What radicalized you?

I don't think it was really one particular thing, but seeing the economy go "mask off" during and after COVID really opened my eyes that work itself has very little value, and capital is really the only way to stay ahead. Seeing people make 5-10x their investment in a matter of years in the stock market and 2-3x their investment in their home during the same period while being stuck making the same wage as I was 5 years ago hasn't felt good.

Today is my yearly reminder of what I consider to be the impetus of what "radicalized" me.

What is it?

I’m well aware of being considered a social radical, especially in the United States where we just kind of apathy-ed our way into fascism. But frankly I don’t think I was radicalized. There is no single event that explains why I think the way that I do. Instead, I just think the rest of the people are just basically asleep or are simply in positions where they don’t have to care about other people, so they don’t.

FD Signifier uses the term “pick-me” to refer to a certain class of black conservative person. They are people who adopt conservative politics in the hope that they can fit in and be “not like those other blacks”. I think that idea can be applied more broadly. There are many conservatives who still completely support Donald Trump as president even though they can see that his policies are causing people to be murdered on the street. The reason fascism spreads is that they think that if they can just ingratiate themselves with the fascists, they won’t be in the scores of people being put under foot.

And the thing is that these thought processes are the same for everyone out there. If you were to ask people “do you agree with every single government policy wholesale”, the answer will be almost universally “no”. So why aren’t they trying to change them? There will be many answers to that question, but they all boil down to the loss of social standing. Just being described as being a political activist is considered to be degrading to many people.

The fact that since this thread was posted, somewhere around ten of my countrymen have died from diabetes. Roughly 100,000 people in the US die from diabetes every year. There's famously 525,600 minutes in a year, which means roughly one death every five minutes. Every single day, conservative politicians kill over 250 of my neighbors just in this particular way. It's a pretty useful statistic when you want to appeal to emotion, even if it is massive overestimate (some of these deaths would not be prevented by better access to healthcare)

Ten people who were alive when this thread was posted, and are dead now.

This is a minor one, but I think it was what originally got my ball rolling, so to speak.

I really enjoyed video games as a kid, I had an N64 and GameCube and Wii and an okay laptop. To be fair, I did play them a LOT, but also I lived in the country and didn't really have friends outside of school hours so I didn't have a ton else to do. My parents became concerned, but unfortunately also bought into the "video games make you dumb/a zombie" classic boomer thinking. So, they unilaterally declared that I was to be restricted to 3 hours of video games a day. It's funny, as an adult that seems like plenty of video game time, but as an early teen it was a disaster!

I wailed and gnashed teeth etc, but I was a very well behaved child, so I followed the rules. I stuck to them religiously, partitioning my game time into 3 hour-long segments, and feeling incredible guilt whenever I accidentally went over the limit in a day, even a little.

...however, slowly, I began to realize that I was the only one keeping track at all; neither of my parents actually monitored my time, either with digital tools (which I doubt they knew how to use) or with just plain ol supervision. So, I slowly began pushing the boundaries, and sure enough, nothing happened. Oh sure, occasionally there would be a noticable breach, and there would be some posturing, but ultimately it would just return to the status quo.

This whole thing kind of gave me the realization that rules only exist so much as anyone cares about enforcing them. Unfortunately this lesson can be used for some pretty evil ends (just look at current US admin), but it's also enabled me to help both myself and others in ways that don't hurt anyone, but would be considered "off-limits". Basically, I learned that self-policing does nothing good for myself.

In my mid teens in the mid 00's and watching my dad let his guitar gather dust, hearing him singing less and less, and watching him slowly become a rage driven zombie staring at work emails all day Saturday and Sunday.

I basically lost my parents to their work and I swore to never let the world take away my soul.

The so-called sin of empathy, I guess. I don’t like to see others in needless pain, and I was not raised by ghouls that think that pain brings us closer to God, though I was raised in an evangelical Christian church.

I don’t buy into the ideologies at the core of modern conservatism. The more I stand fast and stick to my guns, the more I’m seen as a radical. I just don’t want people to suffer when we have the means to help them. Anything less than helping every person we can is unacceptable. And that makes me a radical, I guess.

The AI boom. When Chatgpt launched in 2022 it was immediately obvious to me that the covid economy would never recover and the best was behind us.

I was always a little bit of a doomer/prepper but thats the moment that radicalized me and I leaned all in. I’m glad I did, because my spouse got laid off of their six figure job last year and has been out of work for 8 months now and we woulda been screwed if we didnt already have a bit of a prepper attitude.

