How did everyone become a leftist?

Assumed I was conservate when I was 16 do to knowing my parents were but when I became interested in politics, I soon became more socially liberal and basically libertarian. This was due to learning about the failures of the drug war, the tragedy of America's wars abroad and such. 

Then I began to question whether we need the state at all and discovered these essentially right wing "anarchists" who use a sort of a-priori argument called the "non-aggression principle". I jumped on that bandwagon until I found that the NAP or "non-aggression principle" is essentially bad philosophy used to protect class privileges when it comes to property.

 Funny enough who led me along this path of questioning the NAP were a group called "Bleeding Heart Libertarians", the fellows at Center for a Stateless Society (a primarily individualist anarchist and mutualist group), anarcho-communists such as early left youtube's (anarchopac / Zoe Baker), and people in group forums back in the day such as Brenton ( Brenton Lengel - YouTube). They all really stuck the nail in the coffin when it came to right wing precepts and helped begin to usher me into left wing thought.

Now I am into a few more Marxist / post-Marxist sources but those previous influences listed were an instrumental introduction to the left (save for Bleeding Heart Libertarians which did get me questioning the NAP but I still considered a right-wing group). Funnily enough who first led me into finding good reason to question the efficacy of capitalism was Peter Joseph as well as the Venus Project / Jacque Fresco.

Maybe some things in my life led me this way, but politics has always been an intellectual pursuit for me which I wanted to grow in. So, I'm unsure of what were the exact precipitating life events. I am still soaking in what knowledge I can as someone who still has problems reading longer texts. I'm not very involved irl organizing or activism. I face personal and structural barriers to that here. But perhaps I will be able to find something worth doing actively.

HAHA XD

When righties went after Bill Clinton to get him to lie about a blow job.  I haven't voted R since.  Never regretted it.

I've always leaned pretty left. I was taught from an early age to care for people and the world around us and conservatism always proved to be the opposite of that. Realized I was gay when I was about 13, too, and LGBT groups are usually incredibly left leaning, so I was exposed to leftist ideas as a young'n. Read Marxist theory in HS and have been a dirty commie ever since lol

I guess it occurred quite naturally. I was raised in a pretty conservative family, however my extended family was more far right than my father. I still havent found out if my father is closer to centrist than far into the blue quadrant...he did like Trump but I have no clue if his opinions changed since January 6th or not. He isnt very open about politics. But the rest of the family however very much is. I am LGBTQIA+ and they were extremely opposed to my identity and my step mom pretty much forced me out of my home with the ultimatum "either quit the trans bullshit or leave" so I was homeless for a year. That also opened my eyes to life in poverty and societal injustice and neglect on ALL TYPES of marginalized groups.

Sadly I DID have a slight chuddy phase when it came to LGBT issues because of people like Blair White but I can say confidently I never went as far as to agree about right wing politicians, right wing policies, the JQ, or anything else. I think I realized what was going on when YouTube started recommending me channels like Hunter Avalone (before he became a social democrat) and even creators as bad as No Bullshit (you know, straight up Nazis). It was a huge wakeup call and when my gf came out as non-binary at the time before coming to terms on being a binary trans woman, I really started to accept all types of gender identities. The old me was all just cope over my transphobic family and thinking if I wasn't as "crazy" as the SJW queer community then they will accept me. Thankfully my Dad is learning to accept me regardless now so that's why I think he's more center than the rest of the family. I started watching a lot of left content on YouTube and debates and while I know some debate bros aren't the greatest, I think it helped me look into more social and some economic/business ethics in the current state of America and educated me a lot about how the right thinks and their tactics to pull apolitical people in. I also now see how people like Milo Stewart (who got sooooo much shit when they made that everyone is racist video) is INCREDIBLY based and right, even at the time and was a very VERY smart kid. I certainly wasn't ready to accept that at the time and now after my experiences and based on statistics and evidence, really appreciate that they were ahead of the time on the political forefront. I think a lot of the "SJW" talking points are actually really true now and I feel horrible for ever shutting them down all those years ago (and I blame the Gamergate stuff for that even though I wasn't directly involved in the gaming community). 

Over the years I got more and more left, and now I am very much in the green quadrant. I would say beliefs align with Chomsky the most. I am always open to learning more of your guy's viewpoints from all over the spectrum and hearing out the reasons why you all think that. I am ALWAYS willing to shift my opinions on topics given good well researched arguments for it. 

