I didn't start reading theory until this most recent phase of the Zionist genocide, but it was the Collateral Murder video leaks (and subsequent leaks) that raised the contradictions enough for me to realize that there is an empire.

Then I spent over a decade slowly radicalizing while the contradictions kept sharpening, I went from left-liberal to left-libertarian to anarcho-communist to some kind of Third Worldism with anarchist characteristics after Trump won the first time. Still not reading theory, just watching current events and hating the US empire more and more at a very constant rate.

Then the pandemic showed China was one of the only countries on Earth to give a shit about public health over profits, and I finally dropped my anarchism. I've been an ML ever since, and after Oct 7th I've read Lenin and Mao and Fanon and Walter Rodney and W. E. B. DuBois and others. I just finished Black Jacobins and I'm set to read Empire of Borders next.

...I'm still procrastinating on Capital. It's intimidating okay??