How did you get into politics?

[Deacarsia]

I first developed an interest in politics during the 2008 United States presidential election. My blue-collar family were Blue Dog Democrats who strongly opposed the presidency of Barack Obama. As I learned more about politics and economics, I became a Ron Paul supporter, and from there I supported Donald Trump in the 2016 election. I consider myself a palæoconservative.

[Southern-Aves]

Funnily, I wanted to be the first female prime minister when I was 5 but never got into politics till I was a teen when I was hoping Daniel Andrews became Victorian Premier (he did), I considered myself centre-left (yet heavily supported anti-feminist / anti-'SJW' circles) then as I grew older I started being more interest in (very) far left politics, now I consider myself a Leftist-Anarchist-Communist type

[United Usonia]

My interest in politics started in 2015. My dad was watching one of Bernie's speeches and I was intrigued so I asked about it, and he helped me understand some of the issues. That lead me to doing my own research, and eventually, that made me become a social democrat.

[Chernoslavia]

I kept getting into trouble at school since the 6th grade of getting into fights with students and later trunacy, threatening staff and all that good shit. I didn't (and still don't) like being told what to do and where to go and so the thought of people other than my parents asserting any form of dominance or authority is unbearable. I also have a huge fascination with firearms and military technology and every now and then I'd go out in the wilderness with my .22 rifle a friend of my dad gifted me. In my teens and I already had ready access to a variety of firearms ranging from shitty .22 revolvers to self loading rifles and shotguns, all belonging to my dad at the time. Never shot anyone nor has it crossed my mind, I was a problem child (at school anyway) but I'm not a psychopath.

One time in the fall of 2011 I came back from high school turned on my Playstation 3, saw a good Christmas deal for classic PS1 games and was surprised to find out they had the entire Syphon Filter series available, feeling nostalgic I played the game all night and now being more attentive about the dialogue I was intrigued about a certain level in the third game of the series and thought ''huh..do people like these exist?'', googled em up and found out that some freedom enthusiasts were setting up a meet and greet this week not too far from where I lived, Emailed one of their members got the okay and met up with like minded individuals who informed me about the political situation in America and how the government is doing away with our constitutional rights little by little. Before then I thought anyone could just buy any type of firearm and be off, gun control to me was something that happened in California, not in the good old USA. And guns were just something that were so obvious and necessary that I didn't think anyone was much of a cunt to regulate them in the slightest. And that's how I got into politics.

[Bombadil]

I genuinely don't remember, I think I sort of just slid into it but given I studied Law & Politics as a degree I guess I must have been generally interested.

Still, I was essentially brought up on the right, privileged private school entitlement and all that.. but in having lived all around the world I've veered sharply to the left.

Better the fool who's sent to roam than the one who's kept at home, as they say.

[VoVoDoCo]

my dad was a Fox News watching Jesus loving conservative. As such I identified as conservative for a while. Though politically I was more libertarian.

Case in point, before I had identified as (or even discovered) a libertarian I was already a little dismayed at the conservative position on gay marriage. I could hear them on the radio on the TV talking about how America was going to hell in a handbasket due to the changing views on the issue. And I was shocked, since I was young, that gays were ever denied marriage licenses in the first place.

Then in my political science class in high school my teacher was talking about third parties and what their various positions were. He talked about the libertarians and it immediately clicked with me. That was when my moderate obsession with politics went a little overboard and still does to this day.

Now as I’ve gotten a little older and read a little bit more, I’ve shifted away from The Libertarian party and moved halfway between them and the Democrats. As the Democrats join Trump in their Backwards trade policies, I’ve shifted more towards the libertarians again.

But yeah. Conservative father, libertarian Epiphany, And liberal literature.

[Kubra]

Engaged and competent social studies teachers. Generally having adults around who cared about things like public life.

[Tondo Federation]

My family had been indirectly related to many politicians in the Philippines. My maternal aunt was the campaign manager of Imee Marcos, the daughter of the late Ferdinand Marcos. My uncle is the current congressman of the 2nd district of Ilocos Norte (where my mother hails). My paternal grandmother was also very active in rallies during her high-school years. This was where my populistic and conservative views came from, alongside with my Christian background.

[Risottia]

I got into politics because politics got into me.

Seriously, even if I don't care about politics and politicians, they will care about me, and not in the good way.

So it is pure self-preservation.

Basically this.
It's also a citizen's duty.

[Major-Tom]

My dad introduced me to Fox News around age 10, so this would've been around 2009. He was furious about the Obama Administration and always had me watch the O'Reilly Factor with him on the patio, where he would semi-drunkenly explain why Obamacare was socialistic and whatnot. Typical post-2008 election Tea Party shit.

In 2010, I went to San Francisco for an open water swim where some substantially older guys and I did a charity event, swimming from Alcatraz Island to Downtown S.F. I was nearly eleven, pretty open-minded overall, and talked to my fellow teammates after that first Alcatraz swim. They seemed to have such fun drinking beer and talking politics, and they were all quite left-wing, in direct contrast of my parents. I aligned myself more with them, I thought they had the right idea, not Bill O'Reilly.

