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 grew up pretty conservative too. All the right information (capitalism bad, elections and peaceful protest don’t change shit, politicians are liars, wars are made by the rich to get richer) was rolling around in my head in my late teens but so was all the reactionary bullshit and anti communist lies. They just took a long time to shake out into the conflicting sides of an argument.
The tipping point for me was the Ukraine war. It was one lie too many. I’ve got a memory that doesn’t let go when it comes to media. So I never forgot that ukraine had a nazi coup. The liberal “democracies” openly supporting nazis was too much.
All the nazi symbols that the msm didn’t know it was sposed to be blurring were like pins stabbing my eyes. Suddenly I could see that “both parties bad” wasn’t even going far enough. The entire system was built by rich white supremacists to maintain power. There is no middle ground there are fascists and there are anti fascists and all the western governments are fascists.
After a short while I realized the only anti-fascists who have a plan to eradicate fascism and make sure it can never return are communists.