A very helpful early step seems to be less about learning about communism and more about gathering an appreciation for how anticommunism has a long and ongoing history of doing unconscionable things while creating false narratives and false histories that we take for granted.

Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti is a good book for this. Very quick read and welll-written. Basically any exploration of what the US did in the name of anticommunism will also demonstrate these points. Coups and genocide in Guatemala. Propping up mob bosses and terrorists and slavers in Cuba. Bombing every population center in North Korea. Mass killings and genocide in Indonesia. The oppression of the people of the Philippines. Vietnam. Operation Condor. Project Aerodynamic. Operation Paperclip. Operation Gladio. Knowledge of these things in concert creates a stark contrast with the dominant narratives of what Western capitalist nations supposedly stand for.

But I shouldn’t be too presumptuous maybe learning about communism is really the best place to start. For that, I cannot recommend enough to go to the core theory of Marxism, and then build on this to study Lenin and the establishment of the first socialist state. Marxism is useful and valuable in and of itself as a means by which to understand capitalism back then and even now. Lenin and the Bolsheviks are useful for their social embedding, the development of revolutionary practice. Both in combination will also provide a strong grounding in the terminology that is often peculiar to communists, such as what we mean when we call people liberals. For Marx, I recommend reading Heinrich’s Introduction to Capital (and once you’re feeling like really getting into it, Roberts’ similar book and then the original, Capital Vols 1-3). For Lenin, I recommend State and Revolution. Reading Engels is also very useful, picking a few of his most popular writings can’t hurt.

What they wrote is still relevant today. Capitalism was in a midpoint of development then and is now much rather advanced, having most of the same character and developing in many of the ways they predicted. Most importantly, it exposes the core mechanisms of capitalism that lead to its instability, its tendency towards particular forms of violence and destruction, the way it constitutes and creates social practice.

You then have the option of going more in the direction of more philosophical theory or into historical review of revolutions and anticommunism in the 20th century. I think the latter is usually more useful than the former of you have to pick one, but they really complement each other.

Something else that’s helpful is to become as familiar with media criticism as you can. Learn to recognize the tropes and follow sources in depth. Understanding the media apparatus and how it pushes in the interest of capital requires learning like 50 think tank names and feeling comfortable going down the rabbit hole to find out that the independent expert that just got cited is funded by a literal CIA cutout. FAIR.org is a great place to go for absorbing a media critical view. It really is like a muscle that needs to be worked out and developed to stay strong. As you get more comfortable critically absorbing media, you’ll spot the bullshit like the current, racist, pro-genocide MSM narratives against Palestinians on sight and for a wide set of materials. The usual revelation is simple: the American Empire pushes in its perceived self-interest with no care whatsoever about who is harmed in doing so - aside from having a plan for rhetoric so that its people never recognize that they’re the bad guys.

Oh and also there are about 15000 in-jokes here that are communist references. If you hang out with us goofballs you’ll pick them up.