What is an important "butterfly moment" for you that helped push you towards leftism later on?
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
Counterintuitively: falling down the alt-right pipeline. I could never bring myself to fully agree with it and was "deprogrammed" by (and I really hate to say it) . I was a ite for awhile and even (also to my current regret) voted for Jim Crowe Joe in the 2020 election. However, my ism also led me to finding out tankies existed. Like many ites, I mocked and sneered and resisted them at first. However, I like to think of myself as somewhat intellectually honest, and my confrontations with them led me to reading and finding out they were right.
Before long I was a frequenter of r/genzedong (I didn't use reddit at the time chapo was the specter haunting reddit and only heard of the sub from genzedongers after it had been banned for awhile). I migrated to Lemmy when genzedong got quarantined for fighting against liberal disinformation regarding Russia's liberation of Ukraine in early 2022.
However, my ism also led me to finding out tankies existed. Like many ites, I mocked and sneered and resisted them at first. However, I like to think of myself as somewhat intellectually honest, and my confrontations with them led me to reading and finding out they were right.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.