My family are mostly Democrat voting liberals and I identified as one for years. When I was in 5th grade I spent more time with my Fox News-watching grandparents and became a Republican for like a year or 2 and became an apolitical lib for a while. From like 2015-2019 I was a Bernie bro who had some objectively shit takes. The biggest 180 I did was probably on the sex trade. I used to be for it as a horny teen like “huh? Did someone say SeX?? Well it’s all ConSeNsUAL so why cockblock someone from getting some PuSsY?” Obviously now I realize that’s a disgusting sentiment and that most people in the industry are not happy and would rather do anything else. Just because a few are happy with their line of work, it doesn’t make it right to force so many others into a position where they feel abused and humiliated or threatened. “Legitimacy of industry” in terms of prostitution always means lining the pockets of abusive pimps (physical or anything else) who will use the opportunity to get rich and usually fund illegal markets (source: Look at Nevada). Enough about me, what topics have become more clear to yall after becoming a communist? I could probably list a few others but I’m interested in seeing what yall say.
Hmm for me a pretty recent 180 i took was on Deng Xiaoping. I was a commie but I really wasn’t super educated on the state of AES(even though i am part of the chinese diaspora) and was always under the impression that it was capitalism. That deng xiaoping turned china capitalist. Probably not really as big of an 180 as some other people here but really learning about china was really inspiring and restored my hope in the world ig. I feel way more patriotic towards china right than amerikkka.
Thinking of possibly doing my master’s in china after my undergrad.
Unworming yourself from the hegemonic propoganda related to AES/NK/China is a difficult one to do comrade, it took me actually meeting people from China to understand this fully.
The European Union. I used to think it was a somewhat flawed but reformable stepping stone to a more just and strong European (liberal) democracy. After becoming a Marxist it seems obvious now it is a neoliberal power structure with some pro’s for the common people (Schengen Area), but so many more ways for the ruling class to get their way (that same Schengen Area facilitating cheap labor and trade).
While a socialist pan-European organization would be amazing, it is laughable to think the EU is just slightly flawed or even reformable into this. Like parliamentary politics itself, the EU has some limited uses as a platform to us socialists and anti imperialists (Clare Daly, Mick Wallace), but limited they truly are due to its inherent neoliberal nature. State and Revolution was a great book that really put me into the ML view on Marxism, and taught me that existing power structures like the EU can not be reformed to serve the working class.
I’d have to say the same. The EU is nothing but an institution by and for capital. Ironically I remember my first real encounter with “EU bad actually” came from a Brexit leaver perspective, but that doesn’t mean they’re not wrong.
Since then I have come to the conclusion that the EU has successfully achieved with the pen what the Nazis failed to achieve with the sword, namely intra-European imperialist relations.
Same, i though it’s the run of the mill succdem org but the one that ultimately work for the members benefits and posing some hope for multipolar world, especially when it was closing to Russia and China some years ago. Reading Marx and Lenin make me seriously doubt its purpose. Year 2022 moved me to “EU delenda est”.
Around 2019, on China. I was like “not real socialism and it opress minorities”. Holy shit thanks Chapo.
I’m new to learning about a loooot of stuff. I used to support Ukraine’s side at the beginning of the war
Good for you for getting out of that. Not a lot of people are capable.
I used to be a heavy meat eater who said that ‘I could never abandon meat’. Until I actually tried abandoning meat and I haven’t gone back since. It’s easy, cheap, healthy and I learned to cook many different things now.
How do you feel about the Impossible meats and stuff like that?
I don’t eat them that much. Many of the recipes I use don’t include them and they oftentimes are more expensive than lentils, beans, mushrooms, chickpeas, whatever.
They did get better in the past few years though. A lot of them now taste pretty good. I don’t mind them but I always give starting vegans/vegetarians the advice to not buy them too often and instead look for other culture’s recipes. You will save money and it will probably be better quality of food.
Bean substitutes can go a long way, and that’s coming from someone who isn’t even vegan or vegetarian
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The idea that the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a horrific but sadly necessary evil to end the war. Endless propaganda got to me and I never put to much thought into it.
I learned the history and found out that it was all a lie. Japan was ready to surrender, they were finished, the attack was senseless evil power projection.
Fucking everything lately. I understand now most of the people we call leftists online are historically-illiterate historical extremists speedrunning the 2nd International in the midst of a golden opportunity to live new history lol
That the Holocaust was an aberration. If anything it was a continuation of what came before.
