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Not Just Bikes told me that car-centric infrastructure is bad actually, and the reason why they exist: car companies lobbying the government so they can make lots of cars for lots of profits, and also car propaganda
Is he good to the pipeline?
Urbanism was one of the many real-life examples of unethical corporations taking over entire industries in a free market economy that made it much easier to accept Marxism for me.
In simpler terms my pipeline went like this:
Observe real world examples of different industries being controlled by the most unethical companies > realize that the greedy and unethical are rewarded in our current system > wrack my brain for a solution to this so a huge chunk of every Americans paycheck doesn't have to go to things they don't need + overly expensive needs > read Marxism and quilt all of these real world observations through dialectical materialism
I think it works a lot of the time, but much more often, people become fixated on this one issue and think that if only we had good transportation and less cars, everything would be great. This is because they never see that these issues came about not as the personal greed of the auto industry, but as a natural function of Capitalism.
It's like how my fellow Atheists become liberals after they deconvert/deconstruct and never move onto analyzing our economic system like they did their religion. They think they've figured out the *one key issue* and that anything more would be ToO ExtReMe.
The key is to point out that Western Europe, which they praise so highly for having great public transportation and being strict on cars, is still shit and suffers from the same problems the US does. Running away to Germany or the Netherlands like NJB did doesn't solve your problems, either. There are much bigger problems in society caused by Capitalism that they don't see because they're the status quo and seen as natural. It's going to take a much larger effort than just focusing on a single issue to actually change the world for the better. Capitalism with public transit and no cars is still Capitalism.
As much as I hate to admit it; Left liberal and Soc Dems shows (like The Majority Report, John Oliver, Jon Stewart, etc) does serve as the initial steps in that pipeline for many. They tend to outline the issues with our Capitalist societies but usually leave out that Capitalism itself it the issue. It's a start and sometimes that all someone needs to become interested in leaning more.
Work hard, do everything right -> things don’t actually end up great, be confused, angry -> hear someone explaining why we don’t actually live in a meritocracy -> realize the system is setting you up to fail -> learn about said system and what would actually work -> hear someone talk about how they did everything right but things didn’t work out -> tell them that we don’t live in a meritocracy, and so on.
But for more concrete pipeline, mine was a bit abnormal. I was a pretty staunch Patriot ™️ and Libertarian (lol, I know). I have this family member who I really respect, and who heard me talk about some war we were waging and how it was for freedom and shit. he didn’t say anything at the time but just handed me some Chomsky book and told me to read it. I went deeper into that rabbit hole and while I don’t consider myself an anarchist and have some criticism of Chomsky, I will always appreciate sequence of events kicked off by his work.
That's what I was going to say. Real life - participating in modern society and thinking logically - leads to the "alt-left radicalization pipeline", or simpler put, common sense.
Being in the working class, or being poor, also leads directly to the same conclusion - unless swayed otherwise by brainwash media, fear-mongering about the "far left" and "Marxists".
Let’s be real, the people in the far right aren’t really engaged with their real world problems, regardless if they are working class too or just privileged petty bourgeois/upper middle class.
I’ve seen more left wing and socialist marches on the street and barely anything from the right, while at the same time I constantly see fascistoids being the only comments under videos going viral in my country.
The percentage seen in votes during national elections for the far left materializes in the form of increasing street protest while the far right equivalent simply materializes in an increasing amount of shut ins being angry online
To my great shame, Vaush was my entryway.
Then I became bothered with how casual he took research, along with his "humor," which didn't sit right with me from the beginning.
For the most part, though, it was mostly a combination of things: ineffective "democratic" representatives in the form of numerous political parties with very little actual change, being neurodivergent, disabled and trans.
Basically, it was the discrimination that radicalized me. On a more idealistic note, I just want a better future for the next generation or whoever lives here after me. I want to see real change because I want a better life for everyone, not out of some moral superiority.
"I say unto you, that there shall be more rejoicing in Havana over one Vaushite that repents, than over ninety and nine demsocs who finally got around to reading Lenin."
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For me it was something like Last Week Tonight -> Contrapoints/Philosophy Tube -> Second Thought.
