How did you become a leftist?

[Stand Your Ground]

What made you become a leftist?

For me, it started with an anti-Nazi patch I came across while school clothes shopping a few years ago. I remembered my 8th grade teacher teaching us about the Holocaust so I bought it and thought to myself, wow if they're still making these there must be some serious problem with white supremacists lol. I went home and did some research online, saw some stuff but then it kinda faded away from me for awhile. Then about a year later I came across the Nazis Make Good Targets compilation album, listened to it, liked it and started searching for more anti-racist music. For awhile it just kinda about music for me. Then I saw an Antifa video on Youtube and researched that, which opened the doors on the whole leftist world, and now here I am!

[Vendetta]

Uh...my life experiences, and where my education led me.

But also, because it should be said, the Clash.:thumbup1: I believe they were the first who introduced me to leftist ideals.

[Qayin]

Propagandhi, Sex Pistols, Anti-Flag, The Unseen and the Iraq war.

Oh and i was a hardcore liberal before this.

[Jazzratt]

Carefully

[Sentinel]

Carefully

I came to think of the old joke: how exactly do hedgehogs make love?

[Il Medico]

dunno. Kinda just did.

[gorillafuck]

When I was a freshman in high school some senior was being really friendly towards me because he recognized that we liked the same bands and he started an SDS chapter and asked me to join. So I did and became more interested in politics.

[Comrade B]

I come from a Marxist family, my parents were dirt poor most of their lives. I got a lot of influence from a family friend in the Teamsters

[Mumbles]

Rage Against the Machine led to EZLN led to references of Marxism led to Marxist.org. Also during that time I joined a commie group in cybernations (hey Q and others!) who helped me start looking around the ideas and different ideologies.

[Invincible Summer]

Rage Against the Machine led to EZLN led to references of Marxism

This. Plus sociology really helped too

[RHIZOMES]

Came from working class single-parent family household struggling to make ends meet. Discovered Rage Against the Machine and Chomsky at fifteen, became this sort of vague libertarian socialist who vacillated between anarchism and Trotskyism. Then I developed some materialist analysis and shook off the last vestiges of liberalism I had after I joined the Workers Party and became a Marxist-Leninist.

[Die Rote Fahne]

My brother.

[which doctor]

playing red alert, suspicion that I was being lied to about Cuba, but reading the Communist Manifesto sealed the deal. this was when I was 13-14

[Chimurenga.]

Rage Against The Machine and punk rock.

[Raúl Duke]

I wanted to make the world better so I looked up and read shit up
So I read No Logo and some Chomsky.
Later I meet some leftist friends, read up on anarchism, and was like "Well let's give it a shot."
Afterwards I joined this site.

[Invincible Summer]

playing red alert, suspicion that I was being lied to about Cuba, but reading the Communist Manifesto sealed the deal. this was when I was 13-14

Are you referring to RA2 and the Cuban terrorists that blow themselves up? That shit was bonkers.

The game was sooo good though... "It will be a silent spring!!" *turns area into radioactive fallout zone*

[A Revolutionary Tool]

Mostly my conditions. I had been listening to leftist music(Although I knew nothing about the politics or a thing about economics, it was just rebellious which I liked) I just remember one day my sister and I were talking about gun control. She told me we should ban guns because they were causing too much violence(It had been a violent year in my area). I told her that maybe people wouldn't go around shooting each other if we weren't all so poor. She responded by saying "But then we would be communist" in a disdainful voice, which surprised me. That's when I started looking up what communism was. My sister would be so pissed if I told her it was her that got me interested in communism :laugh:

[which doctor]

Are you referring to RA2 and the Cuban terrorists that blow themselves up? That shit was bonkers.

The game was sooo good though... "It will be a silent spring!!" *turns area into radioactive fallout zone*
yeah, red alert 2 was pretty nuts, but I think the first one was the best. I remember the music being a lot better for the soviets than it was for the allies, and all the tanks and troops werecheaper, though shittier, for the soviets.

[Barry Lyndon]

Living in Egypt and visiting the occupied Palestinian territories before I was 11 years ago gave me a critical view of US foreign policy from a young age. And then when I was about 12 I went on a road trip to Yellowstone National Park and passed through a Native American reservation, which made my view of the United States more critical still. At 13 I read the Communist Manifesto for the first time, and soon after started reading the writings of Che Guevara and Malcolm X. I held the 'its-nice-in-theory-but-it-can't-work' feeling throughout much of high school still, and was essentially a social democrat, but by the time I was finished with high school I had jettisoned that entirely and become a full-blown Marxist, as I am today.

