I don't know that it would be a single thing.

Star Trek always seemed the right way for the future to be (yes the writers involved things sometimes that made it not fit, I'm going off concept here) - no one hungry, merit based on the pursuit of knowledge that all are given an opportunity for, etc.

When I was a teenager and the internet was a 'new thing', it seemed like the start. Linux was new and even usable - a direct attack on the corporations that seemed to be strangling innovation and progress.

I was in HS when Columbine happened. My friends mom was a counselor that was recommended and brought in. She obviously didn't share their experiences with us, but I saw the news, I saw the pain she felt after grieving with students and families, and recognized the combination of fear and gratitude when she just needed comfort after. I also saw the absolute complete lack of anything meaningful being done that wasn't directly from those getting involved.

I had thought everyone saw Reduce-Reuse-Recycle as the path forward. I saw concept cars with solar panels and charge station concepts, along with windmills and geothermal and hydro power and all kinds of ideas around energy that would lead us away from the idea of just burning things to create energy from incredibly limited resources. I saw CFCs get banned and thought the world was on the right track, and yet corporations (and the politicians they owned) would then start to push coal and oil and gas and more destructive means of getting access to these fundamentally unnecessary resources. It only has gotten worse from there.

I saw people getting motivated by grassroots campaigns, only to see those campaigns actually being funded and run by the worst sort of people, using marketing tricks to twist people away from their initial motivations.

I saw progress in acceptance, understanding, and a visible movement away from bigotry and hate, only to see it continue in the worst ways possible.

So I guess what radicalized me - and I'm not sure if thats even the right word, because to me it should be a commonly accepted view - was seeing small groups of people ruin everything that was working towards a better future for their own greed and hate, and with each passing year seemingly undoing years of prior progress for the sake of a meaningless and completely unnecessary profit for those who already had way too much, taking from those with way too little.