There's a very interesting phenomena I've noticed with socialists roughly my age, and in particular cis men, where many of us went through a reactionary phase between like 2015-2017, and most of us were radicalised to the right by YouTubers.

At the same time that all the feminist cringe compilations caught a lot of traction, and YouTubers like Sargon of Akkad, Chris Ray Gun, Armored Skeptic, and all them gained a lot of attention. Many of us had originally watched those when they were dunking on evangelicals

However, we then went through the transformation from the right to the left at very similar times too, like our late teens.

The key thing I've noticed too... Is that a lot of us were suffering with mental health problems at the time we were being radicalised to the right.

I'll fully admit I used to Sargon of Akkad religiously, as I originally got invested with his 'The Conservative Party are your enemy' video and I followed somewhat his trajectory into being more right wing... And I was hurting at the time.

I was very depressed and felt very lonely (even though I had plenty of people around me who loved me) and I found this catharsis in the anger that these YouTubers took out with their rants.

I was never Alt Right, but I was definitely right wing and I know of quite a few who went through that phase and also happened to be, by and large, cishet adolescent men with mental health issues (like myself at the time) . Not a hard and fast rule just a real trend I've noticed

Drop your stories below if you relate to this I wanna hear about people's journeys

I see some are misinterpreting what I'm saying here in the QTs.

I'm not saying that people with right wing opinions are mentally ill that would be horrendously offensive to mentally ill people, of which I have been one most of my life.

These are only observations from my own personal experiences and anecdotal experiences that there exists a correlation (not necessarily causation) between the two. I don't know many (none, actually) that were perfectly mentally healthy at the time this radicalisation happened.

That's why I stress this is anecdotal and personal experience. I have zero studies or hard data to back this up I fully cop to that fact.

Also to the people that are talking about saying "Well I never experienced this" - good I'm glad you didn't go through it. But I think you can see from the replies that many did and are thankfully now rather remorseful about what they thought and believed and are now socialists.

You can scorn that it happened but personally this happened to me when I was 15. This is happening to literal children; this doesn't excuse it, but explains how this trend was able to develop so rapidly.

This is a phenomenon that the left would need to come to grips with.

For the record I'm not talking about the people who were literal fascists or white supremacists - that is altogether a different thing and I hold my own deep skepticism that someone can go from believing that to being a socialist in that rapid a turnaround.

I'm talking about people who became run of the mill conservatives, or "classical liberals" or whatever you want to call it - people who essentially did not get so far along the trajectory of radicalisation before they did a 180.

My personal line is that I'm much happier to have people who now condemn their past opinions and ideas (as I do) than people who still hold them.

But like I say, I would be careful to pour large amounts of scorn considering this propagandising did happen to literal children.

(That doesn't excuse it - adolescents are not without agency or critical thinking, but they are by and large more susceptible to being manipulated than fully matured adults are, and more likely to see within these right wing figureheads authority figures)