Aesthetics were the first thing that won me over to socialism. When I was a kid, I chanced to hear the Soviet national anthem used ironically in youtube video (likely a youtube-poop of which I was and still am fond.) I had never heard anything so beautiful, so powerful. I could not imagine a feeling more triumphant than that expressed in the chorus of a million voices singing out in red square.
I didn’t know anything about the Russian revolution, nor of socialism - all context, I learned in retrospect. But that first encounter stuck with me and served as a bulwark against the barrage of anti-communist propaganda the Florida Education System tried assailing me with.
Now, a decade and a half past that point, I’m a member of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. And whenever I get whipped up into my feelings about that moment, I feverishly take to photoshop and try to make some propaganda of my own, hoping that it may stir up similar feelings in another.