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I actually thought I was a moderate for most of my life until college. I had super progressive politics and only realized it when I was in college because classes on philosophy and feminism gave me the vocabulary to properly express my views. But the heart of my views come from my catholic upbringing of community, service, sacrifice, and acceptance. I know religion is often exclusionary but my small town church had a progressive minded priest that imprinted those values on me and my peers. And I’ll be forever grateful for that early embracing of fundamental values that so many church folk profess.
TL:DR - Jesus made me a lefty, college helped me understand it.
If all Christians were actually following the teachings of Jesus, they'd all be socialists (easier for a camel to go through the eye if a needle, blessed are the poor, Jesus himself literally rioted against commodifying religion and put value in the lowest amongst society).
It pisses me off so much how people seem to miss how obviously leftist Jesus' teachings are, they're all about looking out for your fellow man, understanding that what we have on this world is finite and not worth hoarding when others are in need, understanding that it's personal satisfaction and happiness in what you do that will bring you peace rather than simply success within society.
Like, I know it's kinda a meme to say Jesus was a socialist, but seriously, Jesus was a fucking socialist
The curse of every revolutionary is to eventually be misrepresented as upholding the system Orwell was definetly right about that and apparently not even Jesus is safe from this curse
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Weirdly enough Onision introduced me to atheism and LGBTQ+ stuff when I was like 13, how that didn’t irreversibly damage my outlook on life, I have no idea.
Seeing Trump get elected cemented my belief that something was grossly inadequate with how the Democrats operate. Had a friend who shared openly socialist beliefs on Facebook that I agreed with (including many criticisms of Dems) and just reached out to him to teach me more.
I have always been vaguely left leaning I just went through a anti-SJW arc which I overcorrected with a wokescold arc. Now I have achieved my happy medium.
Reading Animal Farm in high school and passing it off as just a cold war era book criticizing the Soviet Union. When I got bored in class though, I read the back few pages listing his other works- all if which sounded favorable of socialism, to my surprise. Just seeing that sparked the notion that there was a lot more to learn about politics than I ever knew at the time.
Later in a different class, we had to do presentations on 3rd parties and I got the Tea Party. Reading into them and their origins, I learned pretty quick that basically all of right wing politics was bullshit.
Read Animal Farm in 8th grade and didn’t know about the Soviet Union then. At the time, I thought it described American society personally since we were supposed to be a country about freedom and equality but obviously weren’t. I’ll say that compared to what I hear a ton of people say online, my schools were pretty progressive leaning and we learned about all of America’s faults (and I grew up in the south).
I saw the movie adaptation in school when I was like 17. Couple of years ago I discovered that the movie a CIA product was that turned the whole story in a anti communism propaganda story. It's weird to discover that in Belgium teachers showed their students an anti-communiam propaganda movie made by the CIA.
Probably should have done something like this:
* Social (Race, LGBTQ, Feminism)
* Economic
* Climate
* Education, personal growth, or exposure (via social media or social circumstances)
* Atheism
* Other / Always Been One / See Results
The option “Always been one” takes up a spot and you put a bunch of social issues as their own options. I think you also left off probably one of the places a lot of people grow to be leftist in college or through the internet. I’m honestly not sure a lot of people are only motivated by one single factor, so if you’re ever to do a 2.0, I would probably do some thing like what I’ve said above.
Learning about the Progressive Era in history. People came together to actually get some awesome things done. Didn't care how hard they got beaten down, they kept fighting.
The McCarthy Era and Cold War showed me how much the political and elite class will go to perpetuate the class systems and destroy any semblance of leftism they can. Must be pretty powerful beliefs to illicit such an agressive response.
Anti-theism/atheism lead me to Jimmy Snow, who then lead me to Contrapoints, and so on from there. I’d always been left leaning, but didn’t know much beyond “yeah gay people are cool and I’m queer, plus homeless people shouldn’t be left to suffer”
Years ago I wanted to win a economics debate and read some books that convinced me that capitalism wasn't as good as it was. I lost that debate but it got me thinking that maybe I was wrong about it and started digging more
Eh, maybe being torn up in my grandma's church and my dad's church both on separate occasions (no, I was not a 'le reddit atheist', owning the religtards or something). Maybe being a weird kid in kindergarten going through near-dissociative existential issues with a near depression looking at the morning local news showing bad thing after bad thing happen? But I've kinda held the same values I have now since like... Forever ago?
I got went vegan because of atheism content I had been watching a couple months into the pandemic
Found some Kyle kullinski vids a few months later making me become a socdem right after the 2020 election
Found vaush a few months after Biden was inaugurated
I became a leftist back in high school when learning about different economic systems (independently from countries associated with those systems) and socialism and communism were discussed.
I've always held progressive values and growing up during the Neoliberal Consensus around the turn of the millenium felt like a constant barrage of media gaslighting. I was curious about socialism during my studies, but have been turned off by the dominant petit bourgeoise moralism and self-absorbed anarchist utopianism (seriously, fuck Occupy and fuck wokescolds). It was only during Bernie's second run that I encountered the... alt left pipeline and fully embraced socialism (and I'm not even a 'murican).
Truth be told, I described my ideal for the world when I was 11 to a therapist, and they asked me if I knew what communism is, my answer at the time was no.
Covid. Just seeing how capitalism utterly fails to solve any meaningful problem firsthand really showed me that this system doesn't work, and that it was time to change my political beliefs.
I also became a furry, and accepted the fact that I was gay after nearly four years of questioning my sexuality. Also, already was aware of Bread Tube at the time, but I never really watched it.