Those were the major tangible events I can recall from getting introduced to politics, and since then, I've been pretty consistently left-wing with the exception of a brief period of time (age 15ish) where I went completely manic and fell into a nearly fugue, depressive, substance abusing state in H.S where I briefly flirted with rather radically right-wing ideas. But, as soon as I got my deadbeat head into check, I rather quickly turned away from those ideologies.

Aside from that brief, miserable period of time where I was such a mess that I was ready to embrace radicalism, I've been consistently fairly left-wing (though not radically so) since I first encountered ideas contrary to those of my dad. The irony is, ever since Trump was elected, my Dad has gradually grown from a right-wing Tea Partier to a rather liberal individual in his 50s. Something switched in his brain, I suppose. He can't stomach Fox News these days.

[Gigaverse]

Ah.

Haha.

I-I feel embarrassed somewhat to admit this, but this site did it for me.

[Chan Island]

It came in blips through childhood through the Iraq War (I remember tiny me asking why there were so many tanks rolling down the street on TV and my mother explaining that it was like the first day of the war), American presidential elections and various drug war incidents. 2010 was the first UK election I was even aware of happening, and was totally in Cleggmania on that one (a Cleggmania I might add, which ended up lasting much longer in me than most...). The crash and Occupy Wall Street obviously hit my radar too, but maybe not as much as for many others as I lived far away from the main centres of action there and came from an unscathed family.

But ultimately it was the 2011 AV vote that got me hooked. I'm terrible at maths, but I loved learning about the different systems, discovered CGP Grey's amazing breakdowns.... and then was virtually howling with incredulity that the British public could make such an obviously wrong choice on just about every metric you could ever want to use.

Well, it set the tone for UK votes in this decade anyway so maybe shouldn't have been surprised. Still though, that horror and the desire for me to increase people power, remove barriers on freedom and do what I can to not live through a violent revolution have remained a strong part of who I've been ever since.

[Drongonia]

Well, as a younger lad (11 - 14) I had a bit of a shitty situation at home which impacted my ability to sleep at night, so all I did was stay up late and watch TV on this tiny CRT in my room. The only thing that was on at 1 - 4am when I was watching was BBC World News (besides those pesky infomercials), as I believe TVNZ 1 just played that coverage all night until about 5 when the infomercials came on.

I often saw a lot of political stuff I didn't really understand, but I was interested enough in it that I would write down certain phrases, buzzwords, stories and so on and researched them when I got to school as we didn't have internet at home. I then started agreeing more with what they said on TV as time went on, and if you'd believe it through high school I was quite far-left and supported a bunch of socialist candidates. Oh, how things change. Anyway, 2016 was the next big tipping point where I just found myself agreeing more and more with what I heard Trump saying.

Fastforward a while and here I am.

[Dumb Ideologies]

It's because I pretend to be chill but secretly think that all opposition indicates a deficit of virtue that needs to be eliminated by reason or force.

...I mean, it's because I just care about everyone so much.

[N7eternia]

I think I've always been into politics. It's just a matter of what person I was at a specific time of my life. In my experience, the one thing that remained constant was how people get affected by any type of politics. It's a surefire way to get a reaction.

[The Liberated Territories]

Around 11 or so years ago my social studies class in middle school was doing a thing on the 2008 election and who we supported and why we did. Well as Obama was clearly the most popular candidate in my class, I chose McCain, which cemented my lifelong political hipsterdom.

[Luziyca]

NationStates: while I just wanted to make a kingdom, after discovering the forums, I fell deep into this rabbit hole, and now I pissed away about ten years of my life on this site.

[Shrillland]

I can't really point to any one point that got me into politics, I was just raised to be aware of how it affected me and everyone around me.

[Bear Stearns]

During my first year in banking right after college, I had a shady MD who was trying score some political favors by letting a candidate for one of the city judge positions run his campaign with the bank's marketing software (I worked at a smaller bank at the time where it was feasible to get away with this). I was tasked with getting this candidate set up on our system. I was 22 at the time. Very weird experience.

Beyond that, I was VP of the College Republicans during undergrad.

That's the most political experience I have had.

[New Bremerton]

9/11 was my political awakening. Prior to that point, I was vaguely aware of how "dumb" and "selfish" all Americans were, according to my parents at the time, and how Bill Clinton was a very bad man. I remember watching Princess Diana's funeral procession and Hong Kong's Handover to China in 1997 and hearing about some conflict raging in Yugoslavia. I was also aware of just how unpopular Hong Kong's first post-Handover Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa was at the time. Since 9/11, as a direct result of my parents' left-wing politics, I began to hate and despise "evil, racist, imperialist" America and Israel with a passion, especially in the wake of the U.S. invasions and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Israel's war "crimes" against the Palestinians during the Second Intifada and their "Apartheid Wall" in the West Bank. I hated Bush and Blair with a passion. As a teenager, I came to identify as a liberal along American lines.

