Like a moment that seemed insignificant and unimportant at the time, but looking back was in fact a pivotal moment in pushing you towards radicalization.
For me probably being introduced to Guitar Hero at my friend’s house in like summer 2007. At the time it was just another day, but looking back I ended up falling in love with those games, I ended up being introduced to The Ramones and even more importantly the Dead Kennedys through them, which caused me to get into punk music and resulted in me adopting very critical attitudes towards larger American society, attitudes which later grew into anarchism and then Marxism
I thought I was a liberal, but it turns out I didn’t know what words even mean, apparently. Because it’s not what I thought it was! This post made me Google things.
Probably not a popular take in this community, but apparently I fall in somewhere between Democratic Socialism and Centrist Marxism, with a sprinkle of Social Democracy thrown in. Big props to LeftValues for giving me a start on that. Marxism-Leninism score of 0%, though, so that’s odd to me. I thought there works be at least some shared values, but my fondness for decentralization means probably not. Seems like there’s a lot to learn. At the very least, it seems like everyone wants things to get better.
I can recommend https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Category:Crit's_absolute_beginner_reading_list for more about Marxism-Leninism. There is also the sidebar in https://hexbear.net/c/anarchism for more about that, if that makes more sense to you maybe.
Anyway I am not big on labels as I have
a) read too little theory to be calling myself this or that
b) the debate about whether I am more x or y is pointless hairsplitting which does not serve any meaningful purpose
Right on! I made a post in communism for some resources as well, although that community looks like it might be mildly dead. I appreciate the links!
I don’t know what instance you’re talking about, about hexbear is probably the most active explicitly left-wing instance in the lemmyverse. There is hexbear.net/c/askchapo or hexbear.net/c/lib_rehab if you want to ask a bit more spicy questions. Or pick any other comm that semi-fits what you want, it doesn’t matter too much.
hexbear.net/c/theory is probably where you want to go if you want to read more theory and there is also
https://bulletins.hexbear.net/posts/readinglist/
There probably are also very valuable comms on lemmygrad.ml but I don’t know about that instance too well unfortunately.