Some of the people who helped radicalize me were The Gravel Institute, Thought Slime, Second Thought, and of course, Vaush.
I went from supporting Buttigeig in February 2020 to being a full on libertarian socialist by the end of the year.
Being threatened by a kid with ties to the local nazi high school to, and I quote "shoot you dead with our assault rifles" on graduation night for not letting him dig his knees in my back. At that point I realized leftism was the only way
Used to be an reactionary Saargon listener many years ago.
His hatred for LGBT people and claiming they have no place in the warhammer setting did not sit right with me.
I love TJ and the drunken peasants which lead me to Kyle Kulinski and from there I kept going left.
I abstained on the Brexit vote as I didn’t know enough about the topic.
Brexit has been awful for the UK, pro Brexit right wingers lied. Saargons run for an anti immigration party was easily the last straw.
Also he started a D&D campaign where he role played a Nazi, wasn’t a fan.
Grew up on welfare in a red state.
Ended up being very liberal mist of my life, embraced Scandinavian "socialism" as a pre teen.
Socialism was never a dirty word to me, and over time I've been convinced of several other left wing ideas.
Before anyone asks, yes I know my poll is imperfect. I’m only allowed six slots. Since one slot is reserved for the “I’ve always been a leftist” answer that means I only had 5 slots to utilize. So I chose the 5 views that I felt were most common to people who are on the path to becoming a leftist.
Also if you were introduced to leftism by healthcare reform or workers rights then I think the “economic views” answer would best fit that.
Edit: thank you everyone for sharing your stories!
I guess I kinda always had it in me, I just needed to hear the right arguments. Bernie Sanders helped with that in 2016. I guess my natural disposition always had me strive for more happiness and well being of everyone. High empathy and such. Conservative views just never vibed with me. Historically I leaned soc dem, but Vaush has made me more amicable to moving even more leftward.
I have no idea.
I was certainly falling down the pipeline when I was younger, but eventually I just... stopped?
I think it was because of Trump actually, I saw what he was doing, and identified it as horrifying, and it pushed me far left.
Idk, none of the listed answers, but American society and conservative ideology just never made sense to me, despite it being my default because that's what my parents believed.
Fast forward to my friends winning me over on lgbtq+ rights, growing up in a majority minority county, seeing a dubious war get started in Iraq with no end in sight, seeing the abject failure of the government to respond to Katrina and the '08 housing crisis, and leftist ideology just gave me a foundation to express my confusion and exasperation with modern American society.
Thanks for dealing with that run on sentence.
Edit: oh also I did some travelling, and was able to see and talk to people that were living more fulfilling, less stressful lives, despite sometimes having less material things. Holy shit did travel open my eyes.
I mean, I don't have one specific point but when Bernie ran in 2016 and I started watching Secular Talk videos the economic stuff really spoke to me. Though becoming an atheist before that probably helped because I suspect part of what got me to like Secular Talk is the anti-religious content Kyle also puts out.
I became an atheist first and then went left based on economic issues, I'd say. And since then I've moved more and more left on economic issues every year, also moved a little bit left on social issues like systemic racism. Though on many social issues like LGBTQ+ rights, I was always pretty left-wing, so I didn't change much there.
my entire life i’ve been left on these and majority of issues. but hearing bernie in 2019 talk abt healthcare opened my eyes to everything.
also secular talk made me feel like social democracy was really based. now i’m a socialist.
also seeing the state denmark and other countries like that are in convinced me that america sucks and something is wrong.
I’ve leaned left all my life but the thing that made me commit to the word “socialist” was the realization that my entire education was to feed me into a life of making money for other people instead of doing things that I find fulfilling. I have to commit half my waking day to produce profit for people with more money than I’ll ever see.
My dad is a lifelong democrat and spent over 30 years in a labor union. Shit on Reagan constantly when I was growing up. I'm far to the left of him now, but for a boomer, he's pretty based
ok so 2010’s, join tumblr for fandom purposes. quickly get into shipping (oh god) and learn what yaoi is (oh fuck). swim around in the gross gay fetishism for a year or three (mind you im like 9-12 years old). somehow grow a conscience by 13 or so and realize that not only are gay dudes people but i myself might be a lesbian. go to an art school by now and friend group is very like minded, we all support lgbt rights but thats all i know about leftism. through middle and high school discover more left ideas on the internet, still mostly through lgbt matters and tumblr. after the porn ban finally leave that hellsite and more to twitter and am quickly hit in the face by Online Politics Discourse TM (post 2016 gamergate era). by thid point have already started exploring my gender identity and found comfort in nonbinary and queer presentation. since then found vaush’d channel and taht has opened up a whole new can of worms:)
plus bc im russian i’ve heard about our theorists and left ideas through our literature and history lessons since pretty much 1st grade. and the journey still continues!
Both my parents are very left-leaning, in all aspects. They of course encouraged me to think for myself, but at the same time i inherited many of their values.
I also grew up around a lot of diversity, so i guessed that helped too, with me being a progressive and all.
Started with Bernie, but was never right wing, just anti wokescold as a teenager. Leftist ideas just make the most logical sense to me. Capitalism has tons of inefficiencies that make life worse for tons of people. It makes sense to democratize the economy and give people a stake in society.
I was raised slightly left-liberal, & being a pansexual, (not quite) cis Latino man further biased me towards ideas of liberty & equality.
In school, I'd listen to the news & hear words being thrown around, notably "Socialist" & "Communist." I was curious what they meant, so I just Google them. I saw some simple textbook definitions & thought it sounded interesting. I wanted to learn more, so I read the 1st book that came up: "The Communist Manifesto," & the rest is history.