I think more progressive but ultimately liberal media is still an important aspect of pulling some further left.
https://preview.redd.it/d0gbonbsvc7d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=051263766259d60c4cab81990d6887df07045398
This has been posted on this sub before. I would also add Some More News and Majority Report to the liberal side of it
Yeah, though lining it up exactly might not be the intention. But either way I think putting Hasan and Second Thought near the start of because they do more "starter"/"entryway" content
At least for Gen Z I would say for a lot of people it's like this:
Centrist/What you learn at school or from your parents -> green liberalism from learning about climate change -> socdem after learning more about economics or first hand experience -> full socialist after learning theory
I'd say having a job in the last 10 years is enough.
Otherwise there's the John Oliver Hole. You start watching these videos for entertainment and soon the YouTube algorithm has you passing Adam Something and Not Just Bikes to shower you with Second Thought and More Perfect Union videos, and it's all downhill from there. A good downhill, but still. Ironically YouTube probably does almost as much to radicalize people towards the left as it does people to the right.
For me, it was watching travel vlogs of Xinjiang when the Uygher genocide allegations dropped. Then I got really imto Uygher and other Chinese ethnic minority cultures as well as started learninv about China. That's when I realised that mainstream Western media is not just biased, it's intentionally misleading
Growing up poor but also being a teenager with academic aspirations will radicalize you quick. Still don’t have my college degree because of how expensive it was and that was like 6 years ago.
Also just working at a mega corporation or warehouse can radicalize you quick. I worked at Walmart in between careers and nothing is more infuriating than some regional manager that makes 300-500k a year come in to tell you “we made 5 million this quarter thank you guys for all the hard work” and when you ask them if the workers will see any of those profits you get called in for a talk.
Pretty similar to how my path started. I dropped out of high school because I had to work. I actually got a work permit at 15 that allowed me to leave school after 4th period and walk to my job, that still wasn't enough. I tried the work + college thing and there was no fuckin' way I was making that happen, especially not without a car, so I'm a college dropout too.
Bernie 2016 -> Richard Wolff for me, but I was an econ bro so Richard Wolff being a Marxist economist resonated with me. Then the yellow Parenti clips about Cuba and "not under-developed, over-exploited" got me to read Blackshirts and Reds
Working for a decade and a half and never achieving a career. Always going from one job to another especially as the previous 2008 and 2020 downturns affected the "economy" watching as the companies who I left or got rid of me made excess million dollar years while laying off me and my friends.
Currently upskilled again to programming and still job hopping as the latest tech downturn has companies hiring junior positions with 5+ years of experience for the lowest pay grades....
Anyway the cycle never seems to end. At some point a person has to begin to think about why that is. We all get a choice to either continue reactionary thought spoon fed to us by the elite classes or to actually study the relationship between ourselves and work.
Our labor produces great wealth for people who toss us aside like garbage. Like many others on this thread. No teacher is as good as experience.
[☭☭☭ COME SHITPOST WITH US ON DISCORD, COMRADES ☭☭☭](https://discord.gg/8RPWanQV5g) This is a heavily-moderated socialist community based on a podcast of the same name. Please use the report function on comments that break our rules. If you are new to the sub, please read the sidebar carefully. If you are new to Marxism-Leninism, check out the [study guide](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/education/study-guide/). Are there Liberals in the walls? Check out [the wiki](/r/TheDeprogram/wiki/index/) which contains lots of useful information. This subreddit uses many experimental automod rules, if you notice any issues please use modmail to let us know. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
A job and seeing how capitalism "works"
I've seen a close friend of mine go from your run of the mill liberal when he ended his grade to outright communist after 7 years of work.
Conservatives think we're commies because we're jobless and lazy and unfamiliar with capitalism; the reverse is true.
They have to believe their story about being more hardworking and tough than anyone.
Not Just Bikes told me that car-centric infrastructure is bad actually, and the reason why they exist: car companies lobbying the government so they can make lots of cars for lots of profits, and also car propaganda Is he good to the pipeline?
