When I was a lib, I was sort of just like... a communist who needed permission to be a communist, this lead me to believe this was the case for the vast majority of libs, finding out I was wrong sucke
Like ok. When I was a lib, I had a lot of communist values already. I was already socdem leaning (though an Obama supporter because I foolishly believed he stood for those values). The vast majority of times I moved left involved some sort of confrontation with a person to my left on an issue. Sometimes there was resistance on my part, but that usually involved just like, a single argument, me realizing they were right, and moving left on the issue. Other times it was just... receiving information I didnt previously know. The closer to ML I got, the harder the struggles were, as some of the current geopolticial issues and also historical issues involved in that were the hardest to deprogram and the most hard coded. But I still got there.
Even simply openly calling myself as a communist was as simple as seeing someone else on Tumblr openly do so and realizing "oh wait thats an option?"
Oddly, "lesser evilism is not actually the correct way to approach electorally" was kind of my final gate? Despite being a poster here I sort of secretly still was a lesser evilist up until the recent stuff with Gaza. So it wasnt a straight line admittedly, but what it did do was give me a certain line of thinking about what the mindset of people who vote Democrat were.
In the midst of autistic myopia, I sort of for a long time believed that most libs were "communists in waiting" too. I sort of assumed you just had to spread the word, and they'd get there. Maybe they'd struggle on some of the same points I did, like not automatically believing a protest movement is good because its a protest movement, or that "America bad" isnt actually a bad way of thinking and critically supporting anti-American forces in the world is in fact the correct thing to do, and of course as I mentioned lesser evilism. But for the most part, you just had to give them permission to be communist. You just had to normalize it.
So seeing liberals like, be presented with the option to move left and slamming the door closed violently. Even on the most basic and obvious things. It was disheartening. I really thought it would be easier than that!
Theres this recent awful trend on TikTok (one Ive mostly only just heard of, because I'm not on that platform) of people "turning in their leftist card" over real leftists not flocking to support Harris and being principled about opposing genocide. One particular one, the only one I've seen with my own eyes, was a guy saying he "just found out he's not a leftist, he's a liberal, and [he's] turning in [his] leftist card". Like, whats happening there is a liberal is learning for the first time that he's a liberal. But like, my experience with that realization was to go "oh, so THATS what leftism is? OK. let me travel there" (yaknow, like I said, on average lol, it wasnt always that easy). So seeing the door slam for me is kinda weird? Still to this day despite being somewhat used to it now?
Sorta similar for me, once Bernie ran in 2016 socialism became kinda non-taboo and once I started looking it was very fast to just go "oh yeah capitalism does suck" after seeing the issues for a while but never really having it click. Still had a lot of brain worms to work through and still have a bunch that I probably haven't even noticed yet, but I feel like once I went anti-capitalist it took a long time for me to find out where I was in the giant pile of leftist labels. Kinda just picked up anarchism because when I still watched breadtube it seemed like the least offensive since it didn't challenge a lot of brain worms. Also I was chatting a girl up that said she was a leftist and when I self identified as an MLM she ghosted me. Then after kinda running with it, learning more and doing more self crit and reading theory COVID happened. The correct response to COVID was displayed by China and required "authoritarianism" to enact, and then it was just kinda like the last piece fell out and now I'm what I would've called a tankie back in 2018.
Its always interesting what issue is people's breaking point. For me it was Mike Brown and the Ferguson protests. That it was Covid for you is really interesting to me. Makes sense though.