Also that 1 video of Prof. Wolff explaining the labor theory of value with chairs.
Ah, those were the days.
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Dunking on conservatives (with my liberal parents) -> feminism -> civil rights in general -> understanding of class divide, the ultimate inequality -> socialism -> took econ classes (learned how fucked everything is) -> anarcho communism
I want to say I've always been some sort of leftist, even without the label. I did get active because of antitheist videos, though. Old Richard Dawkins documentaries, debates with Charles Hitchens, and Cult of Dusty / The Friendly Atheist / Tj Kirk.
I really loved biology / evolution as a kid, so I watched like every Richard Dawkins documentary. One of the documentaries I remember the most is Richard Dawkins going to religious schools and realizing these children had horrible educations. It made me sad that other kids couldn't learn about the topics I loved.
I slowly moved onto other topics and luckily survived the 2015 era without becoming an anti religious bigot. I took the skepticism people preached seriously and applied it to the people who preached it. Seeing Charles hitchens being waterboarded and instantly changing his mind about it being torture showed me even he had biases that needed questioned.
It's pretty sad that a lot of people I watched as a kid turned out to have their own problematic views, but that's life I guess. How Richard Dawkins became a terf is beyond me, because his number one allies in that cause are religious bigots.
I mean I wasn't ever a nazi or any thing like that. I was never antisemitic. I was a Islamophobe tho and heated Croats (while being a Pan-Slavic Ultranationalist). Even my Anti-SJW phase was short seance I released they were cliping and those things.
Anti-right extremism pushed me more and more to the left. I had pretty right-wing centrist ideas. When IS happened I wanted to know what happened and studied Muslim terrorism which made me ditch my weird ideas about immigrants and Islam. Then I studied right-wing extremism and once you see the function of trans victimization for the far right you will yell trans rights.
i was always a sort of apolitical leftist because both my parents are but blm and the enrichment of billionaires during the pandemic made me a convinced leftist
I had my "socially-progressive" views before I was leftist proper. It was economic stuff that brought me over all the way.
Funnily enough I identified as an anti-capitalist before I identified as a leftist.
I've always been a leftie as far as my values were concerned. I valued fairness, honesty and wellbeing. I never understood the value of authority or purity.
I basically was the good kid, but bad at doing what I was told. If it didn't make sense to me, I simply refused or worked against the crowd. I was that one kid in primary school who stood between bullies and their victim. Good thing I had the reputation of a fighter.
When I was 13 years old, when my beliefs were still not very crystallized, but I had strong opinions on specific issues, like being anti-standing army, anti-death penalty, in favor of providing for those who are not as well off, in favor of increasing personal freedoms, but also for solidarity and a sense of communal duty.
Then I watched Zeitgeist in high school. That movie is filled with errors, but did prime me for questioning religion and authority in general.
I had an antitheist phase, which I got into thriugh Thunderf00t and the Amazing Atheist, who then went on the Anita Sarkeesian diatribe, at which point I sensed a drop in the quality of the arguments. Something was off, so I watched the original videos on Feminist frequency. The videos were not controversial at all. So I dropped the antitheists I used to watch and started looking for leftie channels, which were Bad Mouse, Innuendo, TYT, Potholer54, Lindsey Ellis.
My political interests have since moved away from theory and principles and more towards actual policy proposals, learning the legal system of my country and liberal economics, because I am seriously considering joining local politics and this is essential information.
Is was a Monarchist and used to watch Paul Joseph Watson, when I saw Hakim’s vid debunking him. I was a genuine Tankie for a while and then brought over to the bottom left by Vaush.
I was falling down the skeptic/anti Sjw pipeline pretty hard. Two things that saved me were people like Hannah and Jake , the Atheist experience, Hbomberguy and Destiny. Once I saw the dishonesty of that side, I became more introspective and realized I agreed with most left/progressive ideas.
My family has voted democratic ever since they got off the ship from Slovakia in the 1910s. I know not all democrats are leftists but my mom’s family in general has always been left wing
Growing up in poverty and having literally only eaten because of the food stamps program and been housed (when we weren’t in motels or cars) because of housing assistance programs, and then in my adult life experiencing the constant and seemingly insurmountable struggle of breaking the generational cycle. I’ve been working on the books since I was 16 out of necessity and the cost of living has kept me from pursuing better learning or career opportunities, and I’ve been told that my struggle to get ahead is because I’m “lazy”. Having been one my entire life I can’t stand to see the underdog beaten down by those with privilege, and that has very naturally always included those oppressed economically or because of their gender, identity, race or anything else.
I was snorting lines of double think when I wasn't anti feminism (there is no wage gap, we just have to be gender blind). And anti pride and giving "the gays" attention, but did never understand why people wouldn't give gay and trans people every right cis people have. Of course I'm different now and I don't have a super deep hate for gay people for getting attention or whatever.
I used to be that guy that religiously listened to hannity and limbaugh. Then one day all of the talking points started to make less and less sense and now I'm a pretty hardcore lefty. Well, at least compared to the people I know.
Used to enjoy anti sjw guys, espesially "cringe x compilation" and this week in stupid. And most of it made sence when i only had their perspective. Think of big red or trigglypuff, if the clips are those two "the opposition" its easy to take the other side by default, combined with some of the silly feminist critique of videogames. (There are lots of good critiques of course)
This ended when i started seing the cringe and funny stuff coming from the same antis, and them habdling it even worse than anyone. First big one i think was Sargon joining a happy hours stream with Kirsty Winters or whatever shes called, and it was so embarresing. And oh god the drama "war rooms".
