I Spent a Year in Right-Wing Facebook Groups and This Is What I Learned

I’ll never be the same again.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Ever since my teens, I’ve identified as left-wing. At first, it was a rebellious act of defiance against the town I lived in. Most people were at least right-leaning, even if they insisted they “didn’t care about politics.” I felt proud to be on the left, which I had idealized as “the good side”. We stood for tolerance and all things progressive, unlike the people I was surrounded by.

I felt morally superior. And I liked it. I was from a disadvantaged background, and I wasn’t heterosexual. Growing up in a conservative town, I often felt like I was nothing and like I didn’t belong. After only experiencing feelings of inferiority, it felt good to experience feelings of superiority.

As I reached adulthood and began to experience the world beyond my hometown, I became disillusioned by the left. To be clear, my values still aligned with the left of the political spectrum, but not with the groups I was mixing in. Particularly in online communities, I saw a lot of gatekeeping and it made me feel uncomfortable. Squabbling over minor differences of opinion was a regular occurrence. There was, and still is, a lot of conflict amongst lefties. Often, if someone has an ideology that is even slightly different from some else, then you can…