A combination of many things. Although I was never that “brainwash” by propaganda, I did have a phase where I was suspicious of AES states, accusing them of “state capitalism.” One significant factor that pushed me towards supporting them was realizing that Stalin didn’t “betray the revolution” and that he was not only a socialist but an intellectual as well. Certainly not the caricature of a brute portrayed by liberals, so dumb as to have apparently planned ww2 battles on a globe (instead of a map lol). Khrushchev lied, of course. And that heap of rubbish has caused so much damage to our socialist cause. It is a similar process to my opinion of Xi Jinping, and I soon realized that he was not a brutish dictator. Xi is a decent man who loves his country and the Chinese people. Likewise with the dictatorship of the proletariat, which I eventually came to understand as a contrast to a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. It makes no sense that the communist party in China would oppress their citizens. The CPC is significantly improving their lives in every single aspect that affects them. If a communist party would do those things for me, I would gladly and voluntarily put a muzzle on any anti communists who talk shit about the DOTP. I agree with censorship too, insofar as it protects the socialist cause against reactionaries. In short, the revolution that feeds me gets my support after all.

The first law of dialectic, accumulating quantitative changes leading to a qualitative change eventually.

At some point the realization gets through the inertia if you continue exposing yourself to the facts about the imperial powers acting against your interests and facts about which actions worked against them and which didn’t.

Anti-communist propaganda kept being debunked to me, to the point where I realised I was just following what the ruling class wants me to believe

[Note: twchnically was a social democrat, but i dont really care seperating soc-dems from dem-socs] I was really, really bad for a while. Like “no country should be trading with China or Russia” bad. Like “supports israel” bad.

For me it was A. The disparity between the socialist response to covid to the rest of the capitalist world and B.Radicalization from learning about the Iraq War.

I lost a family member to covid, and when that million death toll rolled around, i was incensed. I was even more incensed because I warned everyone in my life and online about the disease, and i got the ever so often “don’t worry about it, it’s just the cold.” I essentially watched in reverance as China managed to do a full response while being a much more densely populated country and being where the outbreak originated from.

The Iraq War was another one. For me, Vietnam was bad, but that was just “bad strategy.” I still saw it as legitimate (obviously I don’t believe that now). Iraq was always “the war.” It wasn’t taught in schools, I didn’t even know any vets from the war. I knew we invaded Iraq, but I didn’t get why it was so controversial. I was looking at it and wondering, since the intial engagement didn’t actually last that long [unlike Vietnam, kind of. Obviously there were the Iraqi insurgents]. One day i finally looked into it and it essentially shattered me. So much death and destruction for what is basically money for people who already had money. And no one got punished for it. At that moment I basically vowed that I wouldn’t believe anything the media or western stooges put in front of me. Of course this led to some embarrassment [a la, Sadam Huissein and Pol Pot support], but after some ideological ironing it helped smooth out those wrinkles.

Note: I had an inkling of a sense of political economy. At one point i even remember grumbling to myself like “why do the corporations get to have all this power and get rid of jobs and dwvelop/impoverish places based on tax policies, but the workers have to put up with it?” That was way before the events mentioned above, i just find it funny looking back on it

Learning more about life in the USSR and seeing China kind of be that in the modern era

Zero COVID

The idyllic social democratic countries I thought were better still marched the workers off to their deaths. China didn’t.

For me it was watching bougois leftists be just as insane as the ruling class and then finding a streamer who was able to accurately dismantle the propaganda, then podcasts and then books.

The main part was being told to read state and revolution. I remember that while reading i thought “dude, you’ve been following a cult all your life.”