What radicalized you?
Assuming you’re an anarchist or otherwise leftist radical, what radicalized your position?
For me it was a combination of seeing the rampart corruption of the Greek state and the sloth and hypocrisy of the KKE in my own family. Then afterwards it was the alienation of my own wage-slavery.
Remember to care for your opsec when answering.
when I was in 3rd grade, I had a gifted test, where after I flawlessly cleared 11th grade math, it was decided that I may go to a math gifted school. if my single mom can afford it. she couldn’t. I proceeded to develop type 2 bipolar disorder in 6 years of getting bullied bcs my classmates found out my mom couldn’t afford it. any capacity my brain had to learn has gone completely and I struggle with learning anything at all. now I have to live my life knowing that I had a natural talent for absolute greatness that could benefit all but this society of empowering the strong, and keeping the weak down, has drained any and all of it. but hey, of course I’m the weird guy for saying our priorisation of money over the benefit of all is bad.
Just reading Chomsky, then Graeber. There is actually no great injustices in my personal life. I dont have any reason to complain.
Climate catastrophe and burnout and want to get into politics to maximize my impact on the world. Then I searched over most ideologies, finding anarchism the most compatible with critical thinking.
Being autistic, I’ve always had an anti-authoritarian outlook. I started getting radicalized in high school over the murder of Eric Garner and the other black men that were killed by cops in 2014-2016. Then I saw the protest against the DAP. I had a little understanding of what I was seeing, but didn’t understand why the cops responded the way they did. The final 2 nails in the coffin for my radlib phase was working in a grocery store during the pandemic, and a massive walkout over sexual harassment at my workplace.
Is being autistic by definition being anti authoritarian? I’ve interacted with a couple of autists that, seemingly at least, were very much pro authoritarianism.
@Plopp @rockSlayer Not necessarily, althought ADHD people tend to be anti-authoritarian. However ASD people tend to have a very strong sense of justice. But they can still be factually wrong. But often whatever we believe is right, we believe it and push for it strongly. This is why you usually find ASD people with radical beliefs, from Anarchism, to TERFs to Objectivists etc.
Like everything involved with autism, anti-authoritarianism is an autistic trait that varies from person to person. I have a very strong sense of it that has been amplified by theory
@rockSlayer Oh yeah, AuDHD here. My anti-authority and strong sense of justice is probably why I was always in that mindframe since I was a kid.
Time, more and more bearing witness to deliberate economic and political cruelty by politcans enabled by voters.
Inequality ia the greatest toxicity.
Critical thinking
Had a period of mental breakdown where I concluded that there was something either psychologically wrong or ideologically wrong with myself. Started questioning most of my thoughts and what I could trust. Slowly built out political views I felt aligned with my core values.
A trust of friends and chosen family were the foundation. That built out into being politically anti-authoritarian and anti-fascist. Gradually turned into believing Marx’s proposed issues with capitalist society and some of Foucault’s teachings about resisting authority (not so much their other stuff).
I eventually became closer friends with a punk and have gotten to hear of anarchism throughout history and the current anarchist influences in various other movements.
My views of anarchism are still mostly vague. I’m still focusing more on becoming a more functional person and growing the communities I’m apart of, so more thorough research and understanding takes a backseat for now.
During the BLM protests when people were standing on their porch, filming from their own property and cops came by, turned to them, shouted “light em up!” Then started shooting. I don’t think I will ever see police as anything other than a occupying army after that.
Honestly it was smoking weed. Or rather, seeing through the “war on drugs”, which made me look more critically at everything I was hearing at school or on the news. Once you realize that all the fucked up shit that goes on, doesn’t happen for the reasons they say, then you see why those things really go on-- I guess that’s called getting radicalized.
being trans and having auDHD with a childhood passion for natural philosophy inoculated me against heteronormative brainworms and their cousins: capitalist, workist, Protestant-work-ethic bullshit.
being mobbed, assaulted and abused because of this — by parents, siblings, peers, teachers and strangers — is what taught me to hate.
losing friends to war, suicide, and honour killings is what taught me hopelessness.
watching my parents work 90 hour weeks and still struggle to pay the bills showed me the contradictions.
being abandoned and homeless as a teenager when i started fighting back is what radicalised me.
Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman, Luxemburg, Beer, Stallman, Graeber, Swartz and Serafinski taught me why i’m angry, and taught me how to imagine again.
the fight against triple oppression is what keeps me going.
The rise of government and corporate surveillance, the enshittification of the internet, and disillusionment of the grandiose promises of technology got me here.
Getting tear gassed by thugs in formation over a water bottle.
I don’t even know. I’ve had pretty much the same feelings about capitalism since about 10 and was always taught compassion and inclusiveness by my parents, teachers and even the media I consumed. I always joked about being an anarchist in high school; didn’t know my views were literally anarchist until the political compass shit started being spread all over the net and took the quiz.
My mother’s chronic mental illness might have been easier to help her with. She might still be alive. And then there was my time on an ambulance.
I don’t think there was any one event that got me started, just the integrated effect of reading history, reading contemporary news, personal experience, and later reading anarchist theory over my lifetime.
