Damn, I skipped the first two. I was a radlib, hated the liberals more and more. Saw some communist content on Instagram. It recommended State & Revolution, I thought “oh, yeah, Lenin was an author! I should read what he has to say!”. Boom. That book lays out all of the things wrong with reformism and it outlines why the state functions as it does. Lifted the veneer of liberal democracies and exposed them for the tool of bourgeois oppression that they are. Made me despise all of Western politics. Decided to read Stalin, Engels, Marx (Marx still kicks my ass, though). Started really focusing on dialectical materialism. It reinforces the dictatorship of the proletarian, which Western leftists who aren’t MLs will never be caught dead supporting.

I’ll say, I never had a “red scare” aversion to anything communist or Soviet like American chauvinists do. I was at the very least aware that communists were the ones willing and capable of fighting Nazis and fascist paramilitary death squads funded by the US, so I knew there was something “missing” about the American narrative of “communism bad”. I mean, not that I held the US in high, moral regard as they’re genocidal bastards, but I did believe a lot of the shit about AES countries being “authoritarian dictatorships”, which is such an absurd, idiotic belief granted that all states have their own dictatorship and authority over the populace. Looking back, it’s almost embarrassing to have had essentially no principles: somehow, I knew the US was a great terror to the world, but on the other hand, I believed much of the anti-communist propaganda just like every other uneducated leftist and liberal.

Being a liberal boils down to being so unbelievably uneducated about the world. It means viewing the world and societies’ development outside of reasoning and the scope of science. It’s pure fantasy and idiocy, and it’s no wonder that the “well-meaning” liberal finds themselves so blindsided and impotent when their system adapts a more nakedly fascist character.

I am not sure what I could consider myself before becoming ML. Closer to liberalism? Socdem? It wasn’t really anything particular but Trump’s presidency definitely exposed the contradictions that helped me realize that Western “democracy” does not work the way we are constantly taught how it does.

There’s my realization how I reacted to pro-China as “tankie” which also made me have an introspection and examine why I reacted that way after Trump’s administration. When I discovered a documentary(Loyal citizens of Pyongyang) about DPRK and the horrible history that was never taught, how the US and the UN/NATO committed genocide and the horrible sanctions as collective punishment for not obeying the US empire that’s when it really affected me.

Posting that documentary on a supposed leftist forum and the chauvinistic reaction, the “yellow peril” and how justified the actions against DPRK were for them and being labeled as a Tankie, how they don’t tolerate Marxist-Leninists pushed me to… Marxism-Leninism so there’s something great from that.

this was me from 2020-2022

I remember watching Richard Wolff’s “Let’s Talk About Socialism” as a pivotal moment of “oh maybe it isn’t terrible.” Nowadays I’d probably say that lecture is mediocre, cause IIRC he was kinda downplaying the USSR’s accomplishments and advocating for worker co-ops or something. But at the time it was a solid pipeline moment to get me to reconsider. For a time after that, I was into “libertarian socialism,” which basically meant that I thought AES states were too top down and that we were going to do it differently by being more bottom up or something.

I think reading State and Revolution was the real turning point away from that, where Lenin kinda lays out the blueprint for AES states and it became a lot more clear what all the terms mean and why people practicing it did the stuff that they did. I still had a lot more growing to do after that though and do to this day. But this place helped me transform from “I’m probably ML” to “I don’t see any proven alternative to ML.” And helped me transform from “I don’t quite understand what states like Russia are doing, it’s confusing” to “imperialism is the primary contradiction and critical support for anti-imperialist states.”

This place also helped me understand dialectical and historical materialism better. It’s still something that slides off my brain a bit, but I think that’s just from not enough actual application of it.

I don’t want dictators, regardless of whether they’re a fascist rightoid or a tankie leftist.