I am a 22-year-old Arab male college student from Lebanon, and I used to be a communist and an SJW male feminist somehow. I adopted both ideologies because I have good intentions and being naïve I became indoctrinated by my professors. Communism is great in theory, but it is a failed system and is even more unfair than capitalism.
Lebanon is currently suffering the effects of the civil war, which are an economic crisis with inflation, high unemployment rate, the minimum wage is only 420$/month, our politicians have raised taxes by 1% and all our taxes are filling their wallets. As a result our infrastructure is poor, causing daily electrical balckouts with swollen electric bills, water shortage, overprice poor quality internet & telecommunications service, some people are dying near hospital entrances because they can’t afford it, Hezbollah are stonger than our Military, a Syrian Refugee crisis, corruption and nepotism, and a recent garbage crisis. Because the Lebanese political system is based on sectarianism, and all the politicians deals are based on confessional quotas with four major religious sects the Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, Maronite Christians, and Druze in addition to the religion is stated on a citizen’s ID card.
By 2012 I left the Islamic religion to become an atheist because it is very unscientific and is ethically questionable, which made me for freedom of expression, secularism, an advocate for women’s rights in the Arab world, egalitarianism, support the LGBT community, or in other words a classical liberal.
By 17 July 2015, the main landfill of Lebanon was closed, this caused the outbreak of the garbage crisis, in addition to 16 hour/daily power-cuts, also with 100F heat making our garbage filled streets smelling like a rotting corpse. A week later a grass-roots civil uprising organized by the #You_Stink movement in response to the garbage crisis. I have joined this movement first for achieving basic human rights and second for playing video games without power-outages interrupting me. Most member of the movement are classical liberals and social democrats and 1 or 2 are Marxists. By 23 August 2015, #YouStink organized a mass rally 60 thousand people attended demanding their basic human rights, unfortunately Amal & Hezbollah thugs hijacked the demonstration through inciting violence by throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks on police officers. This obliged the Lebanese Armed Forces to declare martial law for a few hours prompting soldiers to arrest anyone they see on all sights except for police officers, and emergency workers.
By Fall 2015, I befriended members of the Lebanese Communist Party who also participated in the uprising (I’m still close to them) as well as took Cultural Studies, I got indoctrinated into Marxism and demonized every single CEO and Company owner on earth, and sympathizing with the poor, and less privileged people also based on their identity like race gender sexuality and disability.
By late November 2016, I attended a lecture on intersectional feminism by the Intersectionalist Club at the Lebanese American University, I stated that “gays have it way harder than lesbian women even in Iran & KSA” and “the patriarchy harms men too” they immediately responded to me with” you’re a Lebanese cis-het male and need to check your privilege”, here when I started to dissociate myself from radical feminists and social justice warriors. Then I started watching many anti-sjw and MRA youtubers. I also became a social democrat, because I saw how communist countries are corrupt and suffering the horror of an economic crisis, like in Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, and the infamous exploitation of child labour which contradicts Marxian principle, and the equal outcome concept which also contradicts Marxism with “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”.
Then I became a classical liberal/libertarian after watching a discussion with Peter Schiff and occupy protesters on free market capitalism, he explained to them how heavy taxation is harmful and is the face of crony capitalism, and how people are out of jobs, the regulations hurt the economy especially small & medium companies, and free market economies have helped the poor succeed like in Hong Kong , how the Federal Reserve is corrupt, and how he predicted the financial crisis but everyone laughed at him. I also realized that big government is harmful, and the bigger it is the more tyrannical it gets, and the US government is already big and corrupt, making it involved in wars and revolutions harming the world like what they did to Iraq, Libya , Afghanistan, The Chilean Coup, and the mindless support for Israel.
I also did research about Rafik Al Hariri former Lebanese Prime Minister from 1998-2004, he was an extremely wealthy businessman, had been assassinated by Hezbollah and the Syrian Army, and the reason he was killed is he wanted to bring back Laissez Faire economics of 1960s Lebanon where our economy was thriving, and if you ask any Economist in Lebanon they will tell you that Rafik Al Hariri was “making Lebanon great again” economically.
Even though I support free market capitalism, I believe that healthcare should be free only when necessary, same for education but it should be cheaper. And the US government should decrease spending on Military, and Israel.
PS: Excuse my English as I learn it as a 2nd language. And If you are interested in my anti-sjw story I will post later.
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