My dad was a miner in Wales so was involved in all the strikes, he also was involved in homeless charity work for years. He gave me a very strong sense of fair and unfair which kinda led me towards leftism as i politically developed.

basically my dad is an absolute proletarian G

When I think about it, I think that Ive always been left leaning with my ideas and personal morals. From a young age, I never understood why money and objects held more value than actual tangible lives. And how we as a species can go from living in caves, to discovering technology to take us to space. Yet we as a species still can't figure out how to truly solve our issues without violence. It wasn't  till the pandemic however that I actually found words and ideas/theories that fit me and what I believe in. Shoutout to the TikTok punks for turning me into a comrade.

Whenever I learned that every nation has its own ruling class and the only countervailing power to those interests, which are the interests of powerful corporations, is a government by the people. I think one’s leanings are rooted in childhood, upbringing and early experiences, but enlightenment is a matter of a combination of reading and maturing. I became politically aware in my early 20s.

reading about alternative stuff, basically punk rock. i actually was kinda conservative b4

I was super conservative because that's what my parents taught me. I got social media from a young age however so I was exposed to a lot of different beliefs. In seventh grade I was horrible mental health wise. I would spend hours trying to make myself prettier to fit into beauty standards. I would sit on my phone and watch TikTok for hours as well to escape. I heard a lot of body positivity on there which led me to learn the roots of these problems. capitalism being the main ones. I also came out that year. Faced a lot of hate. researching the true meaning and cause behind social constructs and norms really helped me to become confident in myself. I feel better as a leftist

Idk im black and  was in middleschool during the edgy 2016 anti jsw era and like all the white kids around me were becoming right wing zealots so when i was becoming political this ideology just seemed to be in my best black interest. i use becoming poltical loosely because ive been politically aware my whole life. you kind of have to be as a black queer kid.

i was born into a white middle class family in a conservative area and could've been easily a equally conservative person, but pretty early on in my childhood i recognized that i was queer and that pretty much set me on the path of being left wing. however i am now a anarcho-communist, and i guess what radicalized me was the riots in the USA back in 2020, everything just kinda opened my eyes to things. 

i'm very happy i didn't end up like my neo nazi father, i hate that i could've been like him if i just didn't watch the news or ignored feelings about my identity. 

i was raised in a left-wing enviroment, but actually became more right wing before getting involved with communism. my mum has always been a socialist, and my father doesn't speak much of politics but when he does from what he says i could imagine him being the same or a mild libertarian variety of communism. i was raised left-wing, before getting involved with those "debunking" videos on youtube. at first it was atheists debunking religious people, then men debunking what they called feminazis (anyone who pointed out any issue with the patriarchy). i got to the point of watching people claim black people were racist and trans people were mentally ill, even dabbling with a bit of ben shapiro, before i took a sharp turn left wing. when i was older i began to read left wing theory, eventually reaching marxist-leninist theory and becoming a communist

I grew up in a steel mill town and when there was a ton of layoffs including my dad while CEOs made record profits when I was young started it. I would always move more and more left and after a spannish professor from chile talked to me and showed io postino in college I got more serious about organizing and getting involved.

Despite being born in a very far right family. Just the combined effects of being impoverished and having a natural interest in academia lead me to being very left wing. Something something reality has a left-wing bias (don't quote me on that).

as a kid i was always more socially liberal and generally more accepting of people as the pandemic began and I had more acess to social media I became a liberal, i was very bad at being a leftist if that makes sense but as I grew up so did my conviction for my beliefs and politics :> I'm now much more well read and informed!! 

I've always been left-ish leaning in the past, the "hey, maybe corporations could profit less if it meant stopping climate change, right?" (oh, the sweet innocence) and so was my mom, but both her and my dad are still pretty much fed on the big media lies about socialism and the likes. By the age of 14 I was leaning towards the right a lot, but it didn't last long as the candidate I was rooting for turned out to be an absolute piece of shit. My real radicalization started when I got in a very diverse and left leaning school at 15 and finally at 17 I got a girlfriend who comes from a very politically engaged and leftist family, she taught me a lot and really widened my views on the world around me. We're still together, btw! TL;DR: my marxist girl made me a commie.