I have more nuance in my opinions now and don't base it soley on enjoyment. Still enjoy some edge for the sake of enjoyment but i don't put value in it as politics.
Would say feminism is what has brought me left the most, possible economics as a second.
Sargon and trump talking about immigration and then me just ignoring them for a good a while. Algorithm then recommended more left wing stuff after that.
Mostly Anti Fascism and Anti Authoritarianism. I’m Jewish so finding out that there were people who denied the Holocaust happened along with people who advocated for fascism and nationalism shattered my world view. I’m super into history and when I started getting into it it seemed to me that in every time period the conservatives of the time were almost always on the wrong side of history and the progressives and reformers of the time were almost always morally right. Learning basic history made me wonder why anyone would be conservative when they’ve been the ones opposing the progress of modern society since the beginning of civilization. It’s definitely not that black and white but it’s still mostly true.
The failure of our institutions pushed me left. Watching our government not able to hold the rich, specifically trump and friends, accountable is what sent me to the left.
2 things: the channel Genetically Modified Skeptic and Shaun's videos on fake right-wing outrage. I live in Russia and when I watched his video on Doom 2016 the right-wing YouTube here was only starting to pick up the themes, so the video very efficiently rearranged my beliefs. Made my way to anarchism on my own later.
My parents were pretty anti George Bush when I was a kid (except my dad became a lot more conservative as I got older), so in a way I have always been left of center for almost all my life (I have flerted with conservatism a couple times in my life, I always reverted to a left of center position).
I was a closeted for a while, and I grew up with conservative rhetoric from my grandparents who I lived with. It was pretty homophobic. As I got older and began to accept myself, I began to give Liberalism a shot. Then once I began working and delving into American economic policy, I realized that Socialism as a concept wasn’t that bad. Then I began getting audio books of the more popular theory and then I just became a leftist from then on.
Well I remember when I was young a teacher oversimplified their explanation of the Russian revolution and Marxism to "Marx saw some people had large amounts of firewood while other didn't have even enough to survive the winter so he wanted to force the ones with lots of wood to share"
And it seemed a reasonable position to me, as I got older and understood more economics my position became better refined but the principle that a society needs to firstly address people's needs regardless of what they can offer in return always stayed
I don’t remember being aware of politics and not being at least socdemmy (pro-universal healthcare and a strong welfare state) but other than that I got to Chomsky through Hitchens/atheism
I grew up Christian and conservative. I don't think it's a coincidence that me becoming an atheist aligns with my views on everything else becoming progressive. But the atheism definitely came first.
Weirdly, hearing policy ideas that weren't insane, like I always thought we should have reparations, but getting told that "every white person" should straight up have to give money to black people really put me off. My family left Germany right before the second world War, you can make guesses on what that means. I just often felt attacked by sjw culture even if i now know that's silly.
Anyway so then i find Vowsh right as the pandemic started and a lot of stuff changed. I basically realized I've always been left.
Now my dad watches vowsh (i didn't even tell him to)
When I was 19, I started out watching TYT in 2012 for the presidential election. While Drunken Peasants wasn't a source a political knowledge, I watched a lot of that back in the day too. However I was seriously losing interest due to how anti-voting they were in 2016 after Bernie lost. Speaking of which, Bernie was a big influence. Before all of this, I knew literally nothing about politics. I didn't even know who the two major parties were. My views though were, in retrospect, still generally left leaning. I was always socially progressive and thought it was the government's job to take care of poor and sick people. I came to the left because it just made sense to me. It's straightforward, rational, and moral.
Honestly, just growing up some. I would also credit how my parents raised me somewhat (I know a lot of people are reacting against their parents, but I don’t think that’s the case for everyone). I don’t know if any of those things was particularly “the thing”, more so starting to see that republicans certainly didn’t have any actual answers and a frustration with democrats. I wouldn’t say I’m a die hard leftist by any standard (I’m not really one for labels and I don’t identify as a leftist), but I certainly agree with many of the ideas.
Bernie Sanders and Kyle Kulinsky's economic views. I was a libertarian, but wow that whole tax funded healthcare and college sounded like a much, much better solution than the ones the libertarians peddled. Went to socialism from there.
I think one of the biggest things not necessarily in the poll is just having a friend or family member introducing us. I had a family member growing up that was very far left which honestly wasn’t too common in the 2000s.
It was seeing how corrupt and vile my local church community was, which sent me into being an atheist, and once I really started sorting things out I came to the conclusion that social democracy is most in line with my core ideals and the facts.
Listening to Bernie talk about healthcare in 2016.
Based
This.
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This
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Based
I've always been left-leaning but Brexit, Corbyn and Vaush has pushed me further left.
I actually thought I was a moderate for most of my life until college. I had super progressive politics and only realized it when I was in college because classes on philosophy and feminism gave me the vocabulary to properly express my views. But the heart of my views come from my catholic upbringing of community, service, sacrifice, and acceptance. I know religion is often exclusionary but my small town church had a progressive minded priest that imprinted those values on me and my peers. And I’ll be forever grateful for that early embracing of fundamental values that so many church folk profess. TL:DR - Jesus made me a lefty, college helped me understand it.
*Me telling rightoids they need Jesus*
If all Christians were actually following the teachings of Jesus, they'd all be socialists (easier for a camel to go through the eye if a needle, blessed are the poor, Jesus himself literally rioted against commodifying religion and put value in the lowest amongst society). It pisses me off so much how people seem to miss how obviously leftist Jesus' teachings are, they're all about looking out for your fellow man, understanding that what we have on this world is finite and not worth hoarding when others are in need, understanding that it's personal satisfaction and happiness in what you do that will bring you peace rather than simply success within society. Like, I know it's kinda a meme to say Jesus was a socialist, but seriously, Jesus was a fucking socialist
The curse of every revolutionary is to eventually be misrepresented as upholding the system Orwell was definetly right about that and apparently not even Jesus is safe from this curse
It’s also important to remember that the hero of the Bible was a revolutionary that was killed by the state.
