I wouldn’t say I used to be far-right but at high school, I have some right-wing opinion which is mostly from YouTubers I used to watch as well as I have internalise my homophobia and ableism because I get made fun of being queer and autistic that I felt like something was wrong with me.

It was around lockdown that I graduated from high school. It made me realise of the times I tried to get validation from my classmates which I never really got. Also, Black Lives Matter was trending on TikTok which made me realise how very shallow right-wing space is with them constantly moving the goalpost and framing certain scenario a certain way to fit to their agenda.

I still hate myself for it and despite I have changed, I still beat myself over it and wish I can cut myself. Better late than never but I wish I wasn’t that desperate for validation that I think even the slight gay representation is too “on the nose”.

I was raised fascist and bought into it. But the inherent unfairness of capitalism can’t be hidden. My first thought was that the people who said “capitalism is the only way” weren’t wrong but just outdated, that even if capitalism had been a go of system it was obsolete. This cracked open the door to Marxism which lead to a whole transformation over time.

I share this because I think it provides us some hope: even if the fascists won their ideas would only last so long before their own children became anarchists.

Wasn’t a fascist but was maybe 30% baked into one around 2015. One day I was in my room, listening to a Sargon video, when I was stuck by a moment of clarity and thought “Jesus christ, all these people are unbelievably whiny fucking dorks who never stop complaining about shit that doesn’t matter, and also the bigotry was never actually a joke.”

Then I found CTH and never looked back. Just generally growing up and maturing helped too.

I was sliding down the alt-right rabbit hole, mostly out of loneliness. Algorithms and echo chambers love loneliness.

I think there’s a really important threshold, and I’m ashamed to say I reached it, where you know it’s propaganda. Where you stop falling down the rabbit hole and start walking down it of your own accord.

The first propaganda, you believe. Some people commit crimes, or hate you, or are dangerous. Capitalism is freedom. The stuff an uncurious and uncareful person can believe all of and still be internally consistent, if wrong.

Then there’s the propaganda that requires you to acknowledge the lies you believed earlier were lies. No, it isn’t Hispanic people that commit crimes - it’s Jewish people! Capitalism isn’t freedom - libertarianism, or state capitalism, or whatever buzzword for company towns is in vogue.

And you know the stuff you believed before isn’t true. But you still say it in polite company, you mask and start to pretend you aren’t someone who believes what you do. You know it’s unacceptable.

That’s what got me out. Realizing that I was in a dark cycle of self-isolation and internet addiction, and trying to be deliberately social and empathetic and present. Therapy helps, but you’ve gotta want it.

Grew up in an extreme right wing ‘Christian’ church. It never sat well, even as a kid/teen. I don’t know if I ever considered I was fascist, but certainly had to unlearn a lot of internalised thought patterns. Ended up leaving centralised media a few months ago after realising how much alt-right content was being pushed in my face despite following mostly left leaning accounts and queer creators.

Never was full fash, but was pretty deep into the right wing libertarian stuff in my mid to late teens.

Definitely started getting fed the typical alt-right algorithm pipeline, “leftists triggered” compilations, Sargon, Steven Crowder, Jordan Peterson, etc.

A few things shook me out of it:

• Went to University, got exposed to different perspectives and people.
• Started dating somebody who was open-minded and would gently but effectively challenge my views.
• Graduated and started having to pay off student loans, food, rent, got treated like trash at my first job and saw how Capitalist hierarchy screws people over unless you’re the owner.

It wasn’t a quick switch that flipped for me. It was a slow, gradual series of realizations that my worldview just didn’t make sense and didn’t line up with reality.

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Not a fascist at any point, but in music spaces you do notice many of these pipelines. It just takes personal responsibility to find artists who reject that from their scene. Electronic music is littered with fascists but plenty of radicals too

When I was younger, I was libertarian because I hated what the government did. It took me a while to figure out why the government does those things.

Never been a fascist but perhaps I can see how it could have gone?

Extreme dislike to being told what I can find funny. Any time some people try and cancel a comedian for example. Who are the people who end up defending it? If you keep following a lot of those people it may lead you down that route.

But then my entire reason for being there in the first place is based on a dislike for authoritarianism, so perhaps that is why I lost interest as they moved towards fascism.

I think I can answer this one. I went from being a skinhead to a (what I think is) more well adjusted person.

I wish I could write you a neat list of things that happened in order for the shift to happen but it wasn’t as clean as that.

I hit a rock bottom in my life and realized that I cannot go on any further like that. I had a sort of epiphany where I realized the floowing. “If everything I do will be criticized, then everything is permitted”.

It somehow gave me the freedom to drop everything I ever was and change myself in a way that is more freeing to myself. (If that makes sense to you). I emigrated from my country so there was no peer pressure; I talk to my family extremely rarely (once every few months), I cut off all my old “friends”. I changed the way I dress and how I carry myself through the world. I have also stopped being a believer that also altered my worldviews a lot.

I have started reading a lot more (but I have also changed my media diet), I have started learning how to draw (at 35) and generally being a sh*tty hobby artist and doing it for the joy of it. I deleted all my social media accounts, disabled history (suggestions) on youtube, unsubscribed all my streaming services and generally do as much as possible to avoid the algorythm.

I consistently go to art shows to enjoy looking at art, I go to cheap theatre shows, and dream of being able to buy tickets and see a world-class ballet show or a musical.

AAAND! I actually went out of my way to go look at the pride/CSD/gay Parade and cheered from the sidelines on.

Now don’t get me wrong. Even though I like much more the new version of myself, it wasn’t all roses. This change has immensely strained my relationship with my wife and children to the point where we were separated for over 2 years. It’s still extremely difficult for her to accept “the new me” even though in my mind I just dropped the “facade”.

I still struggle with finding new circle of friends. I do have a lot of people “in my circle” but those people come and go. I tried to make friendships with LGBT people, but after telling them that I used to be something else and that I’m changing myself, they tend to drop me like a hot potato. In general people are having much harder time making sense of the new me than before.

My 3 day mood swing passed.

Was a teen.

Not a fascist, but definitely a reactionary liberal. It took leaving the echo chamber I was born and raised in, plus moving far away and laboring in a pretty nakedly bad environment that really helped cement how capitalism truly functions at a base level.