I grew up in a conservative American family and was indoctrinated with chauvinistic beliefs from the beginning. It took me years of studying political science and economics just to warm up to leftist ideas, let alone embrace them.
Finally, I decided to read “Dialectical and Historical Materialism” by Stalin off a recommendation from one of my professors and it really changed my entire interpretation of the world. That started me down a path of reading any Marxist literature I could find.
I’m curious about the path that the rest of you took to get here!
i suspect that being brown, autistic and queer did it for me since this trio guarantees that i will never fit into the dominant social groups within this country.
I was literally thinking recently that all the evil shit that’s been done to me has been by white cishets. I’m white af, but this slow realisation has certainly pushed decolonisation theory on me.
Sorry though, your experience is certainly much harder than mine.
and there are others who have it worse that i do, so i don’t think it’s entirely about hardship.
for me: i think it’s about experiencing being a stranger to the “tribes” that the people who were close to me belong to. eg. my white-passing family members discluding me from the families they’ve started with maga-white people; or the leftists groups being wary of me because autism-affected socialization makes them suspect that i’m an infiltrator of some type; or autism support groups that think that i’m not “autistic enough”.
don’t get me wrong: hardship is definitely part of it; if i had a thousand dollars for every time a manager or interviewer suspected that i was incapable of doing a job because of how i look and/or how i think, i would be a millionaire who wouldn’t need to work.
i think it’s understanding (or atleast being aware) that social and political hierarchies exist and are perpetually on-guard for outsiders. after all: there are maga brown/black people and gay republicans who are clueless about their places within these hierarchies.
I can relate to the autism, and political theory is definitely a special interest of mine. Neurodivergency alone was enough to make me feel completely alienated from my family and broader social group.
Same here. Growing up autistic definitely primed me to be able to accept alternative ideas. When I was younger and my mom made me go to church I remember realizing that none of it made any sense and I didn’t believe it. I think my thoughts about Capitalism were pretty similar but just took longer.
same here with my family; half of them are white-passing that they’ve all intermarried with maga-white people.
and i know it’s the maga thing because my extended family is not white-passing and they accept me and my political views without conditions.