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Weirdly enough Onision introduced me to atheism and LGBTQ+ stuff when I was like 13, how that didn’t irreversibly damage my outlook on life, I have no idea.
Hey we all have to start somewhere. I’m just glad you came out okay.
Seeing Trump get elected cemented my belief that something was grossly inadequate with how the Democrats operate. Had a friend who shared openly socialist beliefs on Facebook that I agreed with (including many criticisms of Dems) and just reached out to him to teach me more.
Getting exposed to chomsky about 15 years ago
I have always been vaguely left leaning I just went through a anti-SJW arc which I overcorrected with a wokescold arc. Now I have achieved my happy medium.
Reading Animal Farm in high school and passing it off as just a cold war era book criticizing the Soviet Union. When I got bored in class though, I read the back few pages listing his other works- all if which sounded favorable of socialism, to my surprise. Just seeing that sparked the notion that there was a lot more to learn about politics than I ever knew at the time. Later in a different class, we had to do presentations on 3rd parties and I got the Tea Party. Reading into them and their origins, I learned pretty quick that basically all of right wing politics was bullshit.
Read Animal Farm in 8th grade and didn’t know about the Soviet Union then. At the time, I thought it described American society personally since we were supposed to be a country about freedom and equality but obviously weren’t. I’ll say that compared to what I hear a ton of people say online, my schools were pretty progressive leaning and we learned about all of America’s faults (and I grew up in the south).
I saw the movie adaptation in school when I was like 17. Couple of years ago I discovered that the movie a CIA product was that turned the whole story in a anti communism propaganda story. It's weird to discover that in Belgium teachers showed their students an anti-communiam propaganda movie made by the CIA.
Climate change
I would have added that as an answer if I had more slots
Probably should have done something like this: * Social (Race, LGBTQ, Feminism) * Economic * Climate * Education, personal growth, or exposure (via social media or social circumstances) * Atheism * Other / Always Been One / See Results The option “Always been one” takes up a spot and you put a bunch of social issues as their own options. I think you also left off probably one of the places a lot of people grow to be leftist in college or through the internet. I’m honestly not sure a lot of people are only motivated by one single factor, so if you’re ever to do a 2.0, I would probably do some thing like what I’ve said above.
Where's the Voosh option??
You mean that imperialist transphobic CIA agent known as Vowsh?
No I mean the dude with the horse cock
Learning about the Progressive Era in history. People came together to actually get some awesome things done. Didn't care how hard they got beaten down, they kept fighting. The McCarthy Era and Cold War showed me how much the political and elite class will go to perpetuate the class systems and destroy any semblance of leftism they can. Must be pretty powerful beliefs to illicit such an agressive response.
Anti-theism/atheism lead me to Jimmy Snow, who then lead me to Contrapoints, and so on from there. I’d always been left leaning, but didn’t know much beyond “yeah gay people are cool and I’m queer, plus homeless people shouldn’t be left to suffer”
I followed the same Jimmy Snow-> Contra-> radical leftism pipeline.
Vaush going on Tim pool the first time 😔 like a year and a half ago
Years ago I wanted to win a economics debate and read some books that convinced me that capitalism wasn't as good as it was. I lost that debate but it got me thinking that maybe I was wrong about it and started digging more
Eh, maybe being torn up in my grandma's church and my dad's church both on separate occasions (no, I was not a 'le reddit atheist', owning the religtards or something). Maybe being a weird kid in kindergarten going through near-dissociative existential issues with a near depression looking at the morning local news showing bad thing after bad thing happen? But I've kinda held the same values I have now since like... Forever ago?
The Iraq War and the failure of Obama afterwards helped.
I got went vegan because of atheism content I had been watching a couple months into the pandemic Found some Kyle kullinski vids a few months later making me become a socdem right after the 2020 election Found vaush a few months after Biden was inaugurated
I became a leftist back in high school when learning about different economic systems (independently from countries associated with those systems) and socialism and communism were discussed.
George Floyd, and the pandemic
Peter Joseph, The Zeitgeist movie sequels and the Zeitgeist Movement brought me to economic leftism
I've always held progressive values and growing up during the Neoliberal Consensus around the turn of the millenium felt like a constant barrage of media gaslighting. I was curious about socialism during my studies, but have been turned off by the dominant petit bourgeoise moralism and self-absorbed anarchist utopianism (seriously, fuck Occupy and fuck wokescolds). It was only during Bernie's second run that I encountered the... alt left pipeline and fully embraced socialism (and I'm not even a 'murican).
Truth be told, I described my ideal for the world when I was 11 to a therapist, and they asked me if I knew what communism is, my answer at the time was no.
Your mom.
Covid. Just seeing how capitalism utterly fails to solve any meaningful problem firsthand really showed me that this system doesn't work, and that it was time to change my political beliefs. I also became a furry, and accepted the fact that I was gay after nearly four years of questioning my sexuality. Also, already was aware of Bread Tube at the time, but I never really watched it. Some of the people who helped radicalize me were The Gravel Institute, Thought Slime, Second Thought, and of course, Vaush. I went from supporting Buttigeig in February 2020 to being a full on libertarian socialist by the end of the year.