My country had elected the most leftist party 3 consecutive times. I used to live in a house beside a church, because my parents used to be conservative pastors. I was raised to hate communism (obviously, their definitions of "communism" were flawed) and progressivism. Some months ago, i stated to search about what communists actually think. 

I've been a socialist for as long as i can remember, but I became some what of a reactionary when, from ages 11-17, i became rather racist and homophobic and turned into somewhat of a Limonovist NazBol. I escaped that mindset and became a normal, relatively progressive socialist when i stopped hanging out with fascists. The moment i cut them out of my life was the moment i could undo brainwashing.

I was like 9 when Trump got elected, and was at the time thanks to a combo of influence from my parents, my country's political direction at the time and basic moral values taught to me as a little kid, a more, moderate, even close to centrist liberal. 

That didn't stay that way for long- a year or two later, and I was getting increasingly more conservative. Not like far right or anything, but like decently building up to be a moderate conservative. My influences were a combination of reading about Nixon's earlier days as a politician, EmpLemon videos and Gamergate stories off the web.

That continued for maybe another year or two, but after a few incidents, I had begun rethinking my whole political direction. I turned back to the left after a period of deep thought and research (it helped that I was somewhat smart and always interested in academia and research amongst things, making my u-turn more of a possibility). 

At first, I identified as a soft left social democrat, essentially on line with at moderate expectations the Blair-Clinton axis of politics and on the more leftist expectation people like Harold Wilson, Jack Layton, Bob Hawke, JFK, RFK/Bobby and MLK (who, btw, all still pretty big political heroes).

Then I got into the more radical stuff going into high school, and sorta evolved my tastes from there. Eventually, a combination of taking notice of the social direction of my country and the world, a good amount of research, my moral code getting refined, some wishful daydreaming and a lot of emotional and mental readjusting, sorta caused me to enter my current state of political thought.

I'm currently a progressive democratic socialist. Yeah, I know, I went from a soft left SocDem to a hard left progressive DemSoc- a combo of economic socialism, equality, liberty, welfare, civil rights, work rights, union powers and so on

Grew up with some of these values, but a combo of being surrounded by a progressive society, a liberal social environment, a diverse school and some very interesting ideas from my parents, amidst other things, helped shape my political compass into the one I follow today.

What a journey- anyways TL;DR I'm a progressive DemSoc.

so i grew up in catholic school from kindergarten to senior year and i remember loving my seventh grade teacher and he loved the orange man and so i did (i know, ew)  ive always loved history and different religions and learning about them and so as i learned the more i was like oh wow dude this shit is fucked.  i then realized that i was queer and that kind of snowballed it for me ig.  i realized that i was far left after my government class in senior year when i cried after class because i just wished that we could rebuiled the systems in our country and start from scratch. then i found leftist influencers like madeline pendleton and just wrapped myself in the culture and am now lowkey obsessed.

A combination of things. My bio dad is financially well off, whereas for the majority of my life my mom has had to work two jobs to make ends meet. Because of my bio dad and the circles he is in I learned to have a distant for the rich especially because of how many of them would shit on the unhoused, the poor, and people like my mom who had to work two jobs. I learned about Anarcho communism more once I got into the punk scene. I learned to hate cops after watching a lot of episodes of unsolved mysteries with my best friend when I was about six. I saw how the cops could commit literal crimes and get away with it and saw how cases regarding women, people of color, and disabled people were treated by them. I basically learned leftist ideology and what it means to be a leftist by watching and listening to the world around me. (Also, listening to bio dad complain about paying six hundred dollars in child support, which he wouldn't do for months at time also helped. Because he complained giving my mom money that she would then use to pay for my medical stuff, food, and keeping a roof over my head.) Hearing the adults around me be shitty and learning that cops are essentially useless at a young age radicalized me.  

Sorta grew up being left-wing, my dad always talked about capitalism and how it affected us, he was always antifa and that just imprinted on me, I started but getting into feminism and racism. Don't get me wrong though, I had my internalized homophobia and misogyny, not to mention racism. Being pretty open minded did help me out of that and I can now recognize when others have those internalizations. Overall I've always been passionate about leftism.

I really started getting into, Anti-Capitalism & Marxism-Leninism taking it way more seriously when I had just graduated high school in 2016, I got sick and tired of seeing the Anti-Communism lies and propaganda and US Imperialism atrocities all over the globe...!!!!

