Submitted by KingGath in AntiFascistAction

I'm a 15 year old heterosexual white male who was born in England and currently resides in Scotland. I moved to Scotland around the time the Scottish independence referendum was taking place and it's and understatement to say I stood out with my strong Birmingham accent, I was targeted and bullied for my nationality by my fellow country men and my self-esteem tanked. But one day when I was in the library and I came about a book that made me... curious, It was called Empire: How Britain Made The Modern World and it gave me a reason to be proud of my background I saw how Britain once ruled the world and soon after I read Empire I became a UKIP supporting, SJW loathing, Immigrant hating, Brexit and Trump supporting loony who was hell bent on reuniting the British Empire no matter the cost. But one day after watching my fair share of Thunderf00t and The Amazing Atheist I discovered a certain YouTube channel called Hbomberguy who pulled me back to the light with his amazing videos. Shortly after that I had binged watched Hbomberguy, contrapoints,Shaun and Three Arrows filling up my maturing brain with leftist knowledge and soon indulging in leftist literature and worshipping Jeremy "the virtuous" Corbyn. But the real pull for me was the Anti-Fascist forums like this that showed the light on how the alt-right are scum and need to be expelled. I'm now a willing son of socialism who will help defend minority's,women's,LGBTQ's and worker's rights without hesitation and when fully matured will become a prideful member of Antifa. Thank you guys :) P.S sorry for any bad grammer

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GaldraChevaliere wrote

It's real easy to fall into the trap of taking your ancestors' accomplishments for your own while shirking responsibility for the consequences of them. I'm glad you managed to dodge it, most boys stateside just eat that shit up.

Thing about a lot of the right is that they're dumbass kids like you who got in with a bad crowd and made wrong choices thinking they'd avoid the consequences of it forever. As many of them, and a lot of centrists, can be reached by kindness and patience. But you gotta know when to draw the line too. Talk to the stupid kid your age who got sucked in by the aesthetic of fascism, but don't give a committed racist skin the chance to hurt you or someone else.

If you wanna see things from perspectives that aren't similar to your own, you should try looking into the women and queer folk who helped build anarchism up to what it is now; Simone Weil and Emma Goldman are good places to start. Weil fought for the catalan revolutionaries in the spanish civil war, and Goldman went around the US talking to working folk and advocating for groups that in her time were untouchables. There's also a ton of stuff written by modern folk of every stripe that gets published online or in zines but wouldn't be considered in 'academic' circles, but has some real substance to it.

Last bit of advice? Kill your idols. Don't 'worship' a particular author or philosopher or speaker or whatever, but take everything they say critically and pick it apart. Take what you need and discard what doesn't work. I like Contra, but she can be painfully off about a lot of things from my perspective. You don't gotta be a 'son' of anything, you just gotta be a good lad and do the right thing when you know you can.

You're also gonna have to accept that a lot of folk aren't gonna trust you in meatspace circles, because you're young and because you had some suspect beliefs before, and because you're literally of the tribe that invented the whole stupid concept of whiteness in the first place. I mean, I'm a gael and I still get super fucking leery around english because they make a bigger deal of my ethnicity than I do. And I'm still in the white club as far as everyone sensible's concerned. People are gonna take time to warm up to you, and you're gonna have to work a little harder to prove you're worth trusting and you're not gonna relapse just because things get hard. That's not a special condition placed on you just because you're white and a breeder. It's the basis of any kind of healthy relationship with a group.

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KingGath OP wrote

Thank you I will take your advice to heart and be more critical of my idols, you made a real good point on that. Although I think your POI comes from a anarchist way of thinking I will say that aspects of your ideology should be incorporated into daily life. Hopefully one day I will be able to gain the trust of you and others and my right wing past will be spec on the radar :)

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Zzzxxxyyy wrote

Whooo, those are some mighty big swings. Hopefully you develop a strong framework. I suggest read the Communist Manafesto, Noam Chomsky’s “On Anarchy”, and The Great Anarchists by Paul Eltzbacher.

Bear in mind that leftists live in a relativistic universe where everyone appears ‘right’ from their POV. Think of it as the leftist version of redshift, rightshift.

Also, remember, everyone, almost universally, does a poor job of representing oppositional ideologies when making a case for their own. So, literally, everyone seems correct until you do your own hopefully unbiased comparison.

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KingGath OP wrote

Thank you for the advice :) but if you had doubts I did my best to do a non biased review of the left when I was watching/reading tonnes of leftist information (but if you have any pointers on how I can improve this skill as i'm not the best at it please reply)

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mofongo wrote

/f/socialism also has great introductory books and a pamphlets in the side bar and some other YouTube video series you should see.

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ziq wrote

Propaganda is a powerful thing.

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rot wrote

What specific arguments or ideas changed your mind?

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KingGath OP wrote

The idea that got me originally hooked was the exploitation of the proletarian masses but after that drew my attention nearly every idea/argument really resided with me in my new found quest for a more equal society (I'm sorry that is such a board answer but I can't argue against any leftist argument/idea I have found).

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rot wrote

I'm just looking for language that people respond to.

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KingGath OP wrote (edited )

I don't know if this would work in any country outside of Europe (I haven't been outside of Europe ever) but the exploitation of the workers and free tuition fees are some of the leading factors that draw people to the left in Britain (in my experience)

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edmund_the_destroyer wrote

I underwent a similar transition fifteen years ago or so, and for me the catalyst was just life experience. I grew up in a bit of a bubble where it wasn't hard to maintain the illusion that capitalism was mostly fair, and most of my extended family and friends seemed to be fine.

And then I watched some friends and loved ones, good people with puritan work ethics, get sick or get hurt or just plain get unlucky and watch their health or their financial security or both wither despite fighting as hard as they could to keep them.

All of the logical evidence I needed that capitalism is innately flawed was in front of me long before I changed views. I had even read excerpts from Marx in college. But only when I watched loved ones suffer did I take it seriously.

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rot wrote

Same here but I was apolitical. I was never right wing

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supernice wrote

Glad you found the way out of the maze. It's depressing as all hell, but it's better to know than not.

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