Like a moment that seemed insignificant and unimportant at the time, but looking back was in fact a pivotal moment in pushing you towards radicalization.
For me probably being introduced to Guitar Hero at my friend’s house in like summer 2007. At the time it was just another day, but looking back I ended up falling in love with those games, I ended up being introduced to The Ramones and even more importantly the Dead Kennedys through them, which caused me to get into punk music and resulted in me adopting very critical attitudes towards larger American society, attitudes which later grew into anarchism and then Marxism
Bible class.
The pastor mentioned in passing one morning that animals didn’t have souls. I asked if that meant my cats wouldn’t be in heaven with me, and he said that was correct.
I realized that he was 100% sincere in his belief, and in my tween eyes, that made him a fool, because anyone who has ever loved and been loved in return by an animal knows that they have souls.
“What do they know?! They don’t even think animals have souls!!!” became the mantra in my head anytime I contemplated doing something the church community would frown on ❤️ thank you, Pastor John
My high school actually did a good job about teaching about the horrific atrocities towards Native Americans, and that definitely moved me left.
Punk music story as well except Tony hawk pro skater
Honestly, I can’t really name any single one in particular but there are a few things I can point to:
- Seems contradictory but being raised by a quasi-Catholic family. I’ve mentioned it before but my family is a stereotypical American family that larps its ness…just set in the midwest because according to my grandpa they were all priced out of NYC even in the 40’s and Ohio just so happened to be where they found jobs. So I adopted a couple stereotypically Catholic mannerisms: a sense of guilt about things so I never really enjoyed getting presents for my birthday/christmas as much as I should have because other than a few video games, what are the odds that any trinket I’d get I’ll just get bored of and forget I ever had within a week? This planted a seed of anti-consumerism within me so while I like nice quality things, I just feel dirty when I waste money and damage the environment.
1.5ish: When I was around my early teenage years I was doing some social studies homework with my grandpa who was watching me and it started about the cold war but he started telling some family lore…but the important part is at some point we were discussing American history in general and he told me to never think of us s as permanent members of the white people club, the KKK despised us and Irish immigrants too, and how us and said Irish immigrants quarreled a lot together when we both ironically had so much in common. So why be bigoted and do the bidding of the very WASPs that hated us? The real kicker is he’s a conservative but he inadvertently taught me about intersectionality and how non-antagonistic contradictions are heightened on purpose by the ruling class.
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Another counterintuitive thing, but being a weeb. I got into anime at an early age of 4 when my cousin who was 11 sat me down and showed me both Dragon Ball and Pokemon. I was hooked immediately, and it made me really fascinated in other cultures. I also think there are some decent morals to be found in some of the anime I watched. Pokemon actually opened my eyes to a better world than the one I currently live where people are friendlier, and there is much less scarcity in the world.
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Learning about MLK. I was immediately outraged that this country let that happen, and then probably the first spark of tankie-ism happened when I learned about the nazis and made some connections between them and the US’ treatment of minorities in middle school. Not to mention that even in elementary school I was a little spooked by all the forced patriotism we did, like I remember rolling my eyes over this school sing-a-long where we just sang (and I quote) “Patriotic songs” to our parents.
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One of my favorite western cartoons is Avatar: The Last Airbender. English class did teach me how to think critically so I really started to examine it and realized that I too can call out the atrocities of my own nation, in fact I’m probably betraying leftism in some weird way because I’m calling out these atrocities almost for the US’ own good. Now that I’m an adult and read gramsci, I’ve made it a habit to overanalyze entertainment almost more than how I analyze news.
I’m sure there’s others, but those are four things I can think of off the top of my head.
Andrewism’s video on solarpunk and mastodon, then lemmy (beehaw) then hexbear.