My political views continued to align very closely with my parents' views for many more years to come. I even sided with China in 2008 when the Tibet "riots" broke out and considered anyone who supported Tibetan independence from China a Sinophobic racist, even as I was fiercely critical of the CCP's authoritarianism and its steady encroachment into Hong Kong's internal affairs, which is remarkable given that I was born and raised in Hong Kong.

While I was a student in the UK, I immediately took a liking to the socially liberal Liberal Democrats who, at the time, were the only political party that opposed "evil" Tony Blair's invasion of Iraq, and I considered them to be to the left of both Labour and the Tories, until the 2010 General Election, when I realized that liberalism is actually a centrist ideology, with socialism being the true leftist ideology, and I felt betrayed when the Lib Dems formed a coalition with the much-hated Tories. As a Commonwealth citizen, I exercised my right to vote, once in the 2008 London Mayoral and GLA elections, for the Lib Dems and Greens, and again in the 2010 GE, again for the Lib Dems. But I only really got into UK politics when the Tories and Labour collaborated to pass a Digital Economy Act, making it more difficult to fileshare copyrighted files online, and the Lib Dems were the only ones opposed to legislation that affected me personally as a digital end-user.

As a HK permanent resident, I was also eligible to vote in Hong Kong's (rigged) Legislative Council and (not rigged) District Council elections. I naturally sided with the pro-democracy candidates against the pro-Beijing camp.

When I repatriated to Malaysia, it took six whole months for the then-racist and corrupt government to register me to vote, and I only received my voting slip the day after a state election was held. Over the years, I voted several more times in a number of state and federal elections until we finally managed to throw out the ancien regime, to our own surprise.

I was at my most left-wing and on the verge of identifying as a socialist around 2011, culminating with the recognition of "Palestine" as a state by the UN General Assembly. But events in Syria, Malaysia and Hong Kong, as well as emerging social and political trends in the West, such as rising political correctness and opposition to free speech among the Left, its implicit tolerance of Islamist intolerance, radical feminism and MeToo, Black Lives Matter and other kinds of identity politics bullshit, caused me to drift rightward and reject my parents' left-wing socialist politics, although I've managed to avoid embracing right-wing conservatism outright and remain a politically homeless, moderate centrist liberal. My views on Israel also shifted radically in 2016 from one of hate-filled opposition to its very existence to one of unwavering support. I no longer hate Jews or Israel.

I'm not so much "right-wing" as I am anti-left-wing. I despise socialism/communism and all that it stands for and consider the terms synonymous and interchangeable, as they originally were for more than a century, and I'm more determined than ever to keep these radical leftists out of power by calling them out on their bullshit and hypocrisy at every turn, without abandoning my liberal roots. I also despise fascism and radical Islam in equal measure.

I consider the British Tories to be the most "liberal" and tolerant party at the moment, and I hope Boris Johnson wins the Dec. 12, 2019 GE with a landslide majority. In the American political context, I identify as a liberal Independent. In Hong Kong, I obviously side with the pan-Democrats and protesters. In Malaysia, there is no one left for me to support, as the party I once voted for has allowed itself to be coopted by their more intolerant coalition partners in the federal government, and the country remains a Third World shithole instead of transforming into a Tiger economy overnight, and criticism of Islam remains a criminal offense that can land you at least 11 years in prison. So much for political reform. Guess I should draw a phallus on the ballot paper the next time I vote in a Malaysian election.

[Czechostan]

By playing NationStates.

Well, I had some interest in politics before, but playing NS really turned me into a political junkie.

[Partybus]

1980 my highschool(and many of the other local schools)did a "walk out" to protest prop 2 1/2 (if I recall correctly) hopped on a bus to downtown and stormed the lawn of the State capital... I was (maybe) on mesc, and I got interviewed on the news...I was surprisingly coherent

[Salus Maior]

I've been checked out of modern politics for a long time.

[Vistulange]

I'm Turkish. It's not a choice. To pinpoint when I first got political - in a meaningful manner - I should probably say sometime around 2006. I mean, I knew of politics as early as I could comprehend the world beyond the understanding of a child, but that doesn't count.

I didn't get into politics, thankfully, I instead got into studying politics.

[Totenborg]

I started learning about politics about '91 or '92 when I was about six or seven. My father obsessively listened to Rush Limbaugh. Hilariously, my father and I don't see eye-to-eye on anything politically, now.

My dad used to be a Republican but now leans pretty heavily on the Democrat side, while my mom has drifted rightwards over the years. I used to agree far more with my mom than my dad, but it's been reversed. Interesting how that sometimes happens and sometimes doesn't.

2008 recession, affected everyone, Iceland was the single most depressing country at that time. Naturally, the recession caused many people affected, including then-me, to get interested in politics

>implying Iceland isn't currently the most depressing country

That happened with my mom. She went from religious right extremist to kinda a hippie liberal type.