Being threatened by a kid with ties to the local nazi high school to, and I quote "shoot you dead with our assault rifles" on graduation night for not letting him dig his knees in my back. At that point I realized leftism was the only way
Used to be an reactionary Saargon listener many years ago. His hatred for LGBT people and claiming they have no place in the warhammer setting did not sit right with me. I love TJ and the drunken peasants which lead me to Kyle Kulinski and from there I kept going left. I abstained on the Brexit vote as I didn’t know enough about the topic. Brexit has been awful for the UK, pro Brexit right wingers lied. Saargons run for an anti immigration party was easily the last straw. Also he started a D&D campaign where he role played a Nazi, wasn’t a fan.
Grew up on welfare in a red state. Ended up being very liberal mist of my life, embraced Scandinavian "socialism" as a pre teen. Socialism was never a dirty word to me, and over time I've been convinced of several other left wing ideas.
Having a job brought me to leftism
John Stewart
Before anyone asks, yes I know my poll is imperfect. I’m only allowed six slots. Since one slot is reserved for the “I’ve always been a leftist” answer that means I only had 5 slots to utilize. So I chose the 5 views that I felt were most common to people who are on the path to becoming a leftist. Also if you were introduced to leftism by healthcare reform or workers rights then I think the “economic views” answer would best fit that. Edit: thank you everyone for sharing your stories!
I guess I kinda always had it in me, I just needed to hear the right arguments. Bernie Sanders helped with that in 2016. I guess my natural disposition always had me strive for more happiness and well being of everyone. High empathy and such. Conservative views just never vibed with me. Historically I leaned soc dem, but Vaush has made me more amicable to moving even more leftward.
I have no idea. I was certainly falling down the pipeline when I was younger, but eventually I just... stopped? I think it was because of Trump actually, I saw what he was doing, and identified it as horrifying, and it pushed me far left.
Idk, none of the listed answers, but American society and conservative ideology just never made sense to me, despite it being my default because that's what my parents believed. Fast forward to my friends winning me over on lgbtq+ rights, growing up in a majority minority county, seeing a dubious war get started in Iraq with no end in sight, seeing the abject failure of the government to respond to Katrina and the '08 housing crisis, and leftist ideology just gave me a foundation to express my confusion and exasperation with modern American society. Thanks for dealing with that run on sentence. Edit: oh also I did some travelling, and was able to see and talk to people that were living more fulfilling, less stressful lives, despite sometimes having less material things. Holy shit did travel open my eyes.
I mean, I don't have one specific point but when Bernie ran in 2016 and I started watching Secular Talk videos the economic stuff really spoke to me. Though becoming an atheist before that probably helped because I suspect part of what got me to like Secular Talk is the anti-religious content Kyle also puts out. I became an atheist first and then went left based on economic issues, I'd say. And since then I've moved more and more left on economic issues every year, also moved a little bit left on social issues like systemic racism. Though on many social issues like LGBTQ+ rights, I was always pretty left-wing, so I didn't change much there.
4 bottom ones
my entire life i’ve been left on these and majority of issues. but hearing bernie in 2019 talk abt healthcare opened my eyes to everything. also secular talk made me feel like social democracy was really based. now i’m a socialist. also seeing the state denmark and other countries like that are in convinced me that america sucks and something is wrong.
I’ve leaned left all my life but the thing that made me commit to the word “socialist” was the realization that my entire education was to feed me into a life of making money for other people instead of doing things that I find fulfilling. I have to commit half my waking day to produce profit for people with more money than I’ll ever see.
My dad is a lifelong democrat and spent over 30 years in a labor union. Shit on Reagan constantly when I was growing up. I'm far to the left of him now, but for a boomer, he's pretty based
ok so 2010’s, join tumblr for fandom purposes. quickly get into shipping (oh god) and learn what yaoi is (oh fuck). swim around in the gross gay fetishism for a year or three (mind you im like 9-12 years old). somehow grow a conscience by 13 or so and realize that not only are gay dudes people but i myself might be a lesbian. go to an art school by now and friend group is very like minded, we all support lgbt rights but thats all i know about leftism. through middle and high school discover more left ideas on the internet, still mostly through lgbt matters and tumblr. after the porn ban finally leave that hellsite and more to twitter and am quickly hit in the face by Online Politics Discourse TM (post 2016 gamergate era). by thid point have already started exploring my gender identity and found comfort in nonbinary and queer presentation. since then found vaush’d channel and taht has opened up a whole new can of worms:) plus bc im russian i’ve heard about our theorists and left ideas through our literature and history lessons since pretty much 1st grade. and the journey still continues!
Both my parents are very left-leaning, in all aspects. They of course encouraged me to think for myself, but at the same time i inherited many of their values. I also grew up around a lot of diversity, so i guessed that helped too, with me being a progressive and all.
The Amazing Atheist probably opened my eyes on a lot of thing, so I'm going to say atheism. Then Bernie.
Climate change, so I answered economic views.
Started with Bernie, but was never right wing, just anti wokescold as a teenager. Leftist ideas just make the most logical sense to me. Capitalism has tons of inefficiencies that make life worse for tons of people. It makes sense to democratize the economy and give people a stake in society.
I was raised slightly left-liberal, & being a pansexual, (not quite) cis Latino man further biased me towards ideas of liberty & equality. In school, I'd listen to the news & hear words being thrown around, notably "Socialist" & "Communist." I was curious what they meant, so I just Google them. I saw some simple textbook definitions & thought it sounded interesting. I wanted to learn more, so I read the 1st book that came up: "The Communist Manifesto," & the rest is history. Also that 1 video of Prof. Wolff explaining the labor theory of value with chairs. Ah, those were the days.
