un sapo en la barriga"(rimes)
who has and does not share has a frog in their belly.
Not being allowed to eat Granny Smith apples because they came from apartheid South Africa. Having an African Madonna & Child painting in the living room. I'm white, born in '61.
Well, a neighboring country attacked mine on 02/24/2022. Then I wanted to radically resolve the issue of its existence. This desire has not yet passed.
I was told that God is love, not to judge others, and the GOP is for small government - then watched as Christians and Republicans took rights away from LGBT people.
Being 🍇 by a classmate at school every day for years as a child and the school administrations, my parents, and the police came after, blamed, and threatened me rather than the perpetrator.
1965, aged 17, I was doing street collection for the Churchill Foundation.
To me, and everyone I knew, Winston Churchill was a hero. War leader, saviour of the nation, recently honoured with a State Funeral. So what I was doing was uncontroversial......
Until I knocked on the door of a small terraced house in a row wedged onto a small plot in the town centre. I was sent away with a stream of strong language ringing in my ears. Only one word stuck: Tonypandy. Look it up; I did.
I think learning that Christopher Columbus was a grave robbing rapist in 4th grade from reading a book outside my school library was the initial moment.
The black, gay, and immigrant men I served with in Iraq and Afghanistan that came home in a box, just have their own government piss on their sacrifices.
Right wingers tell us the teachers are indoctrinating kids into socialism. --- Teachers teach kids not to bully each other. Teachers teach us to accept and even value differences. Teachers teach us that we should get something better if we work harder. --- Is all that socialism?
Yeah, mostly it was just kindergarten and my mom making me feel a duty to being good to people. Having a powerful innate sense of justice that got me into trouble a lot as a kid didn't hurt either.
I had a radical epiphany when I was a kid, I grew up poorer than most of my peers, and I really didn't like how isolating and embarrassing it could be as a teenager. I had this radical thought of "Id really hate for someone to feel the way I do now, and If I can help them avoid this feeling I will".
Growing up in rural Mississippi while having a love of books and learning combined with more than three firing neurons radicalized me. It’s wild to walk around as a kid knowing you’re surrounded by mental zombies.
Christ, right? Stay quiet, stay out of sight, never express an opinion about *anything*. "anti-intellectualism" doesn't convey the social or the physical violence of it.
Born and raised here in the Delta. I’ve been to some beautiful places throughout my life, but couldn’t stay away from this hellhole. Folks here need help, and I just can’t seem to abandon this place. 🖤
2016 my friends and I all joke we were defecting to Canada. Then I realized I'm in one of the most privileged positions in the world and it would be an insult to the human races if I ran away from my opportunity to change things for the better.
idk i'm fucking stupid, know plenty of far-right chuds who are objectively much smarter than me, yet they've completely missed the memo on the very "radical" ideas like people shouldn't have to work just to exist.
I saw bullies win.
I watched my single mother battle society daily.
I saw how the system was brutally biased against her.
I saw our car go up in flames, and no one cared.
I saw rage and violence be respected.
I read The Hobbit at 10.
When the Sunday school teacher had us spend all day making a wooden optical illusion that said "Slave" when you tilted it 45 degrees...that probably did it.
They told me Jesus wanted me to love everyone, and I was too young and autistic to understand they didn't actually mean *everyone*. Eventually I got it, but the Jesus thing seemed better and required less doublethink, even after I stopped believing in him.
I was told once as a young child that I should treat others as I would like to be treated, It just made sense to me.
Comrade, what didn’t make sense was all of the stuff those same people said and did in the 2 decades after that.😬
what radicalized me? If you mean radicalized as in treat everyone with dignity, a sense of right and wrong, and the courage to stand up to fascism. Then I blame literacy, the teachings of Christ, and comprehending the Constitution.
The most extreme push was seeing my nation's gov't would rather push disabled people to die by doctors than help them out of the financial struggles the government put those disabled people into.
Society decided to worship the most corrupt and vile people possible, which made my previously common views about freedom and multiculturalism radical.
Thinking of myself on the first day of kindergarten, handing out sympathy & Kleenex to all the kids who were crying at being away from their parents. Ya no. I was like ‘hello… this is refreshing- perhaps I should automatically care for others so somebody will like me’ - A PATTERN IS BORN
They asked me do I know why you should pay taxes as a Dyslexia and Dysgraphia assessment text. And the answer "to take care of need of people and help others" was marked as right.
Studied Psychology and realized Capitalism is making all of us sicker every day, while keeping access to mental health care and to adequate living conditions away from most people.
Preach! One of my favorite books of all time is “God bless you, Mr. Rosewater.” In it the protagonist asks why, when life is so hard anyway, should we deprive people of money on top of that.
As kids we voted on things. Since I had 3 older sisters and no brothers I never got my way. I’ve never had confidence in the so called democratic process.
That is the worst possible thing a godbotherer could say to an eight year old. Like, do you want someone to declare war on god? Tell a kid that dinosaurs aren't real.
Doing my own thinking in a childhood home that was free of doctrine. And maybe those times, of the Vietnam War, serial assassination and the resignation of a disgraced president. Institutional authority went into the toilet in my formative years.
My most right wing cousin gets triggered by the toddler clean up song. “Clean up clean up everybody everywhere. Clean up clean up everybody do your share.”
In 6th grade (03, yt school in KS) we had an assembly where kids were given good student awards. This girl named Sabah Hussein won the ultimate student prize. All the kids booed at her & made fun of her name. No teacher tried to stop them & the principal said nothing. She never came back to school.
