Hey good on you for doing the reading and I hope the other people on our instance weren’t too mean to you <3
But yeah, most of us started in the same place of being fucked over by capitalism or reactionaries in some way and searched for an alternative and ended up as communists.
personal story of how I became a communist, mention of bigoted alcoholic father
I myself had a pretty materially comfortable upbringing but my dad was and still is an incredibly right wing homophobic, transphobic and antisemitic alcoholic who literally volunteered for ukip, the Tories and the Brexit party at various different points. Like to give you an idea of the type of guy he is he got me a copy of 1984 when I was 8 and sat me down and lectured me on the evils of socialism (and also kind of said that it was simultaneously antisemitic while implying that it was also a Jewish conspiracy). Which kinda made growing up and realising I was queer but having to hide it quite polarising against his beliefs for me, so like i started discussing it online and searching like left wing queer friendly communities and like starting to gel with the idea of socialism (actually just kinda tentatively supporting Corbyn at that point - because like he seemed a bit too radical to me at the time for me to uncritically support)
Anyway fast forward a year or two and I was calling myself a socialist or even a communist sometimes because I found the most acceptance in what were in retrospect, pretty milquetoast “”“socialist”“” spaces and then I found hexbear and ngl it was so nice, like I didn’t really agree with them about everything but from the very beginning the mods showed that they were extremely willing to go hard to protect the queer users of the site from queerphobic abuse and so I stuck around and they gradually got me to read theory and read up about history in my own time. Anyway, now 3 years since I joined hexbear I consider myself an ML because I see it as the most effective path forward for decolonisation and I very much admire the progressive history of (most) marxist-lenininist nations and also I pretty frequently end up discussing theory with the various trans communists from this site who are in my dms. Right now I’m sandwiched between reading 10 Days in Harlem by Simon Hall and Settlers: the Myth of the White Proletariat by J. Sakai
I hope the other people on our instance weren’t too mean to you <3
People are passionate about these topics, I get it. I wouldn’t posted if I wasn’t ready to take from a bunch of “tankies” lol. I had a good time, I’ll be back arguing with y’all about something else soon :)
That being said, I started calling myself (anarcho-)communist when I realized the term for what I had essentially always felt.
Yeah, hope to see you soon. But yeah in general I’m a lot less, idk, gung ho with supporting China than most of the users of this site, but when its like come to major struggle sessions with outside users we kind of close ranks and keep to the hexbear line (excluding the hundred comment struggle session about kruschev that hexbear users had with each other in an unrelated worldnews thread on lemmy.ml when we first federated)
I think things will calm down after a week or so after all the hexbears get bored of arguing with libs and return to normal posting. after all the last time we had this many outsiders coming into our home turf and trying to start shit was like 3 years ago when some /pol/ users tried to raid hexbear and doxx some of the users and got bullied so hard they never came back
Hey good on you for doing the reading and I hope the other people on our instance weren’t too mean to you <3
But yeah, most of us started in the same place of being fucked over by capitalism or reactionaries in some way and searched for an alternative and ended up as communists.
personal story of how I became a communist, mention of bigoted alcoholic father
I myself had a pretty materially comfortable upbringing but my dad was and still is an incredibly right wing homophobic, transphobic and antisemitic alcoholic who literally volunteered for ukip, the Tories and the Brexit party at various different points. Like to give you an idea of the type of guy he is he got me a copy of 1984 when I was 8 and sat me down and lectured me on the evils of socialism (and also kind of said that it was simultaneously antisemitic while implying that it was also a Jewish conspiracy). Which kinda made growing up and realising I was queer but having to hide it quite polarising against his beliefs for me, so like i started discussing it online and searching like left wing queer friendly communities and like starting to gel with the idea of socialism (actually just kinda tentatively supporting Corbyn at that point - because like he seemed a bit too radical to me at the time for me to uncritically support)
Anyway fast forward a year or two and I was calling myself a socialist or even a communist sometimes because I found the most acceptance in what were in retrospect, pretty milquetoast “”“socialist”“” spaces and then I found hexbear and ngl it was so nice, like I didn’t really agree with them about everything but from the very beginning the mods showed that they were extremely willing to go hard to protect the queer users of the site from queerphobic abuse and so I stuck around and they gradually got me to read theory and read up about history in my own time. Anyway, now 3 years since I joined hexbear I consider myself an ML because I see it as the most effective path forward for decolonisation and I very much admire the progressive history of (most) marxist-lenininist nations and also I pretty frequently end up discussing theory with the various trans communists from this site who are in my dms. Right now I’m sandwiched between reading 10 Days in Harlem by Simon Hall and Settlers: the Myth of the White Proletariat by J. Sakai
People are passionate about these topics, I get it. I wouldn’t posted if I wasn’t ready to take from a bunch of “tankies” lol. I had a good time, I’ll be back arguing with y’all about something else soon :)
That being said, I started calling myself (anarcho-)communist when I realized the term for what I had essentially always felt.
Thx for the personal story!
Yeah, hope to see you soon. But yeah in general I’m a lot less, idk, gung ho with supporting China than most of the users of this site, but when its like come to major struggle sessions with outside users we kind of close ranks and keep to the hexbear line (excluding the hundred comment struggle session about kruschev that hexbear users had with each other in an unrelated worldnews thread on lemmy.ml when we first federated)
I think things will calm down after a week or so after all the hexbears get bored of arguing with libs and return to normal posting. after all the last time we had this many outsiders coming into our home turf and trying to start shit was like 3 years ago when some /pol/ users tried to raid hexbear and doxx some of the users and got bullied so hard they never came back
Anyway, hope you stay well <3