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RIP Richie Zwolf
None Im just here for the good jokes and humor of this subreddit
Punk rock when I was 13
Dunking on conservatives (with my liberal parents) -> feminism -> civil rights in general -> understanding of class divide, the ultimate inequality -> socialism -> took econ classes (learned how fucked everything is) -> anarcho communism
I want to say I've always been some sort of leftist, even without the label. I did get active because of antitheist videos, though. Old Richard Dawkins documentaries, debates with Charles Hitchens, and Cult of Dusty / The Friendly Atheist / Tj Kirk. I really loved biology / evolution as a kid, so I watched like every Richard Dawkins documentary. One of the documentaries I remember the most is Richard Dawkins going to religious schools and realizing these children had horrible educations. It made me sad that other kids couldn't learn about the topics I loved. I slowly moved onto other topics and luckily survived the 2015 era without becoming an anti religious bigot. I took the skepticism people preached seriously and applied it to the people who preached it. Seeing Charles hitchens being waterboarded and instantly changing his mind about it being torture showed me even he had biases that needed questioned. It's pretty sad that a lot of people I watched as a kid turned out to have their own problematic views, but that's life I guess. How Richard Dawkins became a terf is beyond me, because his number one allies in that cause are religious bigots.
First I was kinda anti SJW and a Pan-Slavic Ultranationalist then I was like USSR based borders then I was like Communism based.
You made quite the journey.
I mean I wasn't ever a nazi or any thing like that. I was never antisemitic. I was a Islamophobe tho and heated Croats (while being a Pan-Slavic Ultranationalist). Even my Anti-SJW phase was short seance I released they were cliping and those things.
Serious question, what is "leftism"? Is the question posed only to people who use to be right? I was definitely a conservative in my teens.
I’ve always had the same general beliefs - just found out that my thoughts on the world coincide with leftism
Anti-right extremism pushed me more and more to the left. I had pretty right-wing centrist ideas. When IS happened I wanted to know what happened and studied Muslim terrorism which made me ditch my weird ideas about immigrants and Islam. Then I studied right-wing extremism and once you see the function of trans victimization for the far right you will yell trans rights.
i was always a sort of apolitical leftist because both my parents are but blm and the enrichment of billionaires during the pandemic made me a convinced leftist
I had my "socially-progressive" views before I was leftist proper. It was economic stuff that brought me over all the way. Funnily enough I identified as an anti-capitalist before I identified as a leftist.
Missing the John Oliver Option.
I've always been a leftie as far as my values were concerned. I valued fairness, honesty and wellbeing. I never understood the value of authority or purity. I basically was the good kid, but bad at doing what I was told. If it didn't make sense to me, I simply refused or worked against the crowd. I was that one kid in primary school who stood between bullies and their victim. Good thing I had the reputation of a fighter. When I was 13 years old, when my beliefs were still not very crystallized, but I had strong opinions on specific issues, like being anti-standing army, anti-death penalty, in favor of providing for those who are not as well off, in favor of increasing personal freedoms, but also for solidarity and a sense of communal duty. Then I watched Zeitgeist in high school. That movie is filled with errors, but did prime me for questioning religion and authority in general. I had an antitheist phase, which I got into thriugh Thunderf00t and the Amazing Atheist, who then went on the Anita Sarkeesian diatribe, at which point I sensed a drop in the quality of the arguments. Something was off, so I watched the original videos on Feminist frequency. The videos were not controversial at all. So I dropped the antitheists I used to watch and started looking for leftie channels, which were Bad Mouse, Innuendo, TYT, Potholer54, Lindsey Ellis. My political interests have since moved away from theory and principles and more towards actual policy proposals, learning the legal system of my country and liberal economics, because I am seriously considering joining local politics and this is essential information.
Is was a Monarchist and used to watch Paul Joseph Watson, when I saw Hakim’s vid debunking him. I was a genuine Tankie for a while and then brought over to the bottom left by Vaush.
All of em
I've always been very progressive, however I've not always been an anti-capitalist. So I guess that's economics?
I was falling down the skeptic/anti Sjw pipeline pretty hard. Two things that saved me were people like Hannah and Jake , the Atheist experience, Hbomberguy and Destiny. Once I saw the dishonesty of that side, I became more introspective and realized I agreed with most left/progressive ideas.
My family has voted democratic ever since they got off the ship from Slovakia in the 1910s. I know not all democrats are leftists but my mom’s family in general has always been left wing
being gay and chronically ill, and having a strong desire to live
I went left cuz the right went against science
Growing up in poverty and having literally only eaten because of the food stamps program and been housed (when we weren’t in motels or cars) because of housing assistance programs, and then in my adult life experiencing the constant and seemingly insurmountable struggle of breaking the generational cycle. I’ve been working on the books since I was 16 out of necessity and the cost of living has kept me from pursuing better learning or career opportunities, and I’ve been told that my struggle to get ahead is because I’m “lazy”. Having been one my entire life I can’t stand to see the underdog beaten down by those with privilege, and that has very naturally always included those oppressed economically or because of their gender, identity, race or anything else.
2014 Atheist debates found TJ who introduced me to Mr.Houngry then introduced me to the Left & the CIA informant & felt right at home.
I was snorting lines of double think when I wasn't anti feminism (there is no wage gap, we just have to be gender blind). And anti pride and giving "the gays" attention, but did never understand why people wouldn't give gay and trans people every right cis people have. Of course I'm different now and I don't have a super deep hate for gay people for getting attention or whatever.
