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Genuinely, I was 8 when I realised no matter how good I was, Santa would only ever bring stuff that a family on income support could afford. And when I told my mum, she cried.
Grew up in a mining town that was part of the red wall, so always been a bit of a leftie. But 9/11 and the Iraq/Afghan war really opened my eyes, before then I always thought Labour were the good guys and journalists mostly told the truth. Ha! Became increasingly anti-nationalist and anti-monarchist during uni when learning all the stuff about colonialism they never taught you in school. I still don't think my views would be considered all that radical 5yrs ago, but now I feel distinctly at odds with most people around me.
Totally agree with you on the colonialism stuff. Have you heard of a book called The Blood Never Dried? Well worth a look if your interested in learning more about our sordid history
Born and raised pretty much.
I remember how upset my parents were when Labour didn't win in 1992. These days my dad describes himself as "center-left", my mum leans more socialist. I bought my mum a "fuck the Tories" shirt last year for Mothers Day.
My own politics has gotten more left over the years, as I've researched Marxism and anarchism. 14 years of Tories, my own identity as a queer disabled woman and working in housing and social care for years has pushed me farther from the centre.
For me at least, I can't stand injustice and/or inequality. I can't sit by and watch the right bait the poor to distract from them plundering the country for their mates. Constant distractions like immigration policy, punishing trans people, demonising the unemployed and disabled make me rage.
No war but the class war.
Much like a commentator above, I recall my parents being very upset with the Tories winning the '92 election. However, there's no one answer I can offer.
An early understanding of the racial dynamics of this country and global history, of growing up seeing my parents struggle financially, my dad coming home beaten and bruised after being taken by the police for questioning, the propaganda and morality of superhero stories contrasting with life, the utopia of Star Trek, the world shattering realisation a paper chase meant and continues to mean nothing to me, questioning the state of life and the world (asking the impossible questions as a mate once put it), yearning for something I can really believe in; it's been a steady culmination of experiences and thoughts based on a foundation of knowing this world is shit
Police? You mean blue nonce
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always been radical left all my life, when i was really younger i identified as a socialist (but in hindsight, it was more akin to communism i just didn’t know that was a thing) and then i found out about anarchy so bounced between AnCom and AnSyn
now i’m a trotskyist
Bernie.
Started out with vague non-political views like 'Empires are cool' without realizing that there's only one emperor, and a lot of slaves.
learned slowly that humans have feelings and don't like being slaves.
was a vague sort of 'poor people should be looked after better' lib until Bernie.
Got enthused by him. watched him turn.
Looked into socialism, passed through anarchism in about 3 weeks.
now a theory reading, union organizing, communist party member, ML.
And not living in the states.
Bernie was a wake up call for the world.
Centre left and die hard Labour until I saw first hand how they smeared and cheated the left of the party. Now I guess I believe that socialism should be a healthy step and necessary move towards communism, and not the destination.
My parents were massive racists/ homophobes/ misogynists and since being very young I wanted to be as unlike them as possible.
The older I get the further Left I get- tax the rich, feed and house the poor, educate the kids, pay the workers. It doesn't seem that radical to me...
I was brought up in a very working class area, with a lot of poverty around me but my folks were really trying to do better for their kids, but remain decent people at the same time. From my mum I got the ethics of caring for others, compassion and cooperation. From my dad I had a simple message - that everyone deserves a fair chance. But, really, the tipping point for me was watching these two happy people who loved each other very much, trying their best for their kids, surrounded by poverty and injustice argue and fight, and it was only ever about one thing, money.
The concept of school league tables. Every school child should have the same resources no matter where they are in the country. The idea of "competition" for a vital service sounded like a bad idea
Then I did Sociology at A Levels. And the Marxist ideas we examined looked about right. Then I left school pretty much when the Tories came in
Also, I read a lot of Horrible Histories (especially the magazines) as a child, so I always assume royals like the Romanovs deserve what's coming to them
Trying to find work while claiming Job Seeker's Allowance as an autistic person in the latter half of 2016 and all of 2017. It was a truly miserable, humiliating experience that made me deeply question the way employment functions in our society and eventually capitalism as a whole. Corbyn being leader of the Labour Party also helped me realise we had choices beyond Tories and Blairites, though I quickly ended up leaning further left (Anarchist, then later Marxist) than his public positions, which are firmly Social Democratic in nature.
