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Political Conversions?
A few years ago, I was a far-right paranoid lunatic who believed that Communism was trying to destroy my country, that Putin was a Communist, that homosexuality was a Communist conspiracy, that Obama was a Socialist. America didn't and doesn't do anything wrong, the rest of the secular world is wrong. Christianity got a bad rap in the media, and Islam got a free pass. America is a Christian country, why didn't they understand that?
I was a Conservative...
A couple years ago, I blamed every problem in the world on "Socialism" and I believed that the free market, if it only was allowed to function, would solve all the world's problems. I thought Obama was a Socialist, Alan Greenspan was a Socialist, George Bush was a Socialist and Ben Bernanke was a Socialist. I was tired of the Empire, and I wanted the troops home and the murder overseas to end.
I was a Libertarian...
Today, I believe that human beings are more important than profit. That the purpose of life isn't to simply accumulate exorbitant amounts of money and endless consumer products. I am still tired of the Empire, why does the US have to murder hundreds of thousands to kill one hundred terrorists? I notice the wealth gap increasing as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and they are still complaining about the "oppressive" tax policies in place, despite 1/4th of them not paying any income tax.
I am a Socialist.
On that related note, has anyone else had political conversions before? I'd like to know the reasons why you left that behind, or some details about it. I think it'd help me try to analyze my own reasons for such a huge paradigm shift in only a few years.
I am convert from conservatism. I used to be a hardcore Christian fundy (creationism and all) as well as conservative who hated all those damn liberals and though global warming was a conspiracy. Now I'm an agnostic atheist and a Socialist. I would say it started when I began reading philosophy and thinking critically about my own beliefs. I realized that the way society is structured now is not human oriented at all. It is only slightly better than feudalism (John Dewey calls Capitalism "Industrial Feudalism"). I realized that we must structure society around making human beings live fully self-actualized lives, or else why the hell do we have society?
The inability to obtain our cultural goal of material wealth but the overt reference to the means to obtain that wealth can be referred to as ritualism.
I reject the goals as well as the means!
I used to be a homophobic white supremacist with a love of Christianity and the military, I was so viciously patriotic and ignorant. Then I started reading questioning everything I knew and I still do this. I'm something politically speaking, a mix of marxist, anarchist, and a variety of other flavors, with no defined tendency. I am just my self. It took me 9-10 years to get where I am now and I'm almost 22.
"But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first free-thinker and emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge." ~Mikhail Bakunin
lol i love the use of the word "conversion" and "convert" in these kinds of threads.
I'm on some sickle-hammer shit
Collective Bruce Banner shit
FKA: #FF0000, AKA Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath
Likewise! Like it's some kind religion to be joined, followed and obeyed. I've had people try to convert me to Judaism... I've never seen a social revolutionist convert anyone, maybe I'm not in the right area for morons who try to convert people politically speaking.
"But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first free-thinker and emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge." ~Mikhail Bakunin
Lenin came to me when I most needed him.
"We have seen: a social revolution possesses a total point of view because – even if it is confined to only one factory district – it represents a protest by man against a dehumanized life" - Marx
"But to push ahead to the victory of socialism we need a strong, activist, educated proletariat, and masses whose power lies in intellectual culture as well as numbers." - Luxemburg
fka the greatest Czech player of all time, aka Pavel Nedved
No. I had my understanding of the world altered to a significant extent as a response, or a set of ways to respond (ongoing as we speak) to actual student occupation of higher education institutions and its limitations and relevant social conditions. The slogan of "emancipating education for all" was a neuralgic point of its own - and today I'd say the height of both class ideology and illusion of the movement back then. Til the infamous end of the occupations I had come to question the fundamentals of social democracy (which implies also the fundamentals of the social world we act in). Some time after that I rejected it.
FKA LinksRadikal
“The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialized production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day by day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties – this possibility is now for the first time here, but it is here.” Friedrich Engels
"The proletariat is its struggle; and its struggles have to this day not led it beyond class society, but deeper into it." Friends of the Classless Society
"Your life is survived by your deeds" - Steve von Till
Naturally I've always disliked conservatives from a young age, but I also did not like Communism as I thought it literally aimed to have us live like the movie Equilibrium.
I wish death on everyone who works for the Department for Work and Pensions.
No one was born a Communist. Even if your parents were Communists, and you were brought up a Communist - Communism is something you have to personally appropriate, something that encompasses the mind and heart as a whole. In moments of intensified class struggle for the worker, this 'appropriation' or 'possession' comes as quick as being struck by lightening as a result of the innate mass-mobilizing tendency of Communism. But in moments like these, it is immensely difficult, there is no rest for any Marxist.
