This was a huge one for me personally, and likely a lot of at least white, raised middle class leftists. Took awhile to eschew that there was anything salvagable in the genocide-and-slaves country. Like just seeing the flag about, or on clothes I just assume that person is a fascist lol
What opened your eyes? I feel like it should be very simple and straightforward: if you consider all humans' lives equally valuable, then you hate the USA for murdering millions of people in its wars. This is what "radicalized" me although I think it's absurd to call my position of knowing that mass murder is wrong "radical" or "extreme".
And yet, here is how interactions have gone for me:
Me: mass murder bad. Right?
Libs and conservatives: right.
Me: competent actors are responsible for the consequences of their actions. Right?
Libs and conservatives: right.
Me: America has started many wars and as a result many people died, both directly by American weapons and also indirectly by the effects of war. Right?
Libs and conservatives: right.
Me: therefore America is an evil mass murdering entity and the enemy of every decent person in the world. Right?
Libs and conservatives: well HOLD ON NOW (gibberish, bullshit, going quiet and not engaging, anything to avoid pitting reality against their beliefs and seeing which one wins)
I also thought America was good when I was a very young child. Then I saw America murder a bunch of innocent civilians on the news and grew out of such childish unreality. Since it is so obvious I just don't know what to do when I tell people the truth and they refuse to get the point. It feels like nothing works.
I know for me it was a combination of learning US history, always having leftist tendencies when I was a child, working blue collar jobs, and the final nail in the coffin was Occupy Wallstreet/Obama administration. The consistent thing across these experiences was how so-called liberals were often just as bad, if not worse, than conservatives. I understood, though, that the solution to liberalism isn't to go right, but to go further left.
The lack of solidarity among Occupy protesters with working class people and the killing of Abdul al-Awlaki really pissed me off. Then I thought to myself "If liberals are like this now, what the fuck were they like in 1962, 1859, and 1775?"
This was a huge one for me personally, and likely a lot of at least white, raised middle class leftists. Took awhile to eschew that there was anything salvagable in the genocide-and-slaves country. Like just seeing the flag about, or on clothes I just assume that person is a fascist lol
What opened your eyes? I feel like it should be very simple and straightforward: if you consider all humans' lives equally valuable, then you hate the USA for murdering millions of people in its wars. This is what "radicalized" me although I think it's absurd to call my position of knowing that mass murder is wrong "radical" or "extreme".
And yet, here is how interactions have gone for me:
Me: mass murder bad. Right?
Libs and conservatives: right.
Me: competent actors are responsible for the consequences of their actions. Right?
Libs and conservatives: right.
Me: America has started many wars and as a result many people died, both directly by American weapons and also indirectly by the effects of war. Right?
Libs and conservatives: right.
Me: therefore America is an evil mass murdering entity and the enemy of every decent person in the world. Right?
Libs and conservatives: well HOLD ON NOW (gibberish, bullshit, going quiet and not engaging, anything to avoid pitting reality against their beliefs and seeing which one wins)
I also thought America was good when I was a very young child. Then I saw America murder a bunch of innocent civilians on the news and grew out of such childish unreality. Since it is so obvious I just don't know what to do when I tell people the truth and they refuse to get the point. It feels like nothing works.
I know for me it was a combination of learning US history, always having leftist tendencies when I was a child, working blue collar jobs, and the final nail in the coffin was Occupy Wallstreet/Obama administration. The consistent thing across these experiences was how so-called liberals were often just as bad, if not worse, than conservatives. I understood, though, that the solution to liberalism isn't to go right, but to go further left.
The lack of solidarity among Occupy protesters with working class people and the killing of Abdul al-Awlaki really pissed me off. Then I thought to myself "If liberals are like this now, what the fuck were they like in 1962, 1859, and 1775?"
it's no different to a swastika or an "israeli" flag tbh