Reading an essay in about 6th grade called "The Pilgrims Try Communism" (or something like that).
The punchline is that I'd also recently read Acts of the Apostles. The Communism described in the school essay was strikingly similar to Acts (ch.4–5). Just the latter was Christianity.
Sunday school: "Jesus loves the little children, ALL the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white, ALL are precious in his sight."
Shocked that Jesus stops when they are grown, and only cares about white men and white women who follow the white men.
Actually, it wasn't School House Rock or anything like that. It was, of all things, learning about the 1877 Wormley Act (Compromise of 1877) from a rabbit hole and then after 2019 it was the scene from the Addams family where I felt like this:
And then The Last Kingdom up to S1 E8 radicalized me even further in 2022 to the point I was like, you know what? Maybe Skynet and the Danes were onto something.
Sunday School. I believed that stuff about feeding the hungry, love thy neighbor,etc. I just didn't realize that very few of the people in the pews actually believed in Christianity.
Getting tear-gassed and shot at with rubber bullets by suited-up stormtroopers for protesting the WTO in Seattle, maybe. Didn’t make me like the military-backed economy like they thought it would.
My parents talking about Brown vs Board of Education; watching TV showing schools being integrated with needed law enforcement support; JFK was assassination; MLK Jr and another Kennedy assassination. I think I could go on
Grandma telling me how she was beaten by police while fighting tooth and nail to keep students out of jail (she was a public defender) in the aftermath of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City. She was the "red sheep" of our tragically rightwing family. And she passed on the mantle to me ☭
My abusive parents taught me how to read. That was their mistake. Lol. They were the first ones I rebelled against once I learned that their abuse wasn't normal and it was wrong. Books taught me that. Now I see injustice everywhere.
I was raised in a Christian household and paid attention in Sunday School to what the verses said.
Apparently that now makes me a "godless commie" or something.
Watching Chris Hedges cover our bipartisan foreign policy in the Gulf War and Bosnian War as a tween. I knew then I could never support what the US of A does.
The realization that we treat Smaug like a villain for hoarding gold and celebrate Robin Hood but once you hit the capitalist world we inverse those beliefs and values.
I was told by notorious forces to do unto others as I would have them do unto me. I was also brainwashed to believe that it's a good thing to help people who are suffering. Totally radicalized beyond repair.
"Treat others how you want to be treated" because why are people treating people like shit and expecting them not to be upset or feel some type, like if you're you're an asshole to me, I'm just gonna pretend like you don't exist, I will throw your energy back to you
I said this as a joke around my at the time 2 year old, and it stuck. It's so funny hearing it from a little kid. 3 years later, he still gets upset if he tries to share something with you, and you say no because he thinks it means you don't care.
I think folks should be able to get healthcare and food and enjoy life. I like potholes filled in a reasonable amount of time. This makes me a wild-eyed radical.
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All the kids cartoons that told me to be nice to people, followed by all the violence I was subjected to by everyone from police to teachers to bosses to the feds for trying to be nice to people. And yet they're continually shocked by radicalization.
I realized that Optimus Prime would be disappointed in me if I behave like capitalism demanded and that was pretty much where I took a hard left towards Communism.
Well, Luke Skywalker was kind and respectful towards all kinds of alien people no matter how different they were, and I couldn't square that with American society, and if you ask a 12 year old bullied child to choose between America and the Force he's gonna choose the Force.
You let me watch Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers every morning did you really think I was going to buy in to your empire of war, race terror, and hate?
David the fucking Gnome, that's who!
I benefitted from the welfate system. My parents had SNAP and WIC benefits. They also are two of the most hardworking people i know. And Im scared for their retirement because Gen-X got screwed.
Discovering that Covid came from a lab, after I’d believed the scientific story that it came from bats in a seafood market.
who has and does not share has a frog in their belly.
Well, a neighboring country attacked mine on 02/24/2022. Then I wanted to radically resolve the issue of its existence. This desire has not yet passed.
And I have been spiraling down the road of empathy and compassion ever since.
Hanging out with a good crowd……committing random acts of kindness……
In the long run she meant mow the lawn but the sentiment is true.
Except I went to all those places and times.
To me, and everyone I knew, Winston Churchill was a hero. War leader, saviour of the nation, recently honoured with a State Funeral. So what I was doing was uncontroversial......
1/2
October 25th 1993 is my happy place
I watched my single mother battle society daily.
I saw how the system was brutally biased against her.
I saw our car go up in flames, and no one cared.
I saw rage and violence be respected.
I read The Hobbit at 10.
Now I have an "attitude".
#FuckThePatriarchy
The GOP cares but only for its wealthy benefactors.
Comrade, what didn’t make sense was all of the stuff those same people said and did in the 2 decades after that.😬
Lame maybe but it’s the truth.
In the 80s.
Forty years of pushing recycling (which we don't even do anymore) instead of societal change.
The punchline is that I'd also recently read Acts of the Apostles. The Communism described in the school essay was strikingly similar to Acts (ch.4–5). Just the latter was Christianity.
Shocked that Jesus stops when they are grown, and only cares about white men and white women who follow the white men.
https://youtu.be/lAP4adYaT3U?si=TDlqhqmdQOOK1yL_
Matthew 19:24
Apparently that now makes me a "godless commie" or something.
Gulliver's Travels helped too.
Also, actually reading the Bible.