[Tablo]

Haha, I fucking loved Red Alert 2. It was such anti-communist bs, but was a pretty solid game. StarCraft 2 is better(have played it like crazy since I got my beta key).

Long story short I was told my Jewish friend would burn in hell for not believing in Jesus and started to doubt religion. About 8-9 years later I come to the conclusion that religion is a lie and start to look at things I was also lied about and see the government is full of shit. Upon studying the reality of the world I come across Communist ideals and decide to read it for the lolz. Then I realized it was the most agreeable political ideology I had ever heard of and have been a Commie ever since. :cool:

[Nolan]

I started out as an incoherent political mess. My dad is liberal-oriented Catholic from South America and I grew up in an ultra-conservative part of America. I went to a religious private school until my sophomore year of high school. Even in high school there girls have to wear a dress that covers their ankles and cannot let any of their stomach or lower back show. Letting any skin other than their face and arms show will result in an automatic detention and a scolding from the teacher. Boys really have no strict dress code other than shirt and tie. They tried to drill all kinds of disgusting shit in my head there. I remember watching some documentary in the 4th or 5th grade they got from some Christian organization on the evils of communism. They told us that in communism the government takes all your parents money and you'll be killed if you try to go to church or say something about Jesus. Of course, like all my pupils I was raised on a steady diet of "traditional family values," homophobia, intolerance to other religions, hatred of science and rational thought (I was a creationist until the 7th grade), and other bigotry all under the guise of "love for others." I got in big trouble in elementary school for telling another student (not the whole class) that evolution sorta makes sense because people can breed new dog breeds. She turned me in. I had to go in front of the class and "recant." People looked at me weird for a long time afterward and kept asking me if I was saved. The guy that was my best friend from there is a cop now and a closet white-nationalist. He has told me. I haven't seen him since the county fair last year, though...

In Jr High my grades were terrible and I got into trouble constantly. It was about that time I started to rebel against the brainwashing. Eventually I started to browse this site (http://www.talkorigins.org/) constantly, and eventually started to feel I wasn't a Christian, but an agnostic or atheist. I remember actually being afraid sometimes that god was real and he would punish me or something stupid like that. So yeah, for two years or so I constantly argued with myself about creationism vs evolution and theism vs non-theism. You know which side won. ;) After I dumped Christianity, any anti-leftist, homophobic, and sexist viewpoints I had went away.

I moved to the public school. It was a shock. I had a spell were I called myself a libertarian, but that didn't last long. I was really apolitical for a long time after that. Then I found the band KMFDM. Around the same time, the movie V for Vendetta combined with that got me kinda interested in politics, and I for a long time I even had an :blackA: or just a black and red flag as my desktop background. I was really just a liberal and in no way a serious anarchist now that I look back on it, but I had an interest in anarcho-syndicalism cuz it looked cool on Wikipedia. I think had I found this site then, I would probably be an anarchist now. After that followed another looong period of apoliticalness. Skipping a looong time (two years or so) of irrelevant-to-the-story, I got interested in Marx for whatever reason, then called myself a socialist. Eventually I was calling myself a Luxembourgist/council communist. One day, I googled "leftist forum" and found you guys. :thumbup1: After talking to some people I slowly but surely made my way over to ML. And whaddya know, here I am, a free mind in college.

[AK]

Propagandhi, Sex Pistols, Anti-Flag, The Unseen and the Iraq war.

Oh and i was a hardcore liberal before this.
Minus sex pistols and the unseen then it makes up part of why I became a commie.

The other reason was that there was this Russian sub teacher (Mrs. Gull, or, affectionately, Comrade Gull [w/ russian accent]) and we made all sorts of jokes about her. One day, I decided, like Tsuake, to read up on Marxism, for teh lulz. And that's exactly what I did.

[Tyrlop]

i was bord?

