Former chuds, what got you to stop being a chud?

Someone explained to me that new yorkers have feelings and can feel pain, and then the city sold the sewers to blacrock and they increased my rent, so at that point i wasn't a cannibal or a humanoid underground dweller anymore.

So for me, it was literally growing up and becoming a College Lib

Then I joined the DSA and started to get upset with the other members about them being so milquetoast and incapable of doing anything to benefit anyone

When someone called me a Marxist as an insult (which I laughed off and said "I don't even know what that is") I started to get into Marx and realized he was basically right about a lot of things

Then I moved out of the Midwest and saw that even in a supposedly progressive, forward-thinking state on the East Coast, things are shitty

As for family, I just make fun of my relatives who are still Chuds

I don't know if it does anything to make them change their minds, but it makes them shut up

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I became less of an edge lord teenager and learned to become an empathic adult

Re-writing this whole comment because I can do better.

There was a lot of things that got me to stop being a chud. HBomberguy dunking on Davis Aurini was a big one. But realy the biggest factor was the realization that basically all my friends could be categorized as 'undesireables' and everyone who held the kinds of beliefs I was being fed (i.e. the people it was 'acceptible' for me to hang out with) just rubbed me the wrong way.

That was mostly an internal journey, though, and not what you'd call replicable. A better option would be to show them that their boogeymen are not only stupid (e.g. 'diversity quotas' are basically unenforceable) but actively dangerous (e.g. abandoning the push for diversity would lead to an underclass of minorities ripe for even worse exploitation). Unless they genuinely have no sense of empathy, explaining how their perfect society requires thousands of people (including lots of people they might like) to be put to death

Not gonna say I was a nazi, just socially conservative. The secret ingredient was the catholic church asking me to decide between it and believing my gay friends won't go to hell as well as a lot of self criticism for cultural osmosis racism

Pretty much the second I entered the working world and found out that my peers are in general pretty cool and nice I shed my edgelord pretty quick.

The edgelord was more of a coping mechanism to handle mentally stunted schoolkids/teachers in this shite education system. All the edgelord 4chan crap became pretty cringe to me once I started talking to normal people and forming any sense of self worth.

I managed to get my brother out of being a chud but adult chuds are impossible in my experience they're usually lacking the prerequisite anything to process new thoughts. With my brother I just had to expose him to the right ideas and he did the rest of the work himself because unlike my parents he hadn't shed every sense of empathy.

Dumbass take, feel free to disregard:

Shitposting. Maybe never stop being a chud, just start being chuddy toward the right groups?

I had a lot of anger at the world and could only see it through a myopic lens. Lib opinions felt light gaslighting, telling you that everything is good actually and that you should just shut up and learn to love the system. Seeing chapo shitposting felt so fucking validating. Seeing libs called out not just for being some reactionary slur but actually dressed down for their poorly formed opinions on very obviously unjust systems. Thanks to shitposting on libs I was able to be opened to the idea that it is not wrong to be angry at the hierarchies I see around me, but instead to realize what processes and structures actually control those hierarchies. Its capitalism.

Similarly, being mad about "woke culture", "diversity quotas" may be able to be channeled into an idea that it is unjust for some group to have say on who gets to do what, and who even gets to define those groups? Its probably not even members of those supposed groups making up those quotas, but some who is using it to boost revenue. You can cite black thinkers who agree that fighting capitalism is best done with solidarity across working people.

In short, allow them to be angry, help lift the veil as to what is actually making them angry. Its capitalism.

For me it was America's response to 9-11. So you only have 2-3 days to really nail this one.

I went to college and met people who were different from me, and then I started working and realized that corporations don't care about workers. After that it was a lot of reading theory.

Realizing I can get shot for not being white and all of my fellow conservatives would cheer, not think about it, or spread rumors about me being a Hollywood Beijing crisis actor. And literally everyone on the right was obsessed with SJWs and “gamergate.” I admit, I found some of those SJW compilations funny. But then after a while I found it really pathetic that grown ass men who get upset at ‘unemployed people’ going around debating children and getting angry over video games

Also everyone kept complaining about communists ruining the world when they haven’t had influence for like 30 years. Also finding out old government policies and propaganda about how being against the KKK, racism, segregation, unfair wages, imperialism, and homophobia made you a loyal KGB agitator

Also, in high school I was a self proclaimed conservative libertarian capitalist anti communist. But during an activity, I was the only person who stood up when the teacher asked who would prefer if rich people should be forced to redistribute their wealth so poor people suffer less. She said “congratulations. You’re a socialist. The rest of you are capitalists” (she was a well intentioned socdem). Anyway, it made me think about what drew me into the so called “libertarianism” sphere and it was because I liked guns and didn’t hate anybody because of their race or gender or orientation or low income, but much of the libertarians aligned with the GOP

In a nutshell I lost my employer provided healthcare and had to pay $2k a month for COBRA to insure my small family. Then I was able to get insurance on the exchanges that was absolute dog shit and still $1k a month, half my rent. It covered nothing.

