What are the books that radicalized you/ can radicalize you?
I was watching some video and there was mention of someone getting 1984. Upon which, a guy said that this one (one who got 1984) will end up being radicalized. I was already born into a very radical environment so no needs of books to radicalize me (although I am trying to be moderate and chill now)
110 replies
Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.
the Bible, unless you're a physcopath, that shit will make you an atheist if you read it and don't have cheery picked bits thrown at you by those trying to gas light you.
1984 is intertwined into the modern zietgiest
I am already an atheist and it was Quran who made me an atheist but yeah I am reading Bible and boy, the shit is insane there.
Unironically "Industrial Society and Its Future" by Ted Kaczynski.
I don't agree with it at all. I think disabled people are people too, radical stance I know. But some points, especially about modern left and new technology becoming mandatory are well argued and true.
I always thought he was just a random looney and he's definitely not. I think the book didn't radicalize me but showed me what I believed to be true (that the guy was just a looney or evil) was wrong.
I don't believe that the rise of technofascism can be stopped by hiding in the woods tho and I don't think rejecting all tech will make everyone's mental health immediately better, he does not at all take things like community and purpose into account.
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe.
The methodical whitewashing by Zionists of the crimes against the native inhabitants of Palestine combined with the crocodiles tears of liberal Zionists was eye opening to say the least.
Gonna put something completely different out there: The Kingsbridge novels and Century Trilogy by Ken Follett. Kingsbridge is about a fictional town in England through the ages (books are 10th, 12, 14th, 16th and 18th century respectively), and the Century trilogy about several families from different parts of the world as they go through the 20th century.
Just a lot of daily life scenarios with a lot of rich vs poor themes. A lot of it goes too far to the social-democratic side and I don't like how a lot of the characters tend to end up in a better place than where they started but I think it's exactly those day-to-day issues that are what radicalise.
Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galeano
this is the perfect book to understand what's about to happen to latin america again.
Reform or revolution -Rosa Luxembourg (Not a book per se but worth the read)
Black shirts and reds -Micheal Parenti
The conquest of bread -Peter Kropotkin
Mutual aid -Peter Kropotkin
The Black Panther Party ten point program - Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale
Guerrilla Warfare -Ernesto "Che" Guevera
I see some good choices here. For Americans, try An American Sickness by Elisabeth Rosenthal
1984
Animal Farm
The Jungle
Slaughterhouse Five
Brave New World
A Farewell to Arms
Blood Meridian
Guns, Germs, and Steel
To Kill A Mockingbird
Bullshit Jobs
I know I at least read Animal Farm and To Kill a Mockingbird when I was younger. I wonder how much those ended up influencing me. At the time I wouldn't have totally agreed with them, and I don't remember them having a particularly large influence, but they probably did affect me without me knowing. However, I also watched a lot of sci-fi and Star Trek, which probably had an even greater influence.
I wish there was a way to analyze our past and pick apart what effect different things had. It'd be really fun to know. I think when you consume something that you think really changes you, you were already primed for that change before. A lot of things lead up to that moment that you don't even recognize.
Is last one really the title of book?
Bullshit Jobs
Yes! Its a 2018 book by David Graeber
Wiki link above to give a decent synopsis
If you really want some solid Graeber, who tag-teamed with archaeologist David Wengrow, read The Dawn of Everything.
The cake is a lie and hierarchy is horseshit. Humans have left exploitative social structures (read: empires, Capitalism) and reorganized society before and we can do it again. There is physical evidence for thousands of years.
A People's History of the United States blew my mind wide open in high school.
Have you heard about the communist party manifesto? really simple book, 30 pages, you can skip the third chapter, but a real banger I couldn't recommend more
Rich Dad Poor Dad (no joke). It's a glimpse into the inner workings of a wealthy shithead's mind. It unironically tries to convince you that profit is the only thing that matters, people are disposable and those who disagree with these ideas are intellectually inferior. The "poor dad" in the book is a teacher (and the guy's biological dad) who's pictured as someone well-educated, who tries to live an honest and modest life, and is therefore a "loser". It's nauseating.
