#641
[account deactivated]
#642
i was just about to say that. ppl that get annoyed by her are simps
#643

Bablu posted:

proud to say i've been anti-imperialist pretty much since i was 12



😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎

#644
to post is divine
#645

conec posted:

animedad posted:

politics is really hard. I'd almost rather do anything else, but you kinda have to leave your brain trash at the door and try to participate

i have social autism and i would rather play maplestory and eat seaweed snacks


I have fears, like I was pretty useless at science research because I need mentorship I never got and I just accumulated anxiety like beans filling a jar. same with pretty much everything incl politic's I guess. although I've grit my teeth and cultivated a joy in things like reading and writing

#646
#647
I was a libertarian til 08, then took debate and my teacher was an old RAIM dude who worked with MIM pre-prisons. Debate + LF made me MTW, then I decided that a solo socialist is worthless and joined a party. I first heard about the PSL from the old RSU videos and joined. I considered myself a Maoist at the time. About three years ago I went ML
#648
i did debate for a while. policy or parliamentary? ignore me if this makes no sense
#649
i distinctly remember reading my sophomore year roommate's copy of The Lexis and The Olive Tree and thinking yeah this guy friedman guy makes a lot of sense
#650
i was an ethnic nationalist until i played paradox interactive's "victoria: an empire under the sun", which taught me class consciousness. yes, i have autism, thanks for asking
#651
i got into politics by reading an al franken book (lol) when i was like 13 and just kept going more left as i got older. i did stop before falling into the pit of leftcom/anarchism thankfully
#652
https://workersspatula.wordpress.com/2016/02/13/marxism-too-mainstream-declares-hipster-embracing-young-hegelianism/
#653

Panopticon posted:

i was an ethnic nationalist until i played paradox interactive's "victoria: an empire under the sun", which taught me class consciousness. yes, i have autism, thanks for asking



The best part about Victoria 2 is that world war is inevitable under imperialism

#654
Also I came to ML under a general dislike for liberal hypocracy. Because of that I flirted with a lot bad, reactionary ideologies before finding sufficiently hilarious Stalinist memes to convert me. Thanks rhizzone
#655
Someone left a copy of Ken Davis "Don't Know Much About History" around my room when I was in the 2nd grade, and thats all it took
#656
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#657

swampman posted:

Someone left a copy of Ken Davis "Don't Know Much About History" around my room when I was in the 2nd grade, and thats all it took


I remember hearing about Howard Zinn's History of a People or whatever when I was a lot younger and I think I looked at a page (or maybe just read about it) and laughed and thought haha what a load of hippie feel-good bullshit

and then I read a bit of it a couple of years ago and thought haha what a load of liberal feel-good bullshit

#658
[account deactivated]
#659
[account deactivated]
#660

tpaine posted:

so you're saying the "what a load of _____ feel-good bullshit" expression has stuck with you through the years


and/or i just latch on to new ways to make fun of people / hate everyone but they are all functionally the same to an external observer

#661
I was raised MTW but i became Hoxhaist to piss off my step dad Larry. Fuckin' Larry..
#662

Themselves posted:

i did debate for a while. policy or parliamentary? ignore me if this makes no sense



Policy. cross-examination specifically

#663
I developed a deep love for history and the struggle of oppressed peoples after seeing the excellent film BRAVEHEART at age 9
#664
My old coach joined the party last year, was pretty cool. This year he's got the team reading straight North Korean propaganda cuz the resolution is 'the USFG should reduce its military presence in asia'
#665
C-E is what i did too. We got 2nd place at state my junior year (no thanks to me. I was so stoned the whole time i dont remember the subject we won on)
#666
NOFX, SOAD, rage against the machine, weed, hallucinogens, bell hooks, being a weirdo, and having mental illness
#667
actually for the younger folks maybe having articles on HuffPo about how black radicals are rejecting party politics and doing direct action seems normal. but ten years ago every comment on the internet was basically liberal talk radio or conservative talk radio mimesis and we're all more retarded for it. these are certainly better times
#668
père anime is right. in 2004 i used to walk around town with an mp3 player listening to illinois state senator barack obama's speech to the democratic national convention. it wasn't until 2007 that i had embraced the maoism we all know and love and could ridicule obama supporters for their wasted donations and phonebanking.
#669
"Pay no attention to the fact that I directly supported fascist death squads in Honduras, manufacturing a refugee crisis in the US, all of whom I ordered deported as Sec of State. I really do care about Latinos!"
- Genocidal Monster

