First time poster, signed up today after having gathered the spoons to do that for a few weeks (AuDHD).

I am an 80s kid from one of the Nordic supposedly utopian countries. Grew up seeing the neoliberal project and shock therapy lite work its way into our everyday existence in a way that is now hegemonic. Grew up between the whites and the Reds in my own family, still very much remember it all and a lot of those brain worms are alive today and actively used to further the capitalist project.

During the 90s everything here got privatized, there was a big rise in nationalism. Our own Nazis from the wartime got reframed as heroes. The welfare state that only existed because of us being so close to the Soviet started its slow collapse. These days we have the highest out of pocket prices for our “public healthcare”, health disparities are wide. Poorer people live ten-year shorter lives on average. Our social security level is so low it has been flagged in the EU three times as a violation, yet this isn’t even talked about. Instead, it will be cut even further.

We are doing the “nice fascism”. On the surface a lot of stuff looks good, but that is not the whole picture. Many basic folks spend their time being worried about our “country brand”, unironically. We opted for nato in a moral panic after decades of propaganda that the right has very actively pushed.

I have a kid who has played a huge part in my deprogramming from the socdem liberal that I too used to be. Another big factor for me was diet culture and deprogramming myself from that, this led to discovering all kinds of wrongdoing that always had their roots in the capitalist or imperialist system. Reading Fearing the Black Body was a turning point. Eugenics, race biology, patriarchy and all that seemed to go hand in hand with colonialism and capitalism. After that I read more about the treatment of East Karelian folks here during, before and after the war. Found out that the lefts were put into camps during the war. Started to study social sciences and history, went to do social work for a living.

Left Twitter last November, went to Mastodon. Soon after the progressives from my country flooded the site and started to discuss their electricity bills, bicycles and being oh so outraged about the rise of fascism and right-wing politics here. And how voting wrong is what caused this. Every single talking point from Amerikkka gets repeated here.

Lately this has started to take a toll on my mental health. Today our national news had a think piece in it that announced the hammer and sickle to be russofascist symbols. Statues of Lenin are being removed and streets renamed (nothing against removing statues as such, but in this case, this is about something different). People here send signed bombs to Ukraine with pride. There is widespread disgusting russophobia that echoes the way people here talk about refugees and minorities.

And here I am with the realization that we were always Nazis actually and that one side of my family has played an active part in the misery imposed on the Karelian people, just to name a few things.

I always say that if a country would the embodiment of liberalism, this would be it. There is a total and numbing denial of racism. And a myth of sameness that makes all the margins disappear and invalidates them.

Having lurked here for some time reading posts has given me so much hope that I thought I should join.