Share here how did you approach or was approached to studying Marxism-Leninism. I’ll start.
I was initially drawn into understanding communism because of the fascist wave in Brazil, especially after the 2018 elections that got Bolsonaro into power. The liberals and fascists (frequently synonyms) were openly anticommunist, and their bizarre behavior and disregard for the poor was enough for me to realize they were enemies of the people.
So I began researching about communism to understand why they were so “afraid” of it, and downloaded some works of Marx to start reading, but I couldn’t read it by myself because I was never an avid reader and didn’t know where to start, because most of his works are dense. Until I found the subreddit r/communism, which at the time had a growing community around Marxism-Leninism, which through threads and comments got me started on it.
I grew up in USSR, so communism was where I started. When the collapse happened pretty much nobody had any direct experience with capitalism, and most people were actually optimistic that life was going to get better.
Of course, everybody quickly learned what life under capitalism was actually like when we started having food shortages, rampant crime, homelessness, and so on. Receiving capitalist shock therapy really made me appreciate what it is that was lost.