That racism was largely solved in the us and there was just a small fringe who are outwardly racist who needed to be dealt with. Fortunately even many libs these days know that's not true.

my main vector for criticizing an israeli facial recognition tech sales pitch given to my synagogue on our israel trip was "but what about the hong kong protests"

I got into the 2020 primaries like a football game

My most lib moment was agreeing with a Gommulism bad video on YouTube like 8-9 years ago or something

This is embarrassing but I cried when SHillary lost to Trump.

me too tbh

I supported Bernie in the primaries but when he lost I held my nose for Hilldawg and argued for her online lol

I used to be an enlightened centrist but that was like back in 2012

I was at a rally in middle school and shook Bill Clinton's hand when he was running against Dole. It's embarrassing as hell, but it sure as shit has made my "six degrees of separation" game fire as fuck.

I was very pro-Bernie in 2016 but also against the whole Bernie or Bust idea. Lesser evil-ism in general made sense to me, and the man himself endorsing Hillary on basically those grounds was enough for me to be vocally against Busters or people against voting in general. In my defense, I was a minor and couldn't even vote at the time. By the time I could vote in 2020, my beliefs had shifted enough that I voted for Bernie in the primary but not for Biden in the general. I sure as shit won't now, and not for state-level Dems either like I did in 2020.

I honestly am still not against lesser-evil thinking as much as most people on this site are, but for very different reasons than liberals. That kind of thinking really warmed me up to anti-imperialism. Once I got enough historical background on the death toll of America and colonialism and about how texts like the Black Book exaggerate and fabricate deaths under communism, comparison compelled me to realize that if I believed the lesser evil should be supported, then the DPRK, Iran, Syria, etc. (all the places I thought of as scary dictatorships before, essentially) are the morally superior side in geopolitics. On the basis of morbidity alone is enough to believe so, if nothing else

For that logic to work though, you need to believe people are of equal dignity no matter what part of the world they're from. That every dead body is equal to every other dead body. So, I have also come to realize that the failure of other supposedly pro-"lesser evil" libs to be staunch anti-imperialists comes down to either racism or using the "lesser evil" argument as a rhetorical trick instead of an actual belief. Or worse yet, both!

One shouldn't even need to be convinced of socialism or even social democracy to really follow this logic to its ultimate conclusions and support anti-colonial resistance, but apparently that's too fucking much to ask.

On that basis, I commend Hamas. I think Olof Palme would've understood that. I wish the non-communist """left""" today would have enough of a soul to follow the example of types like him.

In my freshman year of college I wrote a whole paper about how you shouldn't punch nazis for my writing class

I voted for Barack Obama in 2012

I thought Obama would help me go to college and stop my parents from getting their home foreclosed.

in grade school the entire lunchroom at my school would chant 'Bush Bush Bush' like little hitler youth members during the bush v kerry election, and as an uninformed child raised by self-described 'democratic socialists' i would naturally respond by screaming kerry's name, even though i know next to nothing about the candidate then or now.

I was conservative as a kid but so are a lot of people whose material circumstances contradict those views.

I believed Obama's campaign promises and thought his election was going to deliver major structural changes to the financial sector and empire, reducing their grip on state and delivering it to citizens.

I thought the wars would end and Guantanamo would close. I thought we would get universal healthcare and it would finally let me become self employed.

Thinking that unrestricted free trade was good and would help non-western countries develop their economies in the early 00s, which is pretty liberal. But then I actually studied an ounce of economics.

Never dabbled in the post Bush era American libbery tho, which seems to be most of this thread.

I had faith Bernie Sanders was going to win the 2016 election and fix the at least somethings in the country