Ofc that got me very interested in universal healthcare, and once you’ve made that mental leap it’s easy to see all the other failings of capitalism including institutional racism.

Roughly how old are they? I think a lot of it depends on how set in their beliefs they are.

For me it was at one point being consistently exposed to people with left-wing views. I think it’s hard to maintain a right-wing worldview unless you have little to no exposure to anyone but chuds.

Also you stop being 15 at one point. That certainly helps

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I was never a chud (sorry) but my working theory on this now is that people won’t change their minds unless they suffer a sudden major decline in status. At that point, there’s a chance they can change.

For me, moving from labor aristocrat to worker (even if I’m still one who benefits from colonialism and imperialism and patriarchy) was radicalizing. I basically went from years of working a swanky respectable job that impressed people to…unemployment interspersed with jobs that are generally looked down upon. That sucked! I was still the same guy, but society was like: “fuck you, we don’t need you anymore.” And so I decided to say “fuck you” to the society that did this to me! What’s even worse though is that I wasn’t fired. I did this to myself because liberal me was bored with that swanky job and believed that I would be able to find another one. As it turns out, genuinely good jobs are extremely difficult to find!

This is why it seems generally pointless to argue with people. Libs and chuds think the way they do because the system benefits them.

I had gamer brain for a little while in my 20s. Never full chud but very "why does it always gotta be about gender" stuff. Realizing how unmoored I was after graduation pretty much power washed it out of me and forced me to learn that my mindset lacked compassion. That and lsd TBH

I was once kind of third world nationalist, slightly attracted to socialism as the most obvious alternative to Western imperialism, so maybe I was predisposed.

But I finally tipped into the radical left side after seeing some protests go down. I saw the full spectrum: peaceful libs trying to have "meaningful debates," cops grabbing protesters, aggressive fash showing up, and only Antifa rising to deal with them. The pathetic responses of the establishment and general population afterwards who has no stakes in what I actually experienced then.

I was turned towards anarchism from there but I started reading theory and got into red socialism as well later on

I'm not sure if I ever was a CHUD proper, I was raised in fundamentalist Christian settings and deradicalized in (private Christian) college. I participated in debate which exposed me to a bunch of perspectives that I would not have encountered otherwise which certainly helped.

I think the bigger factors for me were my own questioning of narratives I was being given (Obama is bad, but not for reasons conservatives usually go on about, and I picked up on how bad faith their reasons for disliking this relatively 'harmless' liberal were) and being confronted with disgust for CHUD things I would say around people I liked. I realized I had to pick between chuddery, which I was already pretty much over, and people in my life, and I made the right call.

Then I just kept going, and found that leftwing criticisms of liberalism made more sense than reaction or liberal idealism trying to defend it.

My own experience with CHUDs in my life is mixed. Usually they understand and instinctively agree with a class conscious view of US politics, the economic pressure and antagonism towards useless bosses are pretty universal and alienating experiences. But I have a hard time getting past idealist hangups, culture war grievances and liberal capitalist realism. I've had mixed success trying to make it clear that the people they are mad at are usually in a similar class position. Seems like a lot of the time it sinks in during a conversation but doesn't change their instinctive outlook in the future.

You have to start with things you agree with. Don't get hung up on specific details, if you have to misinterpret them in order to agree with them then start there. Then once you establish agreement, find out why they believe what they believe in an issue, and repeat back to them what you think you understand (very important, and its okay to guess if not sure). Then connect it to why you agree, how those things are connected, and how this connects to what they value, bonus points if you can add class analysis.

Granted, the minute you walk away they could just put on fox news and undo it all. If your family member is merely backward, then you can help them catch up. It's a long term strategy, there's no shortcut, and you might never turn them into a full fledged lefty, or it might take a long time.

Look up nonviolent communication strategies to drill down on some of the fundamentals. And don't forget to connect over shared interests! Music and books and shows are easier to find points of agreement, since they are engineered to have broad mass appeal, than political points which are engineered to sow division. Only a real social connection can dechuddify someone.

Not sure if this counts but I used to be a libertarian. I followed their beliefs to the logical conclusion.

But you can use the whole "muh woke culture" to tell them to practice what they preach about thick skins and just silently put up with it.

I went from age 12 to 13, sometimes you just gotta accept you're not gonna be the one to change their mind unfortunately :(

I was a fascist in terms of my cultural chauvinism, I had to lie to myself to bury my trans identity and cope with being in the US military. I deradicalized through many steps, but a key moment was Dr. Richard Wolff explaining the pyramid scheme structure of capitalism with Abby Martin.

Hit them with one critical economic point per conversation. Economics underpins every aspect of the cultural crap. And economics effects every single facet of all of our lives. And when you nail exact material reasons why they're suffering economically piques people's interest very quickly.

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