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I haven't really discussed my own personal politics on here too much because I don't feel at home with any political ideology and I don't see myself probably ever feeling affinity with any political party especially in our current landscape. Maybe you can relate? 1/
I plan on writing about this later in long form, but one of the reasons I am so averse to partisan fundamentalism is because I was raised in a very religious, fundamentalist evangelical household. Note: I *love* my family & I always will-- I had a safe and happy home growing up
My parents decided to become Christian before I was born and I was raised in a generally conservative, libertarian and patriotic small town and church. But like every small town Hallmark movie stock character I felt trapped and I wanted to escape.
In America today if you are raised as a conservative, the fastest way to climb socially in education and life after is to become a progressive leftist or somewhere under the tent of Marxism. And that's what I did--
I became an insufferable woke progressive, flirted with chic Marxism, & all my friends were more radically chic than me. The more woke you are the more status you have, the more left you are the higher you can climb https://twitter.com/long_napper/status/1346265773908643840
I realized over time that the "community" I found myself in was incredibly toxic, vengeful & willing to throw their friends under the bus for any minor infraction, for clout. I've seen many people lose their reputations due to a friend stabbing them in the back. I had to get out
The whole experience felt like when I or a friend growing up would "sin" and felt compelled to go down to the altar and ask Jesus for forgiveness. The shame of being insufficiently anti-racist felt like the shame of being insufficiently holy
So for the past couple years I faded out of my friend circles and silently kept my head down in academia (they would say that I failed to confront my privilege, I would say that I am an independent thinker and needed to gtfo).
In an attempt to understand my own upbringing, and the ideological conformity of my academic peers, I spent a lot of time reading political theory, a lot of it taboo: conservative, anti-communist, reactionary, and as contrast new left, and Marxist writers
In short, I assumed that I was intellectually right-wing because I rejected the new left (Most self-identified communists that I've come into contact with in real life are just as cringe as free-market libertarians; everything is either race or all material this & material that)
I enjoyed reading some former left-wing writers like Freda Utley, soviet-dissidents like Solzhenitsyn, Vaclav Havel & more; the anti-Stalinist New York Intellectuals, as well as Leo Strauss and his approach to the classics
I've talked about this a little bit with @___as_a_jew___ @dovesandletters and Aimee, wherever she is now. But to me, intellectually, the new woke left felt ideologically totalitarian so I was attracted to anti-totalitarian writers whether anti-fascist or anti-communist
But the thing is that I am also anti-big capitalism, and most of liberalism generally is grating to me, even totalitarian, except for in its best form as presented by a writer like Lionel Trilling's approach to literature in The Liberal Imagination. . .
So anyway, I'm just stubborn. I'm pro-worker (in some ways I relate with the populists), anti-war, and anti-authority. I don't want anyone to tell me what to believe and I just want to be able to read and have my own thoughts and to be able to write about them.
When I first joined twitter I assumed I would follow mainly rw accounts (I do follow a few!), but I've actually followed more people who identify as Marxists, some sort of former leftists, generally people who think similarly to me. A pleasant surprise. /end