Maybe this has long been clear to some of you but it’s been interesting for me coming to this conclusion. I went to school in Canada, where we of course learned about the settlement and colonization of Canada, but in a “oh this was bad but it was a long time ago and for the most part the white people didn’t know any better.” It was also always the British or French colonists doing these horrible things, once Canada requested independence a few unimportant treaties may have been broken but all in all everything’s fine now. Well except for residential schools, but that was an honest mistake. And except for unbelievably awful living conditions on native reserves, that’s their own fault. So goes the state written and approved school curriculum, of course they can’t admit to their generations long history of crimes.
Of course the colonists and later the US and Canadian governments knew exactly what they were doing. They killed about a hundred million people on purpose.
Around the same time during high school I took a course that focused on the Holocaust, with material written by a Zionist NGO, basically placing the Holocaust as the pinnacle of crime against humanity to which nothing can compare.
And that’s all while ignoring colonial atrocities in the global south, as I’ve only really started learning about those as a part of my journey into ML.
AI. even as a communist, i thought that we could just make minor progress in AI research and then overthrow capitalism and have socialist AI which will be awesome. but after seeing the internet polluted with AI-created drivel (that “internet is mostly bots” theory might be true in all honesty…the capitalists would absolutely do something like that to make the internet look more populated because a lot of industries now rely on the internet) and ben shapiro using AI generated fake images to fuel hate against palestine, i want to see AI completely gone. i despise it. if i had the choice to destroy AI and LLMs and all that shit, i would. and i say this as someone in a field that is currently seeing some fledgling AI implementation.
Shits fucked, I am searching for a software engineer job and I stumbled upon a job listing that offered 50k USD a year. The job wasn’t about actually coding, but about overseeing the training process of an AI that generates code. They will pay you more that x5 of what my teacher parents make in order to train your replacement, it makes me fucking mad
Honestly I’m not really sure. Most of my “stances” before I became a communist were uninformed because like every other person living in Amerikkka, we’re indoctrinated to believe the lies of the empire.
As a kid up till I got into college I was mostly apolitical (as much as a Black person can be) aside from thinking Bush Jr was a fucking idiot and that Amerikkka shouldn’t be acting like the world’s policeman and telling others what to do. When Obama became president I (like other uninformed Black folks) celebrated cause we finally had someone that looked like us in the White House so no more racism (lmao)!
Wasn’t until the BLM protests that started in 2014 (ironically during the Obama administration) that I became woke (the REAL, OG woke) and realized that this country was not built for people who look like me. Also around that time I was on my own in the world of capitalist Amerikkka and the struggles I went through made me question why things like food, housing and education can’t be free.
It wasn’t until 2016 that I actually became active on social media during Bernie’s campaign, and I was hooked by the idea of free education and a higher minimum wage, etc. When he got fucked by the Democratic Party I was so pissed, I voted Green Party that year cause I really believed in Jill Stein (the only fucking party that had reparations as a part of their platform) and ended up rubbing shoulders with actual communists (they called themselves “watermelons”, green on the outside but red on the inside). This was when I discovered leftbook…I could write an entire post about my experience with leftbook…ugh.
That aside, I was a anarcho-communist cause I thought anarchism was cool but after learning more about the Black Panthers I dropped the anarcho and just became an ML and pretty much never looked back.
I voted Green Party that year cause I really believed in Jill Stein
Stein is more of a comrade of mine than many so-called communists who call her a quack or a fraud.
How many of us have been kidnapped and interrogated by the fucking FBI for posing a threat to the oil industry?
I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Baraka as well. If Stein is a comrade, he’s a goddamn comrade. I will never forget shaking that man’s hand.
Of course they had no chance cause of how bourgeois elections work but it was the first time I was really excited about politics cause I actually knew what was going on.
Never voted again after that lol.
I thought anarchism was cool but after learning more about the Black Panthers I dropped the anarcho and just became an ML and pretty much never looked back.
“If it was good enough for Bobby Seale, it’s good enough for me” became mantra.
Lol hell yeah that’s based
I once argued against Makan in favor of PCUSA. Now that I know they’re open patsocs with no understanding of Marxist philosophy I bash them any chance I get.
Another thing is that I used to say I hated coconut but now like it a lot.
Theres a lot more that I can’t think of.
As an early Marxist I had an appreciation for them but didn’t understand what they were for. Then I saw that like 40% of them were also Pro-Trump people somehow (I know how, but still it’s weird when you step back and think about it) and the rest were probably misguided thinking it was THE vanguard party for the beleaguered masses of the US
I did not know that. That’s insane, but makes sense considering all the patsocery and punching left. How did you learn that? We’re they polled or something?
oh I don’t know the actual numbers on who voted for which candidates, I just mean that a bunch of Twitter and Tiktok accounts of PCUSA have MAGA with an American flag emoji. CPUSA has even more of that. Like Max Blumenthal reply guys/Haz Infrared
Sure, I didn’t expect to see an actual poll, but “MAGACommunism” in a “vanguard party is still quite shocking. I think I mentioned such an ideology being related to Patsocism to some PCUSA people and they shut it down, but the truth is there is quite a relation.