The reaction to 9/11. The mass jingoism, ignorance, pure hatred, and lies in display during the run up to the Iraq war just made it clear to me that the whole American political system was broken. Then 2008 did the same for our economic system.

Not to get hung up on the definition, but before anyone starts pissing, I want to point out that I don't necessarily consider myself "radical," it's just that my views aren't very popular with American politicians. Anyway, there wasn't one specific thing/moment, but there are a few major influences that weren't things I grew up with:

1. Learning about the New Deal in high school. Massive infrastructure projects sounded like a pretty cool way to provide jobs, especially after learning about the military industrial complex a few weeks later. The majority of conversations about domestic policy that I heard at the time were centered around welfare and homeless people. I figured if we're so worried about "giving money away" why not just pay people to do shit?

2. Learning about how the US funded Osama Bin Laden and the Mujahideen in the 1980s. We were five years into the War on Terror and I had never heard anyone mention the fact that America used to be buds with the most wanted man in the world. I think it's more common knowledge these days, but it blew my mind and the minds of my classmates when my teacher brought it up. It was my first real "are we the baddies" moment.

3. Reading Manufacturing Consent and coming across information about media consolidation. After learning about Bin Laden's ties to the US, I went through a bit of a phase of reading books about the Bush Administration and the War on Terror. One of the books that stood out was No Questions Asked: News Coverage Since 9/11 by Lisa Finnegan. Finnegan highlighted how the media failed to fulfill its duty to challenge the Bush Administration in the wake of 9/11, but for the most part, it was framed as though it was a recent failure in a system that worked (or at least that's how I understood it 20 years ago). A year later, I read Manufacturing Consent, which recontextualized Finnegan's work as the latest examples of the system working as intended. That was a big one for me. Then a few months later, I procrastinated my way through a deep dive on the handful of giant companies that own the vast majority of media we consume (a figure that has only shrunk since then), which, again, blew my mind.

4. Bernie 2016/The rise of Trump. The other "radicalizing" moments came when I was 17-19, but I spent most of my 20s feeling apathetic. Then Bernie came out of nowhere and shocked me back into giving a shit. On one hand, it was a much needed reminder that there are a lot of people out there who share some of my beliefs. On the other hand, it was a much needed reminder of some of the things that piss me off. IIRC, just 11% of media coverage during the primaries was focused on substantive issues while the remaining 89% was focused on the horse race aspect, and ~2/3 of the coverage was focused on the Republican race. While Trump was able to build his movement with millions of dollars worth of free media, Sanders was immediately written off by both the media and the Democratic Party establishment (damn you, superdelegates!). That got me back on the horse and into organizing.

My custody was signed away to Island View RTC when I was 16. That tore off the mask right quick.

Seeing how fully and absurdly obstructive Republicans were during Obama’s tenure made me vow to never vote for a Republican in my life. If only I knew how much worse they’re were going to get!

Late 90's punk music.

To some degree it started with like the Tony Hawk Pro Skater soundtrack kind of stuff, but eventually Propaghandi, Anti-Flag, Dead Kennedys, etc.

A lot of people in this new generation seem to forget how subversive music has been over the years. I see a bunch of people freaking out because a spanish language artist performed a super positive song talking about the struggles of people in Puerto Rico at the superbowl.

Back in my day we had anarchist punk bands openly calling for the downfall of the government, capitalism, and western society in general. Back then you could openly support these bands without fear of repercussion. Hell, they were played on the radio and included in That's What I Call Pop #43 or Big Shiny Tunes, etc.

Nowadays I feel like the way the internet is being policed we can no longer even say things like "Fuck George Bush!" online because we're currently being monitored by hundreds of different agencies.

So I guess I've been radicalized twice now. Once, 20 years ago for the whole political situation, now a second time re: the internet.

Some of the letters were in red, so they seemed important.

The mass rto mandates, not only by large corporations but also our governments, over the past couple years.

It hasn't changed where my political leanings lie or anything like that, but I would say it's made me feel a lot less optimistic about.. society and the people with/in power, I guess. Ripped bare where alignments lie, and it's not with workers just generally trying to balance life, parents trying to juggle childcare and careers, or the environment and reducing roadway emissions.

There were many things that lead me from right-wing country bumpkin to radical leftie. The assorted political dealings and economic crashes ruining my generation. Seeing the triumph of killing CFCs then promptly burying our heads on global warming...the effects of which were being taught to me in the 90s. Followed up by the foreverwar.

