I don’t just mean outrage or regular rage, I mean shock that someone was to the left of “legal weed and free college but only for those that operate a successful business for 3 years in a disadvantaged community” 
takes.
I think federating took them by surprise, looking back. For about a week, those smug liberals were at a loss to even fathom what Hexbears were saying, and could only chant bullshit about how we’re Russian/Chinese bots.
Sure they still do that but they’ve slightly adapted to Hexbear presence.
One of the things that pushed me into leftism about seven years ago was the realization that there even WAS something to the left of me. I went my whole life believing that progressive liberalism was the left and therefore the correct path. Once I knew there was something further left I immediately followed it, as I will continue to do.
I will not stop until I am the leftmost motherfucker on this earth and then I will have everyone on this site executed for liberal revisionism.
Yo same. I was literally a liberal pretty much right up until I learned I could be a communist.
Getting Maoist Guerilla Warrior on my career aptitude test was a real eye-opener
I always dreamed of a united human race like in Star Trek or Mass Effect. I remember wishing there was an Anthem for mankind, and then I heard the lyrics to The Internationale…and found a Richard Wolff video explaining what Socialism actually is.
The Harry Potter limits of liberalism jpeg helped a lot too.
I realized in the space of a week that I was a Socialist, not a Liberal. I didn’t just want some people liberated, I want everybody liberated. A united human race, unshackled by nationalism or racism or sexism or economic inequality.
… and then I started to realize how many other people I admired had been Socialists, like MLK and Einstein, and then I started to realize how much we’ve been deliberately lied to about almost everything in the US…
basically every time you learn about a historical figure who seems cool, it turns out they founded the US Communist Party or spent 6 months in revolutionary Moscow or aided peasant villages in Mao-era China
People have told me that Canada has forgotten 白求恩. Very sad.
Yeah the same is true for me being anti-car. When I first heard of European congestion taxes when I was car-brained I was like “that is literally insane, how are you going to restrict poor people’s right to get into the city”. But after learning about other forms of transit and the fact that it’s affordable and cheap and objectively better than private vehicles, I realized that just realizing that other transit options exist makes me move further ‘left’ lol.
no more half measures walter
Broke: Ultra-leftism
Woke: Hyper-leftism
shipping you off to some peruvian jungle rn
Left does not equal good, more left does not equal more good. Left and right are rarely useful ways of analysing politics: it really only says something if you are talking about the left or the right broadly or talking about the left and right position to a particular position (and even then I try to avoid.) I know you’re doing a bit and its funny but I’m always surprised by how many people I organize with think this way, and it’s disorienting
It’s idealism. Mapping out the world according to some made up model in your brain
That’s very similar to my experience albeit I was always a little further left than progressive liberalism. I just lacked the theory and vocabulary to articulate my politics. Ironically it was first breadtube, then chapo (the podcast), and finally the subreddit that helped galvanize my preexisting communist leanings.