From anger to hopelessness to optimism
Before meeting the RCP, I was the most confused I had ever been about the world. I was constantly oscillating between existentialism and detachment; searching for any way I could to escape reality and numb myself from the horrors that were unfolding around me.
I was a second year Mental Health Nursing student and then 7 October came. At the same time, the manosphere was emerging. My day to day life consisted of constant confrontation with sickness and death, as well as the social sicknesses that capitalism produces.
I couldn’t make sense of all of this and felt sick myself sitting passively, watching it happen. I was desperately searching for an answer – a way to make sense of the world.
I had been going to Palestine marches every weekend. But after a year of A to B marching, I watched Israel continue to decimate what was left of Gaza.
My anger was turning into hopelessness – until I met a comrade at a demonstration. We connected instantly over shared hatred of capitalism. They invited me to their open meeting and for the first time I heard a revolutionary way forward for the Middle East.
It was like a veil that had been suffocating me was lifted. I finally got answers; I could understand the world and therefore see the way to change it.
With this newfound sense of inspiration and optimism, I went to a second meeting where Fiona Lali was speaking. Immediately after speaking to comrades there, I joined the RCP and the rest is history!
Marina, University of Leeds
Fighting for my beliefs
I was 14 when I really started to open my eyes to the world. I saw the abundance of poverty in the world – and made it my mission to find the cause and the solution.
I came to the conclusion that this was not the result of human nature and that millions of people struggling to get by wasn’t an inevitable thing that had to happen.
That’s where I got into communism. I began to research and discovered figures like Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, looking into their roles during the Cuban Revolution.
I started to look for organisations that would talk about and solve the problems I had – but I found they all ultimately supported upholding the system that is at the root of them.
That was until I contacted the RCP. Suddenly, I could talk to people that shared the anger and frustration I have. Here were people who could offer real solutions – who wanted to tear this system down, help train me into a revolutionary, and encourage me to fight for my beliefs.
Logan, Barry Sixth Form
Bold and unapologetically revolutionary
I decided I was a communist at 14 years old. But from that day, I was politically homeless with no hope, drifting aimlessly between this movement and that, with no real perspective.
No matter where I looked, no one seemed to be offering any real solutions. There was no one expressing the deep revulsion I felt toward the capitalist system.
I was ready for war, and all I got from the left were calls for love and kindness. Labour, the Greens, even the “radical” groups like Just Stop Oil and Stand Up To Racism didn’t offer revolutionary perspectives.
All the while, the lives of billions of people were being laid to waste by a system that has no time for compassion when there is a profit to be made.
When I arrived at university, I expected more of the same. On the way to my first lecture, I met comrades wielding a newspaper named The Communist.
They were searching in the passersby, not just for anyone, but for those who wished to be armed with Marxist ideas against the capitalists.
The paper was emblazoned with a red hammer and sickle, and the comrades held it with such pride and confidence. They enquired of everyone they could, “Are you interested in communism?” and “do you hate capitalism?”
Nothing short of a bold communist would’ve grabbed my attention. Seeing comrades like that, not shying away from the public but shouting from the rooftops to anyone who would listen, filled me with a revolutionary optimism I had never felt before. That is why I joined the RCP.
We cannot be shy. We cannot be small. We cannot be quiet. Much of the radical youth in this country is disenfranchised, directionless, and fearful about the future. We must be there, so bold they cannot miss us, so proud they are drawn in, and so unapologetically revolutionary that they are filled with hope.
Sophie, Newcastle University