I don’t leave my house anymore ever since cops tried sneaking me with weapons drawn for going for a jog in the springtime. That day, I went from “reform the police” to "fuck the police, I’ll shoot back."
There have been a couple of times my worldview has collapsed, and I took better/more accurate positions afterward.
- That I was male, with a considerable amount of low-key sexism and not-so-low-key queerphobia thrown in. That was a hell of a shakeup, and probably responsible for the spark that started the rest.
- I was raised an evangelical bible thumper and oooohhh boy, does that carry some hefty baggage—ranging from Isreal being -THE- holy land, Evolution is a lie, and those godless, evil queer commies have it coming. So much cringe. Karma is not without a sense of humor.
- Was a right-wing Libertarian, very interested in military theory, military history, and was offered full scholarships to military colleges type. Was, unfortunately, definitely on the proto-fascist track politically. Although it did result in reading my first book on any kind of communist thinking in the form of SOVIET MILITARY STRATEGY by Vasiliĭ Sokolovskiĭ.
- The Hollywood, mainstream Western storytelling methods are the best/key/correct/fundamentals of the craft. This happened around the time I started becoming a communist. With all the liberal assumptions modern storytelling makes/requires, I had to re-evaluate and relearn my career craft completely. This is the only one I openly talk about because it can be presented as a safe topic in all circles, isn’t as cringe to admit to, and ML Narrative Theory is unfortunately not touched on that much—especially here in the West. And I believe it’s one of our great weaknesses because we have little to challenge the subtle and constant torrent Hollywood and mainstream entertainment douses us with. This is a shame because storytelling is humanity’s evolved mechanism for sharing our experiences navigating life—we should have this tool in our toolbox. Maybe I should post some lecture/essay posts on narrative theory, how it relates and connects to ML theories, and how it breaks away from Hollywood’s simplistic formulas…
Please do!
I am a 5th year Animation student, currently working on my group’s and mine second 3d animation short so far. It’s anti-capitalist in its message, but I rly wonder how the storytelling could be different in a marxist direction. Obv we weren’t exactly taught to create communist films (tho we got at least one communist teacher.) Either way, I’ll take anything you can give me o.O
Would the work of Bertolt Brecht be of any use to you? I’m unsure of the overlap but it seems that a Marxist approach to theatre/drama could be helpful?
Yoo totally! Thx for the suggestion, I’ll make sure to look into him. Any specific work you’d have in mind?
Brecht on Theatre seems to be the go-to place to start.
There’s a summary here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zwmvd2p/revision/1 but lol:
In 1941 Brecht became resident in the USA but returned to Europe in 1947 after appearing before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Ostensibly against communism, this committee also targeted intellectuals.
Yeah, communist intellectuals mf!!
That’s a testament to how well regarded he is. He’s so important for Western canon that they can’t forget him but they want to carve away his Marxism. Familiar story. Be careful about what you read about Brecht. I can’t recall how much of a Marxist he actually was. It’s been a long time since I looked through On Theatre and when I read it I wasn’t a Marxist and didn’t notice that he was one but I was oblivious to that kind of thing back then.
I will second Brecht’s ON THEATRE. There’s some good gems in there.
You probably know this already, but the Soviet Union produced a lot of animations that ventured into uncharted territory, such as “Shooting Range”, “Hedgehog in the fog”, or “Polygon”. They used lots of experimental techniques whose effects you can study and apply. As for storytelling, you might enjoy “The Key”, I really like how it builds up towards its final moral.
There isn’t a whole lot of Atlanticist liberal film or TV that I can stomach anymore. Novels don’t require the capital that the visual narrative arts do, so there are stories to be found there.
I used to think that all ideas, even potentially harmful ones, should be free to spread so they could be defeated in the “marketplace of ideas.”
Any positive opinion of USA if I even had one before.
gommunism
Non-Gommunism GrainEater?? I don’t believe that such a thing is even possible.
once upon a time 😔
Happy bread day
Thank you!
I either came too late to see it or the @GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml getting here before me is no coincidence and admin powers came with the ability to reverse the process of turning grain into bread.
It depends on your time zone. My bread day is October 27th. If it’s the 28th for you then you can’t see out anymore.
But thank you!