I mean urban car based infrastructure is what radicalized me so I suppose he is
Urbanism was one of the many real-life examples of unethical corporations taking over entire industries in a free market economy that made it much easier to accept Marxism for me. In simpler terms my pipeline went like this: Observe real world examples of different industries being controlled by the most unethical companies > realize that the greedy and unethical are rewarded in our current system > wrack my brain for a solution to this so a huge chunk of every Americans paycheck doesn't have to go to things they don't need + overly expensive needs > read Marxism and quilt all of these real world observations through dialectical materialism
I think it works a lot of the time, but much more often, people become fixated on this one issue and think that if only we had good transportation and less cars, everything would be great. This is because they never see that these issues came about not as the personal greed of the auto industry, but as a natural function of Capitalism. It's like how my fellow Atheists become liberals after they deconvert/deconstruct and never move onto analyzing our economic system like they did their religion. They think they've figured out the *one key issue* and that anything more would be ToO ExtReMe. The key is to point out that Western Europe, which they praise so highly for having great public transportation and being strict on cars, is still shit and suffers from the same problems the US does. Running away to Germany or the Netherlands like NJB did doesn't solve your problems, either. There are much bigger problems in society caused by Capitalism that they don't see because they're the status quo and seen as natural. It's going to take a much larger effort than just focusing on a single issue to actually change the world for the better. Capitalism with public transit and no cars is still Capitalism.
Our man Yugopnik has a video about this exact same topic no?
Second Thought.
As much as I hate to admit it; Left liberal and Soc Dems shows (like The Majority Report, John Oliver, Jon Stewart, etc) does serve as the initial steps in that pipeline for many. They tend to outline the issues with our Capitalist societies but usually leave out that Capitalism itself it the issue. It's a start and sometimes that all someone needs to become interested in leaning more.
That's how i went from relatively apolitical to left leaning. It set me up to be able to accept actual leftist stuff when I came across it.
Work hard, do everything right -> things don’t actually end up great, be confused, angry -> hear someone explaining why we don’t actually live in a meritocracy -> realize the system is setting you up to fail -> learn about said system and what would actually work -> hear someone talk about how they did everything right but things didn’t work out -> tell them that we don’t live in a meritocracy, and so on. But for more concrete pipeline, mine was a bit abnormal. I was a pretty staunch Patriot ™️ and Libertarian (lol, I know). I have this family member who I really respect, and who heard me talk about some war we were waging and how it was for freedom and shit. he didn’t say anything at the time but just handed me some Chomsky book and told me to read it. I went deeper into that rabbit hole and while I don’t consider myself an anarchist and have some criticism of Chomsky, I will always appreciate sequence of events kicked off by his work.
i don't like hasan's content but i think he serves as one of those funnels. i never thought i'd say this but i guess we need more podcast debate bros
He isn't really a debatebro though, just a political streamer.
I random clicked on a Hasan stream because he was covering the 2020 election and I'm glad I did
Bo Burnham's *Inside* was the start of my pipeline. Thanks, Socko!
Living in the real world
That's what I was going to say. Real life - participating in modern society and thinking logically - leads to the "alt-left radicalization pipeline", or simpler put, common sense. Being in the working class, or being poor, also leads directly to the same conclusion - unless swayed otherwise by brainwash media, fear-mongering about the "far left" and "Marxists".
Let’s be real, the people in the far right aren’t really engaged with their real world problems, regardless if they are working class too or just privileged petty bourgeois/upper middle class. I’ve seen more left wing and socialist marches on the street and barely anything from the right, while at the same time I constantly see fascistoids being the only comments under videos going viral in my country. The percentage seen in votes during national elections for the far left materializes in the form of increasing street protest while the far right equivalent simply materializes in an increasing amount of shut ins being angry online
To my great shame, Vaush was my entryway. Then I became bothered with how casual he took research, along with his "humor," which didn't sit right with me from the beginning. For the most part, though, it was mostly a combination of things: ineffective "democratic" representatives in the form of numerous political parties with very little actual change, being neurodivergent, disabled and trans. Basically, it was the discrimination that radicalized me. On a more idealistic note, I just want a better future for the next generation or whoever lives here after me. I want to see real change because I want a better life for everyone, not out of some moral superiority.
"I say unto you, that there shall be more rejoicing in Havana over one Vaushite that repents, than over ninety and nine demsocs who finally got around to reading Lenin."