The dude is a total hack too. There was an If Book Could Kill episode on it that was fantastic.
the rise of fascism radicalized me and made me sought out the books to learn about it and solutions by the communists of yesteryear.
not the other way around.
I mean 1984 did a pretty good job radicalizing me against fascism. I consider it radicalization because turns out America really likes fascism so I guess I'm in the minority.
But why then US fought Germany if US also likes fascism?
Read 1984 and you'll understand. Or any history of a region just after WWII with insane leaders.
It's not just a question of fascism or no fascism. It's that fascist leaders only want their fascism out there. Neighboring fascist counties usually hate each other because of the competition.
Also we can spot evil in others. Its dangerous for us to recognise it and then realise its us too.
Didn't really radicalise me but it's interesting that people had those ideas a long time ago too.
"The right to be lazy" (translation by me so it's worth what it's worth)
Quel banger
🥱 parfaitement !
Just reading about history has done that to me. I don't really read fiction, but I read a ton of history, usually about one book per month or so. But seeing how the human history is just basically despair and misery, makes you a bit annoyed that we still haven't gotten any better.
History books got names too!
Yeah I know. But I don't like to recommend just random topics, because when I do, I've noticed that people just go "oh wasn't interested in that" so I'd rather ask a bit about what topics and time periods people might be interested in, before recommending.
And to be clear, I don't really have a specific book or books in mind that radicalized me. It happened by reading tens, or a hundred, books in the period of 10-15 years. So in that I can't give a recommendation, other than, just start reading about stuff. Start with something you wanted to know, wanted to know more about or were interested in, then during reading that thing, note down anything else that comes to mind that might interest you. Either something the book mentioned or something that popped in your mind randomly. Then get a book about that thing. Repeat.
That's how I got sunk into this hole of reading about history. I just go "huh, what's that about?!" and proceed to find out. /r/askhistorians subreddit has a excellent reading list in their wiki, its sorted into periods and topics, easy to search. That's a good place to start.
You want something strictly relevant to all the messes we're in today?
The Hundred Years' War on PalestineandThe Ethnic Cleansing of Palestineare must reads. Round them off withBeyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of HistoryThen read
Inventing Reality: The Politics of News MediaandManufacturing Consent(obligatory fuck pedo-associated and possibly pedo Chompsky).Take a break from reality and read a quick fiction:
The Trial.If you're not radicalized by anger at this point, you're one of the baddies.
I agree with this but its kinda also that we seem to be going backward big time. If you look at ww1 to ww2 and how shorta time span that was with the depression and then look back on the last quarter decade. its like. this is some bull trump.
Yeah it puts things in perspective. Sadly, lately the perspective has been "this is awful and things will become even more awful for the next decade or two at least. Probably more."
Purely Functional Data Structures by Chris Okasaki. It took the blinders off and I became a convert to functional programming.
I like to joke about recursion and how it gets overused as a "good" programming practice, but I genuinely have a solid understanding of it and find it pretty intuitive... In OOP. I cannot wrap my head around tail recursion
Tail recursion is just recursion? I mean who cares if it's the last thing done or not 😋 ?
Check out template meta programming if you want some recursion to blow your mind (like the variadic template).
The Bible
For me, it was Quran who made me question the majority and gave me a questioning mind and now I am an atheist.
The book that reads at the very beginning something like "you must believe everything written in this book with blind fate" made you question things? Or maybe I picked up a tampered copy.. 🤔 I read that, put it back on the shelve and never picked it up again.
yeah cuz I wanted to be a better Muslim and I dove deeper and deeper and that made me question my sect, then my religion, then all religions.
For me, i was raised religious. Fully believed it all because I was a child and the idea that its all a con was way beyond my capabilities. Got a little older, family fell apart and religion stopped being shoved down my throat.
Decided to read the bible so I could understand the whole story instead of just being lectured about a couple of paragraphs plucked at random.
God creates everything and then straight up fireballs everyone to death in the first like 5 minutes of reading. Ive been taught since birth that God loves us. Been drilled into my head that God has a perfect plan. Chapter fucking one God says whoops and does a genocide.
I did not finish the book.