[Il Medico]

Oh, you mean how got interested? Saw some protest, guy had a Che shirt. i looked up who he was thought he was cool ( I was 14). Went to buy a shirt, found the Che-lives and che store. Bought a shirt. Read there (che-lives) that he was a Marxist, looked that up. Said "bah communism", but then reconsidered, bought the Manifesto. Liked it. Came back to che -lives a year/year and a half later, joined the site. When I joined this site, I was floating somewhere between Social-democrat, Trot, and ML (weird combo I know). But I finally shook off the last vestiges of reactionary, anti-working class politics and became a Left Com. :p

[Mendax]

Propagandhi, Sex Pistols, Anti-Flag, The Unseen and the Iraq war.

Oh and i was a hardcore liberal before this.
This although throw in Rage Against The Machine in a big, big way.

[Spawn of Stalin]

My Mum's an social libertarian/anarchist, my uncle worked with the Class War folks. Grew up around lots of left wing literature, anarchist and Marxist classics, anti-Vietnam war posters, leaflets from the miners strike, newspaper clippings of the poll tax riots, used to go to marches with my family, ate disgusting vegan food, all the things you could expect from an anarchist child. Then one day I said screw it, and pledged allegiance to Comrade J. V. Stalin.

That's my life in a nutshell.

[Zanthorus]

My memories a little hazy but...

When I was a kid I was an apolitical conservative. I didn't give a fuck about actual politics I was just very homophobic, sexist and patriotic. I remember hearing about the Iraq war and being all excited by the prospect of blowing up people in some other country...

For some reason about the second I hit puberty I became an apolitical liberal. Again, I didn't give a fuck about politics because it mostly seemed irrelevant to my day to day life. I just had a vague feeling that discrimination was unjust and everyone should be free to develop their full potential.

Both of those were more vague feelings than political stances though. I guess because I didn't watch any TV besides cartoons and never really went on the internet. When I finally decided to have a looksee round some of the more interesting corners of the web including international news sites etc my perspective started to broaden. I quickly became a libertarian, sucked in by the rhetoric about "freedom" without really bothering to research it. Actually my perspective was probably still broadly left-liberal. I just didn't realise the consequences of free-markets.

All the hype around Obama's election (Yes, we had that here in the UK as well) and the whole national healthcare thing made me realise that the whole libertarianism thing was only going to serve to fuck over the poor. And then of course the GFC hit the world and my families finances. Eventually I discovered Noam Chomsky on youtube and started watching a load of his videos and everything he said about Imperialism, capitalism, democracy etc really struck a chord with me. I basically developed out from there.

[DecDoom]

I was interested in Communism from about 8th grade, although it was more or less soviet fetishism than anything else, I really knew nothing about it. I considered myself a Libertarian (in the American sense) for a while, but on the way back from a trip to New York, we passed the back of Philadelphia (we went by train). It was a depressing mess of run-down shanties and half-standing huts. It didn't really click with me then, but shortly thereafter I started to question the validity of an economic system that allows something like that to happen. I investigated communism again, started to actually learn something about it, and joined this website.

[Linkse Rakker]

My parents are Marxist-Leninist, they were revolutionairy's in Turkey back in the 90's. Some people of my family were guerillas and some people I knew have done a dead fast (hunger strike to the dead). I grew up seeing a lot of revolutionairy's and still I see a lot of them. So it would be weird if I were not a Communist.

[The Ben G]

Well, both my parents are liberals, so I started getting involved in Left wing Politics (at least what is considered the left in 'Mericuh). Also, punk rock.

[Stand Your Ground]

Interesting. Good thread. I see music does influence us to check shit out.

[ChrisK]

I attempted an actual chronology of this in a different thread, but it didn't turn out so well. So many changes and in such a short time makes for blurred memories. Well, here's a basic outline.

I grew up in a Luthren family and was a so-called conservative democrat (right of Clinton but thought he was the shit). I remember the Iraq invasion and thinking that we were going to kick Iraqs ass and I was damn proud of it.

Around seventh grade I wanted to join the Marines or the Army and try to be special ops. Thought that would be cool.

In eighth grade I read two books, the bible cover-to-cover (well almost, I skipped some of the law and Psalms) and the communist manifesto. First reaction to reading the bible was, "What the hell? I believed most of this?" I considered my self a christian still, right up till high school where I went from deist, to agnositic, to atheist.