But the thing that really yanked the final lever to 'fuck the patriarchy' radical was becoming the dad of a girl. It was my first direct exposure to sexism "oh look Dad is babysitting." And all of the gross toxic man stuff started really hitting home, and I lost a few friends in trying to shut it down.

Everything that has happened since further reenforced not just the rejection of the right, but the need to crush its horriffic oppression of both its enemies and its pawns. Dobbs radicalized my wife from extreme pacifist into 'the left needs to start arming themselves,' so even the most levelheaded in my life has also been pushed to the brink.

Art is Resistance. Leave not a bare patch of concrete.

Force the psychopaths to confront their rejection of empathy directly.

2017. Prior, I believed that folks, at their core, truly wanted to better themselves and love thy neighbor. Watching Trump get elected made a crack. Then watching how folks acted and reacted during the term just broke me. I walked away from everything I'd been working towards as an adult, my life path radically changed.

Then during that transformation, COVID hit -- I was out of work but ineligible for benefits since being out of work was a result of finishing my graduate program. I got a crappy poorly paid construction job, my degree was too academic for me to make any use of it for finding work. Seeing how people treated one another during a pandemic... was hard. I'm immunocompromised, people just didn't give a fuck, even my own family was directly responsible for me catching COVID at least one of the half dozen times. One day when my bestie was moving across the country I just snapped. Quickly dropped everything and moved across the country too. Another radical change in my life path.

Ending up here is probably for the best though. Having realized some things about myself, I would've been quite unsafe staying in my home state and am now in one of the safest states for someone like me. In self-discovery, I'm headed down yet another radically different life path now, trying not to let, well, everything, negatively affect where I go.

Each one has showed me parts of myself that are really me, parts I didn't know about, and parts that were facades. Me from 10 years ago wouldn't recognize this me. I hate where the world is at, but would I even know myself without these radical changes? Who's to say.

Spring/Summer of 2020 in general.

I don't consider myself a radical by any means but I do have beliefs that others may find radical and make people very angry. I have to watch myself because I speak of those issues very naturally as a normal part of a conversation.

I am some kind of a prison abolitionist for example. Most people are okay with the idea because they think about non-violent crimes and other minor stuff. But I really mean that we should work towards no incarceration whatsoever as a goal in the next 200 year or so. I never mean "release all of them now! Let chaos reign!" but that's what everyone reads.

Lots of stuff "radicalized" me but that is probably rooted in a deep philosophical skepticism and an understanding of the shortcomings of criminal justice (including how several sources of evidence are not nearly as scientific as we think). I was also persuaded by how disproportionately incarceration affects black men (I am a black man).

Ultimately imprisonment is contrary to the human condition and I don't believe we can deny that at the same time that we work so hard to avoid similar conditions when it comes to other animals. I'm not saying to demolish all prisons in collective rage, but maybe we should look very seriously at ways to advance society to a point where they are progressively less needed.

It was a pastor of a megachurch, of all places.

I grew up in the church. My parents, being Korean immigrants, attended Korean immigrant churches (which has its own fascinating ecosystem). I got immersed into the culture, volunteered in various capacities, and made Christianity a core of part of my identity. I grew up as most people know Christianity - the whole nonsense with altar calls, the "accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior" stuff, repentance, etc.

The first time I heard this pastor, I was floored. I had never heard a sermon like it, one that pulled in the history, the word analysis, dozens of references from various parts of the Bible, and the modern context all in one go. It felt like I was in a graduate level theology class but the content was relayed in a manner that even a layperson could understand and apply it easily. It was through this pastor that I finally heard a salvation message that makes sense - one that doesn't rely on the "personal Lord and Savior" crap and all of its inherent contradictions and questions.

This pastor eventually left that church and began his own church on one basic principle - the church exists to serve others. This church had no Bible studies, no prayer meetings, none of the usual programs that you'd expect from a church. Instead, the philosophy revolved around coming together once a week on Sunday to be equipped and to fellowship as a congregation, and then to spend the rest of the week being good neighbors to those around us. The goal wasn't to sequester Christians with one another but rather, to mingle and demonstrate Christ in our respective communities.

The church sadly fell apart during COVID but I try to live out those principles as much as I can. His message on salvation, in particular, changed the way that I look at modern church practices with altar calls and such and gave me a way to explain Christian salvation in a way that makes more sense to others.

Interesting thread. Given that right off the bat you don't give a definition of radicalization, it is very interesting to see how people see themselves as "radical" from what they are saying in the comments, or in other words how each person defines it. Would have been fun for each comment to start with their own definition of "radical".