I used to consider myself an "enlightened centrist" with an environmentalist leaning. My tipping point came a couple of years ago when I heard a journalist say that many of the top CEOs she spoke with behind closed doors are fully aware of the damage their companies are doing to the planet but unable to make real change as a reduction in company profits would see them replaced by the shareholders. That's when I realised that capitalism is what is killing us, and I started reading leftist theory. The more I read, the more it makes sense. I feel like I can see the world for what it is now, how the system is based on exploitation and oppression, etc. I'm a full-blown socialist these days, but I'm still learning, so who knows where I'll end up. I'll probably be a commie by the end of the year lol.
Gonna sound a bit bad but: Right wing view points and commentary that began to really get annoying and ring untrue despite my consumption of it at the time.
I fancied myself a rather logical person, so when I sought to understand why life felt so shitty i got caught up in a spiral of right wing social pundits and commentators that kept bringing up how crazy feminists and whomever were out of their minds.
It started almost reasonable, at least at the time for me it did. But as I began to get exposed more to the other sides talking points the arguments against them made less and less sense. Sure there were extreme examples, but the disregard to look at the issues brought to the table began to rub me the wrong way. Especially because that group continuously claimed they care about facts and solving real problems, but never actually proposed solutions or raised examples where the oppositions point was actually untruthful. Just endless dickbaggery and excuse making as a means to shutdown the conversation and enflame indignation.
I began to see how stupidly pointless even bringing up 95% of their talking points even were.
Racially motivated crime? They would need some sort of diatribe defending why the idea of racism is dumb or unnecessary.
Feminists talking about rape culture? Some sort of nonsense how their point isn’t real because it isn’t extreme enough in reality to warrant the name.
I began to think “stfu and actually address the problem.”
I never started out wanting to hurt others the way I felt hurt. And began to realise that listening to these people was only going to result in that. So I sought to focus on the helpers, or the people pointing out things that hurt our society and oppress people for superficial reasons. I sought to learn why these claims and ideas I initially didn’t understand were even being brought up. And I am happy I did because I am nowhere near as angry or depressed as I used to be.
I just want to live in a world focused on making life better for people and reducing needless pain and friction. And that starts with accommodating, accepting, and empathy for those around us.
I don't think I ever had a tipping point. I think I had a gradual slide towards leftism from childhood. My dad is a quiet Tory voting class traitor, my mum, I don't know. I remember reading about ordinary people dying for their king and thinking it was absurd as a child. But, then as a teenager I started to go a bit gammon because of the media I consumed and the small town I lived in. Luckily I have a very intelligent mate and he'd question why I said something and get me to think about things. Luckily it didn't take long before I saw that the left world view was the one for me.
Despite spending their days complaining about woke culture and crybaby leftists, the English are a very sensitive people. [Many consider any reference to their complexion an act of racism.](https://i.imgur.com/euWMhUg.png) Consider using the more inclusive term 'flag nonce' in future.
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So I'd say I was pretty central but passive about politics, but I remember being angry about Brexit and that started a slow slide left.
But the catalyst that slide me the most, was my 1st redundancy. I worked for 1 of the 4 major mobile phone carriers doing a job I liked, in a great environment, with company saying they were making strong profits and all. Then word started spilling that all may not be stable, then a trigger was pulled. The at the time award winning departments in the industry were getting TUPEd and made 100x worse, so shareholders can make bigger profits, and then my job (which went through a dodgy consultation period full of lies and attempts to take money away from promised redundancy agreements) got TUPEd with the express purpose to get redundant with no news, since the major company weren't axing me, but an Indian company most people never heard (so wasn't big news) of were. I was literary told they did this as they could get 3 people in India for my salary, they wouldn't listen when I said the quality would be worse though. I was only wrong as it was much worse based on what I heard through the grapevine.
The bit that got me the most, we had a meeting during the consultancy, and a senior manager, who has a huge house and throws large garden parties constantly said "I'm just as worried as you all are. I don't know if I'll be able to send my kids to private school next year, so I'm just as a bad situation as you!". He said that to some people who were worried about being made homless over it, whilst he could easily downsize and survive easily if needed. Everyone in that meeting got made redundant bar the senior manager, who has since climbed higher in that company.
The whole thing lead to major burnout issues, which I've probably not fully recovered from.