Every time I see the nice leather bound Barnes and Noble edition with all the other leather bounds I say “I love to see all the works of fiction together in the same section”
Never fails to get a laugh.
Is it because you went in alone?
The Grapes of Wrath
none. its honestly the right wing that is radicalizing me. I was a (ironically) and extreme agnostic. It was things like qanon which made me have to come to terms with the fact that humans will just believe and follow bullshit. Not just that but tea party and now maga. Its like an effing religion. Heck the 911 memorial stuff is kinda pissing me off because it lead to the patriot act and loss of rights and privacy. Every flag waver and republican at this point that opens their mouth is radicalizing me.
Where can I buy this book?
the book of none can be found with the real nowhere man. You can find him sitting in his nowhere land. Generally he is usually making all his nowhere plans for nobody.
And while Jeremy is writing it, he's also reviewing it.
Medic, pedic, zed oblique, orphic, morphic, dorphic, Greek. Ad hoc, ad loc and quid pro quo. So little time, so much to know.
Well I grew up in right and far right environment.
No Logo by Naomi Klein.
Unfortunately, it made me really against sweatshops and child labour. But most people want to hate stuff that come with very marginal costs, rether than things that force you to rethink how you live.
"I hate structural racism!"
"Like our clothes?"
"No, no...."
Why are we calling being an empathetic individual and being against fascism "being radicalised"?
Because it is the correct use of the word. It is the american conservative propaganda machine which gave it the negative connotations.
Being antifascist matches at least two definitions of radical: "Favoring fundamental change, or change at the root cause of a matter" and "(slang) Excellent; awesome"
Being against fascists is normal. There is nothing radical about it. Only right wing extremists would call that being radicalised.
My question exactly
well it is just you. Radicalized can entail many things. When I was in early to mid teens, I have read and listened to extremists and that made me a hardcore extremist in my religion.
Little Brother 2008
and it's free
https://craphound.com/category/littlebrother/
I loved this book!
Just read people's history by Howard zinn and that'll radicalize a lot of people. It's just the rich fucking everyone over and over.
And it continues to this day.
Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent
Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher.
I forget the name (maybe "the verdict"?) but I read a john grisham book about a fictional trial of a chemical company contaminating drinking water. It dealt in a lot of detail with real-world political and legal structures and how open to abuse they are by the super-rich. It really eroded any belief I had that billionaires can exist peacefully in society without making things worse for everyone.
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. I'd be shocked if every person who bought a copy isn't on a watchlist automatically.
I'm on a big Kim Stanley Robinson kick lately (currently reading Aurora) and I haven't heard of this one. Definitely picking that up lol
The Dispossessed
This was the one I came to mention lol.
Also from the introduction/short story The Day Before The Revolution:
The terms of service for the warranty on my first car after the first time I tried to use it.
Lord of the flies
I know Lord of the Flies is an allegory for the authors experience during and after WW2, but I do think its incredibly ironic the only real life example we have of the book turned out the complete opposite
There was a book which I picked up from my high-school library and it really did a number on the younger me. "Green Rage" was a book written by Chris Manes in the early 90s about radical environmentalism and it gave me a new perspective on things I had not been aware of at the time. While I never actually got directly involved with any environmentalist groups, I did start to better appreciate how our Capitalist system's need extract value at any cost from natural resources would have disastrous consequences.
Fast forward 35 years and I can't honestly say if the author's more dire predictions haven't come to pass since you simply can't trust corporate media to give unvarnished truth about anything. But I have seen and experienced things with my own eyes that give them credence. The fact that the title for this book came to mind immediately when I read this post/prompt says something about it's impact I think.
Island - Aldous Huxley
Less radicalized and more just opened my thinking about how society could be and how imperial forces and people's desires get in the way constantly. More of a 'this is why utopia can't happen' vs Brave New World's 'look at this dystopia'
Ape and Essence did it for me when it came to watching societies crumble and fade. Watch someone dig scrap metal from 30 years ago out of a dump one time and you'll wonder what's even fiction and what's real life anymore.
The Jungle
Came here to make sure this was listed.
