As a recently radicalized baby-lefty I’ve been thinking about this a lot
“the idea of a “moment” of radicalization is liberalism and connotes that people need this singular moment of experience or persuasion whereby they enter the class conscious state.”
fair point, just goes to show that my perspective was influenced by my own experience, thanks for pointing it out because now I’m aware :D
So I guess the real question would be “What’s your personal history with leftism?”
I struggle a lot with binge eating, so I was partially hospitalized a couple years ago. The insurance company decided that I had had enough treatment so they stopped paying so I had to quit. That was when I realized that capitalists want me dead. They will wring every last cent out of us and then kill us. This is life under capitalism.
Net neutrality truly radicalized me the most with the realization of how much power corporations have in the government.
I was already reading Lenin before the dem primary, but super-Tuesday was a really big “oh shit, we will never even win menial victories through bourgeoise electoralism” moment for me.
That night I drank way too much and emerged out of my room the next morning hungover and a committed Marxist-Leninist.
I had a very similar experience. I was pretty enambored with the theory before the drop outs. I read the easy stuff like the manifesto and I was listening to citations needed, the official podcast of the website, and I was thinking about my lived experiences through a material lense. I was disgusted with US foreign policy and the austerity. When they zerged Bernie like that I realized that I would never be able to “calm down” my left leaning tendencies and embrace a liberal POV. There was no minimum of imperial expansion that was fine and dandy because the downward trend was acceptable enough. There were no billionaires who I was satisfied with calling shots and writing laws. There was no context where I could see myself enthusiasticly rooting against the left or punching down (unless we’re infighting lol).
I wanna say 9/11, really big “chicken came home to roost” moment for empire.