[FONT="Courier New"] “We stand for organized terror - this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Revolution and of the new order of life. ”
― Felix Dzerzhinsky [/FONT]
لا شيء يمكن وقف محاكم التفتيش للثورة
I was raised a progressive, so to speak. My "conversion" to communism happened because of teachers' strike and police (I said it already in another thread).
"We have seen: a social revolution possesses a total point of view because – even if it is confined to only one factory district – it represents a protest by man against a dehumanized life" - Marx
"But to push ahead to the victory of socialism we need a strong, activist, educated proletariat, and masses whose power lies in intellectual culture as well as numbers." - Luxemburg
fka the greatest Czech player of all time, aka Pavel Nedved
One day while watching fox news I was screaming along with Bill O'Reilly about the plague of communism in our midst. That night, Marx came to me in a dream to warn me of the great proletarian uprising as foretold in the Manifesto and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The next day I was baptized into socialism by the local Communist Party and pledged my allegiance to the one true working class.
tl;dr: I used to be right-wingish, if that makes sense. I never really had a label for myself politically because I never actually thought about politics until I was older and when I did start thinking about politics I chose socialism. I never "converted"; my politics are developing everyday.
FKA Red Godfather
I used to be a socialist when I was at university, because all the cool people were. Then I started reading Nietzsche and was convinced that lust for power underlay all forms of political behavior. Now I am apolitical.
http://ppe.mercatus.org/
Instead of posting why I "turned to Communism," I'll explain why I'm a prodigal son.
I was mixing Anarchist and Maoist stuff in my head, and getting frustrated with the amount of organized revolutionary activity in my area. I just sort of fell off the bandwagon I guess. It was easier to support liberalism and reform, especially when all your friends have graduated university and are turning into liberal yuppies.
But seeing all the fucked up shit that's going on in the world these days, especially with the open abuse of capitalist state power (e.g. what's going down in Ferguson), something just clicked and I realized that voting can't change this shit. The problem is inherent in the system.
We've got your war!
We're at the gates!
We're at your door!
We've got the guillotine...
I would describe my association with communism as a 'conversion' primarily because it is dissonant with my ego, so I've fought it every step of the way and still keep coming back to it. It doesn't 'fit' with my (fairly conventional) understanding of the history of the USSR and it's brutality, and with my more liberal and individualistic tendencies. But something 'deeper' inside of me keeps pulling me leftwards and the emotional trumps the rational. it doesn't help this is a process that occurred in the midst of mental illness as that makes it even more unlikely such a move is credible if I were to tell friends and family how I really felt, whilst also raising the possibility communism is a better reflection of my 'human nature' than capitalism.
Honestly, everyone needs hope, and capitalism just isn't giving any. I edge closer to some kind of understanding of myself each day goes by and I suspect I will just accept I'm a commie some day because the crimes of communism are not unique to communism- they're just as human as all the other ideologies.
That's good though. When it becomes egosyntonic is when it becomes a worry. Check out the board
"This is my test of character. There you have the despotic instinct of men. They do not like the cat because the cat is free, and will never consent to become a slave. He will do nothing to your order, as the other animals do." — Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
"The intellectual and emotional refusal 'to go along' appears neurotic and impotent." — Herbert Marcuse.
"Our blight is ideologies — they are the long-expected Antichrist!" — Carl Gustav Jung
Yeah, I started a "Young Republicans" club in my High School.Originally Posted by OP
I left that behind after both starting to read socialist literature and working in a factory over the summers. I realized that right-wing ideologies are complete bullshit. I also passed through the "ISO Revolving Door" in college.
That was many years ago and I've since learned something about Marxist economics and the various movements and can make up my own mind. It's important not to make this into a religion and not incorporate it into your personal identity since that's the only way to remain to as objective as possible. If you identify yourself with a particular ideology, all is lost. There is a real world against which all theories must be measured.
"This is my test of character. There you have the despotic instinct of men. They do not like the cat because the cat is free, and will never consent to become a slave. He will do nothing to your order, as the other animals do." — Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
"The intellectual and emotional refusal 'to go along' appears neurotic and impotent." — Herbert Marcuse.