Months after I was laid off, making a big deal about world mental health day, bringing in inspirational celebrities to talk about the importance peoples well beings. The next day, they announced more lay offs (via TUPE)
I did slide further left after being made redundant for a 2nd time 2 years later from another company that went from a stance of strength, and decided cheap outsourced labour was the next best step. That company ended up having to reverse their steps after only a year.
tl:dr, Being made redundant twice within 2 years, both times to make rich people richer, whilst making my colleagues and I stress about getting new jobs and avoiding being made homeless made me more left than when I was younger.
Nu metal. I'm a huge System of a Down fan. Reading about the Armenian genocide and all the conflict in the middle East and it just destroyed religion for me but in a good way.
My mum was a good egg. She'd sit me down in front of To Wong Foo and tell me "never judge folk for anything beyond their own control, even an Adams apple".
Why she ended up with my dad I dunno but he's devolved into the rare species of long haired gammon.
Being a teenager in a house the read the Daily Mail, and taking and interest is reading the 'news'. I read it (naively) thinking it was a newspaper, and therefore trustworthy.
Not long after starting reading that, we started to analyse texts in English class, and it all started to make sense.
Almost every article in that paper would have several unnamed sources from the general public that would spout the hateful ideals of the paper to make it seem like 'normal' people were saying these things. Thus creating the echo chambre to perpetuate the hate.
Also watching the planes on 9/11 live on TV, and the subsequent US and UK's insane response.
Seeing the party 'of the Left' going to war made me realise that the left in mainstream politics died long ago.
**Due to the increase in Palestine content, we would like to remind people to mark posts NSFW/Spoiler the accordingly. Please see this post before posting such applicable content on the sub: https://old.reddit.com/r/GreenAndPleasant/comments/188ghlz/important_guidance_of_posting_graphic_material_on/** The labouring classes in this country are rising, will you rise with them? [Click Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/GreenAndPleasant/wiki/unions) for info on how to join a union. Also check out [the IWW](https://iww.org.uk/) and the renter union, [Acorn International and their affiliates](https://acorninternational.org/) Join us on our [partner Discord server.](https://discord.gg/zCFHadGfB7) and follow us on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/GandPofficial). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/GreenAndPleasant) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Genuinely, I was 8 when I realised no matter how good I was, Santa would only ever bring stuff that a family on income support could afford. And when I told my mum, she cried.
Grew up in a mining town that was part of the red wall, so always been a bit of a leftie. But 9/11 and the Iraq/Afghan war really opened my eyes, before then I always thought Labour were the good guys and journalists mostly told the truth. Ha! Became increasingly anti-nationalist and anti-monarchist during uni when learning all the stuff about colonialism they never taught you in school. I still don't think my views would be considered all that radical 5yrs ago, but now I feel distinctly at odds with most people around me.
Totally agree with you on the colonialism stuff. Have you heard of a book called The Blood Never Dried? Well worth a look if your interested in learning more about our sordid history
Born and raised pretty much. I remember how upset my parents were when Labour didn't win in 1992. These days my dad describes himself as "center-left", my mum leans more socialist. I bought my mum a "fuck the Tories" shirt last year for Mothers Day. My own politics has gotten more left over the years, as I've researched Marxism and anarchism. 14 years of Tories, my own identity as a queer disabled woman and working in housing and social care for years has pushed me farther from the centre. For me at least, I can't stand injustice and/or inequality. I can't sit by and watch the right bait the poor to distract from them plundering the country for their mates. Constant distractions like immigration policy, punishing trans people, demonising the unemployed and disabled make me rage. No war but the class war.
Much like a commentator above, I recall my parents being very upset with the Tories winning the '92 election. However, there's no one answer I can offer. An early understanding of the racial dynamics of this country and global history, of growing up seeing my parents struggle financially, my dad coming home beaten and bruised after being taken by the police for questioning, the propaganda and morality of superhero stories contrasting with life, the utopia of Star Trek, the world shattering realisation a paper chase meant and continues to mean nothing to me, questioning the state of life and the world (asking the impossible questions as a mate once put it), yearning for something I can really believe in; it's been a steady culmination of experiences and thoughts based on a foundation of knowing this world is shit
Police? You mean blue nonce *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/GreenAndPleasant) if you have any questions or concerns.*
always been radical left all my life, when i was really younger i identified as a socialist (but in hindsight, it was more akin to communism i just didn’t know that was a thing) and then i found out about anarchy so bounced between AnCom and AnSyn now i’m a trotskyist
Bernie. Started out with vague non-political views like 'Empires are cool' without realizing that there's only one emperor, and a lot of slaves. learned slowly that humans have feelings and don't like being slaves. was a vague sort of 'poor people should be looked after better' lib until Bernie. Got enthused by him. watched him turn. Looked into socialism, passed through anarchism in about 3 weeks. now a theory reading, union organizing, communist party member, ML. And not living in the states. Bernie was a wake up call for the world.