My reaction to the communist manifesto launched a series of changes in my views that lead me to, in no particular order, social democract, green, democratic socialism, orthodox marxist, marxist-leninists, maoist, orthodox trotskyist, council communist and anarcho-syndicalist.

When I went to college I ran into the ISO and became, mostly, the person you see today.

Why I read the communist manifesto was mostly curiosity at why people believed in communism and a belief in learning everyone's view points (the same reason I read Mein Kampf [quick capsule review "piece of shit"]).

[SammXVX]

My mom says she's an independent, but i was raised in a leftist household, with a lot of room for free thought.

I started listening to the Clash and stuff in third grade, but obviously i didn't understand a lot of the communist views in Joe's songs.
These last few years though, my eyes have been pried open. I can blame either Human Rights issues or Animal Rights issues. Both of which, made me realize that this government does not care enough, and a lot of the people you meet don't either. Further and further did my hate grow, knowing that nothing was changing. Then, I realized how strong people are. If the like minded people are united, we can change things. That's why I live Left.

[More Fire for the People]

Good books and life experience.

[Crusade]

My teacher gave me a lot of books about Malcolm X in middle school and I saw his quotes against capitalism. At that time, I honestly thought "capitalism", "freedom" and "democracy" were the same thing since I saw them together all the time. I looked it up and after looking up the definition of the millions(and millions :lol: rock joke) of words I didn't understand my mind was blown. Since I did so much of my research independently it helped me become very critical of EVERY single thing I read to form my own beliefs. Then I read up on the Black Panther Party and saw they were Maoists. Then I found out Dead Prez was a communist rap group, then RATM, then several entertainers I loved. There were so many beliefs I've had my entire life, but never truly saw in practice politically. Or at least said to me. That's probably why I never paid much attention to politics because I felt like I would be screwed either way. I think the first thing that comes to anyone is just that depressing weight of awareness. You learn a bunch of bad things and take the rose colored glasses off and it's really sad after that. When it finally occurred to me that the world doesn't have to be the way that it is, I actually became a much happier person, even happier than I was with the glasses on. :cool:

[CChocobo]

Well my dad is a moderate, and my mom is very liberal, (but not necessarily extreme leftist) But basically as a teenager listening to punk bands like MDC, Propagandhi, Crass, etc. Before that i was very much apolitical. Then i started reading about what these bands were saying. Started getting into Marxism, and read a lot of Marx's writings, realized i liked his ideas but i was more afraid of how authoritarian things would still be. And thus i got into Anarchism, and started reading stuff by anarchist thinkers (proudhon, bakunin, kropotkin, stirner etc.) And that's how i basically became a leftist. :)

[Chambered Word]

My mother's a Ruddite liberal type and my father's a Hansonite; I swear though, he'd be a communist if he hadn't heard so much shit about Lenin and wasn't so racist. I was pretty much raised as an atheist and later research and pondering has only strengthened my convictions. Anyway, I heard about socialism from someone at school around 8th grade, it was kind of a freak thing I guess. Over a couple of years my attitudes went from being liberal to social democratic and eventually I had learned enough to say I was a Marxist. I began to be interested in Trotskyism immediately and that's the ideology I associate with now, although I didn't understand it for a while. I was slipping in and out of having anti-Leninist attitudes for a while. This was only over the period of a few years - I'm in the 11th grade now. :)

[StoneFrog]

The major ideas behind socialism and such i had since a kid, but never knew what it was.
Only when i moved to Canada from the UK did i really learn about the left from a social studies class in high school. But the teacher didn't give us a correct description of what communism is, it was still full of misconceptions. Never the less its basically started me on trying to find my ideology.

First became a communist supporter then an anarchist now settling in the middle of them as a libertarian Marxists.

[Comrade B]

The first time I was ever called a communist was after writing a paper in 5th grade about baseball players demanding higher wages. We were supposed to write whether we thought players should get more, I wrote that everyone should get a baseball player's wage. It didn't really understand inflation, but I am proud to think that I had those ideas when I was a little kid

[deadmeat1471]

'What made you become a leftist?'

I studied history as a hobby.

:D

[Qayin]

Minus sex pistols and the unseen then it makes up part of why I became a commie.

Sad to say but Anarchy in the UK made me look up anarchism haha

The Unseens Explode album is a force to be reckoned with if your a sprouting leftist teen