"Our blight is ideologies — they are the long-expected Antichrist!" — Carl Gustav Jung
Politics, the intractable institution
I wouldn’t describe myself as a political convert, or authoritative enough for my political views to count in any meaningful way. However, with aging I’ve come to realize that things we think we know when we’re young are much less secure than we thought. Political systems by nature are self-serving; the origin of civilization itself revolved around an accumulation of power in the hands of elites newly able to sequester wealth behind walls, where their neighbors couldn’t see it and burn with envy.
Prospects for distributive justice under such a state of affairs have always been dim. They improved with replacement of patronage by rule of law, an equalizing trend that seems to be reaching limits. Although American standards of governance and living remain high now, we are again seeing fewer checks on concentration of wealth and influence. Private property states offered a better life than most of the socialized ones during the 20th century. Yet exists there any reason to think this will always be true? The U.S. perhaps represents the world’s first country to succeed in switching its economic basis from production to consumption, an unsustainable arrangement backed by its victory in World War II.
When life expectancy in Cuba betters that in many U.S. inner city census tracts, I have to question what I’ve been taught regarding relative merits of different systems of allocation. A new evolution threatens, of America into a country of very rich and very poor—the latter worse off in some ways than the historical poor, because now they’re underemployed with nowhere to go. Given the trends I find optimism scarce. What mechanism of fiat must supplant money at some point lest social progress be arrested, I can’t guess.
Hr zj jSst r xAst Tn xmt n rmt "Why are you going to this land which is not known to the people?" (Urk. IV 324, 8-9)
"If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain" --- Winston Churchill
http://ppe.mercatus.org/
I like Churchill's prescriptive grammar quip, "This is the sort of English up with which I shall not put." But he's left out people who get less conservative over time. I've never thought I was either, but took it for granted the U.S. steered on an even keel more reliably under center-right administrations, which, by the way, Franklin Roosevelt's can be grouped among even though he brought in the New Deal.
Developments after the East Bloc collapse in 1989-1992 gave me pause. Russia has gone downhill politically ever since Gorby departed, and its male lifespans shrank as low as age 57 to boot. Now it's on a course of dangerous adventurism that renders it a greater threat than the latter phases of the USSR had been. And those nuclear bombs are still rattling around in quantity sufficient to wreck civilization if they're used.
Recently I discovered Marx. Throughout life I followed the knee-jerk dismissal of him as lunatic and of his followers as inimical to world tranquility, as this was the attitude for nearly any 20th-century American. Now I'm less sure. I don't understand most of what Marx or Lenin wrote and can't vouch for it in toto. However, Marx correctly identified some social truths, such as the fundamental division of people into classes that came with the advent of the state circa 3000 BC, and development into modern forms described in the Manifesto (1848). Although his analysis in Das Kapital (1867 on) mostly escapes me, I think he has correctly identified capitalism as an unstable set of social relations that probably won't be around 3000 years from now.
Sure, there's a lot of polemics in the Left, and I don't believe businesspersons necessarily more cruel than other people. Nor do I know what will ultimately replace the economics practiced today. Capitalism has brought benefits. But since it places efficiency of exchange prior to human well-being, I think it will ultimately eat up the human beings who are making it run. It may destroy the human environment by wars or by atmospheric pollution. Or, more likely, it will implode leaving its survivors to try something different. Now I've watched age 20, 40, and 50 go by and am worried about my nephew. I would prefer the Reaganauts to what I'm seeing lately.
Hr zj jSst r xAst Tn xmt n rmt "Why are you going to this land which is not known to the people?" (Urk. IV 324, 8-9)
I used to be a New Atheist, and actually quite racist and Islamophobic. Hated Iran, thought Obama was pretty awesome, regarded feminism as stupid and weird, and even had a little bit of climate change denial.
Then I discovered Michael Moore's documentary Capitalism: A Love Story. After that, I watched a pretty mind-blowing double interview with Chomsky and Zinn (done by Sasha Lilley). A lightbulb went off, and I came out as an anarchist and an anti-capitalist. Debating right-wing libertarians and reading tons of economic literature over the years only served to solidify those beliefs.
A couple years later, after being on my own for so long, I finally decided to join an organisation...a Trotskyist organisation. My anarcho-syndicalism was placed under the spotlight and subject to tough questioning. I refused to budge for a long-time. I didn't finally concede and ideologically switch to Trotskyism until I watched 'Anarchism: A Marxist Criticism' by John Molyneux of the SWP.
I say it loud...now Trot and fervently proud!
“[A] great embarrassing fact… haunts all attempts to represent the market as the highest form of human freedom: that historically, impersonal, commercial markets originate in THEFT.”
― David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years