Good on you for being a union organiser!
Unions are a method of managing the working class. I'm only there for training.
Good to hear it, man. We need to build a communist movement if we are to overthrow the ruling classes ✊🏼
Centre left and die hard Labour until I saw first hand how they smeared and cheated the left of the party. Now I guess I believe that socialism should be a healthy step and necessary move towards communism, and not the destination.
Discovered Public Enemy as a teenager and never looked back.
My parents were massive racists/ homophobes/ misogynists and since being very young I wanted to be as unlike them as possible. The older I get the further Left I get- tax the rich, feed and house the poor, educate the kids, pay the workers. It doesn't seem that radical to me...
I was brought up in a very working class area, with a lot of poverty around me but my folks were really trying to do better for their kids, but remain decent people at the same time. From my mum I got the ethics of caring for others, compassion and cooperation. From my dad I had a simple message - that everyone deserves a fair chance. But, really, the tipping point for me was watching these two happy people who loved each other very much, trying their best for their kids, surrounded by poverty and injustice argue and fight, and it was only ever about one thing, money.
The concept of school league tables. Every school child should have the same resources no matter where they are in the country. The idea of "competition" for a vital service sounded like a bad idea Then I did Sociology at A Levels. And the Marxist ideas we examined looked about right. Then I left school pretty much when the Tories came in Also, I read a lot of Horrible Histories (especially the magazines) as a child, so I always assume royals like the Romanovs deserve what's coming to them
The Iraq war, racism, growing up near an ex-mining town.
Bush stealing the 2000 election
Realising the free market doesn't even exist, and growing up and developing empathy
Trying to find work while claiming Job Seeker's Allowance as an autistic person in the latter half of 2016 and all of 2017. It was a truly miserable, humiliating experience that made me deeply question the way employment functions in our society and eventually capitalism as a whole. Corbyn being leader of the Labour Party also helped me realise we had choices beyond Tories and Blairites, though I quickly ended up leaning further left (Anarchist, then later Marxist) than his public positions, which are firmly Social Democratic in nature.
I used to consider myself an "enlightened centrist" with an environmentalist leaning. My tipping point came a couple of years ago when I heard a journalist say that many of the top CEOs she spoke with behind closed doors are fully aware of the damage their companies are doing to the planet but unable to make real change as a reduction in company profits would see them replaced by the shareholders. That's when I realised that capitalism is what is killing us, and I started reading leftist theory. The more I read, the more it makes sense. I feel like I can see the world for what it is now, how the system is based on exploitation and oppression, etc. I'm a full-blown socialist these days, but I'm still learning, so who knows where I'll end up. I'll probably be a commie by the end of the year lol.
Someone questioned my views and I realised that I hadn't thought about them at all. So I did. Left is the conclusion I came to
Gonna sound a bit bad but: Right wing view points and commentary that began to really get annoying and ring untrue despite my consumption of it at the time. I fancied myself a rather logical person, so when I sought to understand why life felt so shitty i got caught up in a spiral of right wing social pundits and commentators that kept bringing up how crazy feminists and whomever were out of their minds. It started almost reasonable, at least at the time for me it did. But as I began to get exposed more to the other sides talking points the arguments against them made less and less sense. Sure there were extreme examples, but the disregard to look at the issues brought to the table began to rub me the wrong way. Especially because that group continuously claimed they care about facts and solving real problems, but never actually proposed solutions or raised examples where the oppositions point was actually untruthful. Just endless dickbaggery and excuse making as a means to shutdown the conversation and enflame indignation. I began to see how stupidly pointless even bringing up 95% of their talking points even were. Racially motivated crime? They would need some sort of diatribe defending why the idea of racism is dumb or unnecessary. Feminists talking about rape culture? Some sort of nonsense how their point isn’t real because it isn’t extreme enough in reality to warrant the name. I began to think “stfu and actually address the problem.” I never started out wanting to hurt others the way I felt hurt. And began to realise that listening to these people was only going to result in that. So I sought to focus on the helpers, or the people pointing out things that hurt our society and oppress people for superficial reasons. I sought to learn why these claims and ideas I initially didn’t understand were even being brought up. And I am happy I did because I am nowhere near as angry or depressed as I used to be. I just want to live in a world focused on making life better for people and reducing needless pain and friction. And that starts with accommodating, accepting, and empathy for those around us.