I'm not even sure if I could pinpoint a specific year. Since I was around 7 years old I've been questioning or criticizing Capitalism even when I didn't have the words to properly articulate it. Around later 2020/2021 was when I found the words to describe said thoughts.

The main host of our system briefly identified as a Technocrat, became disillusioned, started identifying as an Anarchist, read some theory, started identifying as ML. I (not the main host) am generally kind of freakier ideologically, but we get along somewhat. Still ML-something, just with a side of cultism and schizophrenia.

Think Principia Discordia fucked Marx and all the other boys, had a stupid goth son. Aho~!

For me it was a pretty natural progression. I always just wanted good things for myself and others, and was always looking for what was needed to do that. The older I got watching the world around me the more it radicalized me to where I am now. It certainly helped being queer and disabled and surrounded by the like to push me towards the ideologies that made the most sense to that end.

Of course there were plenty of people along the way to help refine my ideas but a lot of my beliefs formed in spite of most people around me's best efforts :P

It's good to meet you all btw!

I was in the middle for the longest time, I didnt even know the left existed until this year. Politics aren't all that popular in our community cause either way things don't seem to end up in our favor. I started watching F.D SIGNIFER and I had a complete mind shift 

I have an lengthy reply, but to put it shortly, I'm a Cherokee who almost fell into conservative rhetoric. That is, until I got into college as a History Major, and immediately noticed my American History Professor was racist as all fucking sin.

This began my motion to the Left.

I quickly found that by simply learning the words "Capitalism" and "Communism", in the early 2010s, I had gone down the path of awakening - realizing now that America has had a MONETARY incentive to attack all of their Historical Enemies put a lot into perspective.

Charlottesville woke me up to a lot. It was about then when I started exploring the left of actual centreand I openly started calling myself a dem socialist a few years later. Covid radicalised me, lol. 

I first thought of myself as a Norwegian model Social Democrat. Then I saw Covid, and how the higher class accumulated wealth during times of suffering, and it radicalized me further left, towards Marxism-Leninsim. That and hearing of the horrors of American international imperialism. After some isolation and times of mental instability, I had some bad (Evola enjoying) influences and became an Italian Futurist and National Bolshevist/Strasserite. After a while, I became dissolusioned and read into Technocratic economics and governance. That leads to my current beliefs.

To be honest I’ve always been leftist even since I was young, there is enough food to feed the world and enough clothes and materials to house and clothe everyone, to me the issue is human greed willing to carelessly cause struggling for just an extra five pounds. Frankly as I’ve learned more about this world I’ve found no reason to change those beliefs. On the right all I see is hatred and anger underlying a wave of depression and failure to uphold the same beliefs they pretend to uphold.

If freedom of speech is apparently a right, why isn’t food or water or shelter?

Currently we have a new prime minister: Petteri orpo who basically just made my own family's problems more severe. Petteri orpo is HEAVILY on right and just that makes my fucking blood boil.

Found Bernie in College. The DNC burned me. Went further left because the DNC is pathetic. Bunch of rich fucks no different than the GOP. Starting reading theory. Listened to Michael Parenti lectures. Became a Marxist-Leninist. Realized that the only path to true and genuine equality is to move past capitalism and replace it with a system where the people have a right to self determination. This new system would be socialism and eventually one day when class, money and the state erode away, communism.

i actually started to get interested in politics through feminism when i was around 13, but i was quite young and naive so i was pretty liberal back then lol. i got to know some socdems when i started high school and i liked their views, but didn't think joining their youth association just to sit in meetings and discuss politics would change the world. eventually, in my 2nd year of high school, i found a new friend who was active in the youth left of sweden. the rest is history!

I have always had a left lean in my beliefs, though back in middle school I was slipping a bit right. When I was 15 I was diagnosed with type one diabetes and I almost had a slap in the face moment realizing just how unfriendly this world is to disabled and working people, then I continued to realize how horrible it is to all marginalized people. Throughout my mid to late teen hood I continued to look into politics and ideology, and naturally due to my realizations earlier a lot of my interests in politics leaned left. I became a staunch leftist after I got really into Che Guevara and his life and legacy at 18, due to a podcast episode on hi from Revleft Radio.