A People's History of the United States
Mother Night, Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein (it does have some anti-lbgtq messaging, but if I recall correctly it's a single paragraph and Heinlein has known biases. The term "grok" came from this book; I'm not the only one who despises how it's been co-opted by Musk)
Makes Me Wanna Holler - Nathan McCall
The Emperor's New Mind - Roger Penrose (especially pertinent with the hype/propaganda coming from oligarchs surrounding AGI/ASI/the singularity)
The Demon Haunted World - Carl Sagan
The irony being that Musk doesn't seem to grok the meaning of the word grok.
These books opened my eyes.
From Freedom to Slavery: Rebirth of Tyranny in America by Gerry Spence
https://archive.org/details/fromfreedomtosl000spen/mode/1up
Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You & Your World
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/62558.Quantum_Psychology
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man
Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13542853-trust-me-i-m-lying
Stranger In A Strange Land
That was the first Heinlein I ever read, and it blew my mind. I wished I could go back in time to meet him and shake his hand.
Then I read more Heinlein and got to the Lazarus Long stuff, and wished I could go back in time to meet him and ask him if he was okay.
Hahahaha this is hilarious
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord.
Benjamin Blümchen audio story series. Mayor and most business men are corrupt, main character regularly engages in political action like organizing protests for animal rights and another major character is a female journalist.
It's insidious because they're popular children's stories featuring a talking elephant as main character. Back before everyone lived on TikTok, even conservative parents bought it for their children. And I think even if you don't quite remember most of it when you get older, stories like these really do influence how you see the world.
Other than that, reading newspapers did most of the work (of course that only works if it's not all full-on fascist propaganda).
Is it in english?
It's originally in German, IDK if there's a translation. Maybe the TV Shows/Movies got translations or at least subtitles? Though they don't seem to be that well-received.
When things fall apart - Pema Chodron.
Stolen Continents
punk as f*uck
if you speak(/read) german and consider yourself vaguely punk i recommend it. if you know any (cis male) german speaking punks, please slap their face with this book (they either understand and accept it or don't, in which case they desperately need to read this book).
it showcases the german punk scene from a flinta* perspective, highlighting how sexism and abuse didn't stop people who actually stood for something better and why it took a long long time for the scene to improve.
isbn 978-3-95575-187-6 , i'm sure your local book dealer is able to order it for you.
Can't believe this is the only mention of Conquest of Bread and Capital here. They are what turned my intuition of "the we've structured society seems unfair" into at least some basic understanding of the reality around me.
Although I think for most people (myself included) radicalization mostly comes from lived experiences rather than anything you read.
Learning Perl, 2nd edition
Perl doesn't radicalise anyone, but it might turn them into a funny character.
Check out Evasion and Days of War, Nights of Love by Crimethinc. That's how I got my start
Pick a judeo-christian bible. Can't miss apparently.
Well I grew up reading Quran. It was later I read Bibles. Apocryphal ones are more radical in conclusion.
Nickle and Dimed by Ehrenreich
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_and_Dimed
Benjamin’s essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Related: he quotes Marinetti’s 1909 “Manifesto of Futurism” which is still frighteningly relevant.
I don't know about radicalized, but if you want to better understand race in America, "The Fire Next Time" by Baldwin is an excellent place to start.
yeah I am not American and we talk in terms of ethnicities, color, and castes. We don't even have a word for race in our language.
Birthrights by Richard Farson.
Voltaire's Bastards by John Ralston Saul. It didn't necessarily radicalise me, but it certainly changed my view of the world.
I've never been radicalized by a book, or anything really.
Probably because I've never believed it to be The Truth.
Most books I've read that people are taking about here, my reaction was like 'well duh'. Like, I knew my teachers were lying to me since kindergarten and their thought their over simplified view of the world was very weird.
Coming up with a worldview on your own from all the little bits of data you have is hard. Most people take their given world model without question and ignore the inconsistencies.
The Hundredth Monkey
That's a pretty stupid book.
Explain more
It's based on junk science and encourages cult behavior. There is no tipping point where ideas spread without being communicated. Western Buddhists are the worst at this that I've seen.