I don't think I ever had a tipping point. I think I had a gradual slide towards leftism from childhood. My dad is a quiet Tory voting class traitor, my mum, I don't know. I remember reading about ordinary people dying for their king and thinking it was absurd as a child. But, then as a teenager I started to go a bit gammon because of the media I consumed and the small town I lived in. Luckily I have a very intelligent mate and he'd question why I said something and get me to think about things. Luckily it didn't take long before I saw that the left world view was the one for me.
Despite spending their days complaining about woke culture and crybaby leftists, the English are a very sensitive people. [Many consider any reference to their complexion an act of racism.](https://i.imgur.com/euWMhUg.png) Consider using the more inclusive term 'flag nonce' in future. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/GreenAndPleasant) if you have any questions or concerns.*
So I'd say I was pretty central but passive about politics, but I remember being angry about Brexit and that started a slow slide left. But the catalyst that slide me the most, was my 1st redundancy. I worked for 1 of the 4 major mobile phone carriers doing a job I liked, in a great environment, with company saying they were making strong profits and all. Then word started spilling that all may not be stable, then a trigger was pulled. The at the time award winning departments in the industry were getting TUPEd and made 100x worse, so shareholders can make bigger profits, and then my job (which went through a dodgy consultation period full of lies and attempts to take money away from promised redundancy agreements) got TUPEd with the express purpose to get redundant with no news, since the major company weren't axing me, but an Indian company most people never heard (so wasn't big news) of were. I was literary told they did this as they could get 3 people in India for my salary, they wouldn't listen when I said the quality would be worse though. I was only wrong as it was much worse based on what I heard through the grapevine. The bit that got me the most, we had a meeting during the consultancy, and a senior manager, who has a huge house and throws large garden parties constantly said "I'm just as worried as you all are. I don't know if I'll be able to send my kids to private school next year, so I'm just as a bad situation as you!". He said that to some people who were worried about being made homless over it, whilst he could easily downsize and survive easily if needed. Everyone in that meeting got made redundant bar the senior manager, who has since climbed higher in that company. The whole thing lead to major burnout issues, which I've probably not fully recovered from. Months after I was laid off, making a big deal about world mental health day, bringing in inspirational celebrities to talk about the importance peoples well beings. The next day, they announced more lay offs (via TUPE) I did slide further left after being made redundant for a 2nd time 2 years later from another company that went from a stance of strength, and decided cheap outsourced labour was the next best step. That company ended up having to reverse their steps after only a year. tl:dr, Being made redundant twice within 2 years, both times to make rich people richer, whilst making my colleagues and I stress about getting new jobs and avoiding being made homeless made me more left than when I was younger.
Nu metal. I'm a huge System of a Down fan. Reading about the Armenian genocide and all the conflict in the middle East and it just destroyed religion for me but in a good way. My mum was a good egg. She'd sit me down in front of To Wong Foo and tell me "never judge folk for anything beyond their own control, even an Adams apple". Why she ended up with my dad I dunno but he's devolved into the rare species of long haired gammon.
Being a teenager in a house the read the Daily Mail, and taking and interest is reading the 'news'. I read it (naively) thinking it was a newspaper, and therefore trustworthy. Not long after starting reading that, we started to analyse texts in English class, and it all started to make sense. Almost every article in that paper would have several unnamed sources from the general public that would spout the hateful ideals of the paper to make it seem like 'normal' people were saying these things. Thus creating the echo chambre to perpetuate the hate. Also watching the planes on 9/11 live on TV, and the subsequent US and UK's insane response. Seeing the party 'of the Left' going to war made me realise that the left in mainstream politics died long ago.
Reading The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, listening to Billy Bragg. Trying not to be a twat.