#670
2004 was also notable because there was an insurgent candidacy in the democratic primaries by a vermont liberal on a platform of introducing single-payer health care, which was critically supported by parts of the left in hopes that it would build anti-imperialist worker's struggles.
#671
"The fight against the global capitalist politics of austerity must be truly international; thus the United States left must pressure the Obama administration to work with Hollande to restart the European economy and to propose similar programs in the United States that would highlight the complete failure of austerity policies."

- from DSA Salutes President François Hollande Victory and Opposes Austerity Politics by the Democratic Socialists of America
#672
yeah but i mean fuck the dsa tho
#673

animedad posted:

actually for the younger folks maybe having articles on HuffPo about how black radicals are rejecting party politics and doing direct action seems normal. but ten years ago every comment on the internet was basically liberal talk radio or conservative talk radio mimesis and we're all more retarded for it. these are certainly better times



i was going to write something similar in reply to conec. kids these days have no idea how marginalized and pathetic first world leftism was in the late 90s and early 00s. in the media and mainstream culture left-libertarianism was pretty much the only thing going. socialism or marxism was treated as a completely irrelevant failed historical phenomenon. protests were more anti-corporate than anti-capitalist. even in "radical leftist" academia, capitalism was omitted from the subjects worth discussing. any analysis that would have traditionally used marxist categories instead employed foucauldian crypto-libertarianism. that was the paradigm, that was how you wrote your essays.

it sucked. i totally understand why old leftists who should know better get super hyped about occupy or bernie sanders. both were completely unthinkable 10 years ago

Edited by solzhesnitchin ()

#674
quote this if you read Jennifer Government in high school and it blew your god damned idiot teen mind
#675

dank_xiaopeng posted:

quote this if you read Jennifer Government in high school and it blew your god damned idiot teen mind



let's play NationStates

#676

tpaine posted:

same but those al franken books were pretty funny



they were. another big thing was studying finance in colleadge and in preparation for an i-bank internship application (big lol) i realized how deliberately impenetrable the system is

#677
Thelneff has been appointed thread monitor because i for some reason remember that person's libsoc or anarchist-friendly? and all my experience with radical politics in the United States says, giving anarchists the power to fuck with people is the magical ingredient to make superfluous Democratic Party shit funny
#678

soicowboy posted:

dank_xiaopeng posted:
quote this if you read Jennifer Government in high school and it blew your god damned idiot teen mind


let's play NationStates


all i ever did was play this and imagine what the book was like, because i was already jaded enough to know that the book wouldn't be as good as whatever i imagined. i think

sometimes i still think that would be a good name to have

#679

cars posted:

Thelneff has been appointed thread monitor because i for some reason remember that person's libsoc or anarchist-friendly? and all my experience with radical politics in the United States says, giving anarchists the power to fuck with people is the magical ingredient to make superfluous Democratic Party shit funny


all my experience with radical politics in Canada says, giving anarchists the power to fuck with people is the magical ingredient to creating an endless feedback loop of "you hurt my feelings > you hurt MY feelings when you told me I hurt your feelings > you hurt MY feelings when you told me I hurt your feelings by telling you that you hurt my feelings..."

#680
that's what the future will be like, by the way. once the anchors of material struggle are gone, we'll all sit around and talk about our feelings. and you know what? don't buy the macho bullshit, it'll be great and a higher plane of existence, because we'll be more sensitive and attuned to one another. until then though we pretty much need to be apocalypse now insane commandos for socialism i guess.