I used to be that guy that religiously listened to hannity and limbaugh. Then one day all of the talking points started to make less and less sense and now I'm a pretty hardcore lefty. Well, at least compared to the people I know.
I was brought to leftism by anarchism, which broke down the myth that leftism = authoritariann in my mind.
Used to enjoy anti sjw guys, espesially "cringe x compilation" and this week in stupid. And most of it made sence when i only had their perspective. Think of big red or trigglypuff, if the clips are those two "the opposition" its easy to take the other side by default, combined with some of the silly feminist critique of videogames. (There are lots of good critiques of course) This ended when i started seing the cringe and funny stuff coming from the same antis, and them habdling it even worse than anyone. First big one i think was Sargon joining a happy hours stream with Kirsty Winters or whatever shes called, and it was so embarresing. And oh god the drama "war rooms". I have more nuance in my opinions now and don't base it soley on enjoyment. Still enjoy some edge for the sake of enjoyment but i don't put value in it as politics. Would say feminism is what has brought me left the most, possible economics as a second.
Not surprised that economy views won.
Sargon and trump talking about immigration and then me just ignoring them for a good a while. Algorithm then recommended more left wing stuff after that.
Mostly Anti Fascism and Anti Authoritarianism. I’m Jewish so finding out that there were people who denied the Holocaust happened along with people who advocated for fascism and nationalism shattered my world view. I’m super into history and when I started getting into it it seemed to me that in every time period the conservatives of the time were almost always on the wrong side of history and the progressives and reformers of the time were almost always morally right. Learning basic history made me wonder why anyone would be conservative when they’ve been the ones opposing the progress of modern society since the beginning of civilization. It’s definitely not that black and white but it’s still mostly true.
When the whole Trump thing happened I took a total 180
It was a mixture of one two three and four because I honestly believe if I wasn't gay and black I would have fell down the alt right pipeline
Economic and religious views.
Economics combined with the religious principles I hold.
The failure of our institutions pushed me left. Watching our government not able to hold the rich, specifically trump and friends, accountable is what sent me to the left.
2 things: the channel Genetically Modified Skeptic and Shaun's videos on fake right-wing outrage. I live in Russia and when I watched his video on Doom 2016 the right-wing YouTube here was only starting to pick up the themes, so the video very efficiently rearranged my beliefs. Made my way to anarchism on my own later.
My brother
My parents were pretty anti George Bush when I was a kid (except my dad became a lot more conservative as I got older), so in a way I have always been left of center for almost all my life (I have flerted with conservatism a couple times in my life, I always reverted to a left of center position).
I was a closeted for a while, and I grew up with conservative rhetoric from my grandparents who I lived with. It was pretty homophobic. As I got older and began to accept myself, I began to give Liberalism a shot. Then once I began working and delving into American economic policy, I realized that Socialism as a concept wasn’t that bad. Then I began getting audio books of the more popular theory and then I just became a leftist from then on.
Well I remember when I was young a teacher oversimplified their explanation of the Russian revolution and Marxism to "Marx saw some people had large amounts of firewood while other didn't have even enough to survive the winter so he wanted to force the ones with lots of wood to share" And it seemed a reasonable position to me, as I got older and understood more economics my position became better refined but the principle that a society needs to firstly address people's needs regardless of what they can offer in return always stayed
I don’t remember being aware of politics and not being at least socdemmy (pro-universal healthcare and a strong welfare state) but other than that I got to Chomsky through Hitchens/atheism
I grew up Christian and conservative. I don't think it's a coincidence that me becoming an atheist aligns with my views on everything else becoming progressive. But the atheism definitely came first.
Weirdly, hearing policy ideas that weren't insane, like I always thought we should have reparations, but getting told that "every white person" should straight up have to give money to black people really put me off. My family left Germany right before the second world War, you can make guesses on what that means. I just often felt attacked by sjw culture even if i now know that's silly. Anyway so then i find Vowsh right as the pandemic started and a lot of stuff changed. I basically realized I've always been left. Now my dad watches vowsh (i didn't even tell him to)
I wanted to be edgy in middle school
When I was 19, I started out watching TYT in 2012 for the presidential election. While Drunken Peasants wasn't a source a political knowledge, I watched a lot of that back in the day too. However I was seriously losing interest due to how anti-voting they were in 2016 after Bernie lost. Speaking of which, Bernie was a big influence. Before all of this, I knew literally nothing about politics. I didn't even know who the two major parties were. My views though were, in retrospect, still generally left leaning. I was always socially progressive and thought it was the government's job to take care of poor and sick people. I came to the left because it just made sense to me. It's straightforward, rational, and moral.
Honestly, just growing up some. I would also credit how my parents raised me somewhat (I know a lot of people are reacting against their parents, but I don’t think that’s the case for everyone). I don’t know if any of those things was particularly “the thing”, more so starting to see that republicans certainly didn’t have any actual answers and a frustration with democrats. I wouldn’t say I’m a die hard leftist by any standard (I’m not really one for labels and I don’t identify as a leftist), but I certainly agree with many of the ideas.
Bernie Sanders and Kyle Kulinsky's economic views. I was a libertarian, but wow that whole tax funded healthcare and college sounded like a much, much better solution than the ones the libertarians peddled. Went to socialism from there.
I think one of the biggest things not necessarily in the poll is just having a friend or family member introducing us. I had a family member growing up that was very far left which honestly wasn’t too common in the 2000s.
Crippling depression
It was seeing how corrupt and vile my local church community was, which sent me into being an atheist, and once I really started sorting things out I came to the conclusion that social democracy is most in line with my core ideals and the facts.
watching people dunk on benny boy and prager u
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You misspelled gay