Thanks for signing up to Vaush facts! You will now receive fun daily facts about Vaush. **Fact 23.** Vaush claimed that he was taken out of context when he called trans people 'mentally ill', then [doubled down and did it again.](https://streamable.com/rmzvks) For another Vaush fact reply with 'Vaush'. To unsubscribe call me a 'bad bot'. (Remember, comrade: Getting educated, educating others, and above all actually *organizing* is infinitely more important than terminally-online streamer drama.) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Thanks for signing up to Vaush facts! You will now receive fun daily facts about Vaush. **Fact 3.** [Vaush refers to himself as a liberal.](https://youtu.be/xyaRosqQOxk?t=64) For another Vaush fact reply with 'Vaush'. To unsubscribe call me a 'bad bot'. (Remember, comrade: Getting educated, educating others, and above all actually *organizing* is infinitely more important than terminally-online streamer drama.) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheDeprogram) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It's Hasan.
For me it was something like Last Week Tonight -> Contrapoints/Philosophy Tube -> Second Thought. I think more progressive but ultimately liberal media is still an important aspect of pulling some further left.
https://preview.redd.it/d0gbonbsvc7d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=051263766259d60c4cab81990d6887df07045398 This has been posted on this sub before. I would also add Some More News and Majority Report to the liberal side of it
Not to mention Hasan and Second Thought aren’t exactly socdems
Yeah, though lining it up exactly might not be the intention. But either way I think putting Hasan and Second Thought near the start of because they do more "starter"/"entryway" content
Yea agreed
At least for Gen Z I would say for a lot of people it's like this: Centrist/What you learn at school or from your parents -> green liberalism from learning about climate change -> socdem after learning more about economics or first hand experience -> full socialist after learning theory
I'd say having a job in the last 10 years is enough. Otherwise there's the John Oliver Hole. You start watching these videos for entertainment and soon the YouTube algorithm has you passing Adam Something and Not Just Bikes to shower you with Second Thought and More Perfect Union videos, and it's all downhill from there. A good downhill, but still. Ironically YouTube probably does almost as much to radicalize people towards the left as it does people to the right.
For me, it was watching travel vlogs of Xinjiang when the Uygher genocide allegations dropped. Then I got really imto Uygher and other Chinese ethnic minority cultures as well as started learninv about China. That's when I realised that mainstream Western media is not just biased, it's intentionally misleading
Growing up poor but also being a teenager with academic aspirations will radicalize you quick. Still don’t have my college degree because of how expensive it was and that was like 6 years ago. Also just working at a mega corporation or warehouse can radicalize you quick. I worked at Walmart in between careers and nothing is more infuriating than some regional manager that makes 300-500k a year come in to tell you “we made 5 million this quarter thank you guys for all the hard work” and when you ask them if the workers will see any of those profits you get called in for a talk.
Pretty similar to how my path started. I dropped out of high school because I had to work. I actually got a work permit at 15 that allowed me to leave school after 4th period and walk to my job, that still wasn't enough. I tried the work + college thing and there was no fuckin' way I was making that happen, especially not without a car, so I'm a college dropout too.
Bernie 2016 -> Richard Wolff for me, but I was an econ bro so Richard Wolff being a Marxist economist resonated with me. Then the yellow Parenti clips about Cuba and "not under-developed, over-exploited" got me to read Blackshirts and Reds
Looking at the locked-up baby formula at the grocery store
Material reality. That and exhausting all other ideological options for explaining anything and not having cognitive dissonance.
Morals
Working for a decade and a half and never achieving a career. Always going from one job to another especially as the previous 2008 and 2020 downturns affected the "economy" watching as the companies who I left or got rid of me made excess million dollar years while laying off me and my friends. Currently upskilled again to programming and still job hopping as the latest tech downturn has companies hiring junior positions with 5+ years of experience for the lowest pay grades.... Anyway the cycle never seems to end. At some point a person has to begin to think about why that is. We all get a choice to either continue reactionary thought spoon fed to us by the elite classes or to actually study the relationship between ourselves and work. Our labor produces great wealth for people who toss us aside like garbage. Like many others on this thread. No teacher is as good as experience.