Whoah whoah whoah, people actually wanted the change they were advocating for? I thought this whole thing was just ironic! I'm as left as they come, and as a cis white male, I'm confident in saying that our society is largely free of prejudice, sure there's bad apples, but there will always be bad apples, and changing the system will be even worse than keeping it as it is! So we should just stay the course and focus on incremental change, after all, if our ship is headed for an iceberg, the worst thing we could do is turn sharply away from it!
I'm really sorry for what your internal mental/emotional landscape must feel like. That is a brutal amount of shame/grief to be carrying around. I mean this genuinely, I hope it improves for you.
Real talk, I'm not gonna say it didn't factor in a tiny bit, but at the end of the day, I can look back on my 35 years and realize I've always been this way. I always loved subversive cartoons where the kids try to right wrongs. When I hit my teen years, I was very interested in finding my identity. I fell in with leftist hippies and have been doing that ever since.
Once in a while I do feel like I have imposter syndrome. Like, my above joke is the crux of the issue. Then I think back on all the things I did when nobody was looking and know I'm the person I show to the world.
One of my biggest social problems is that I'm too earnest and I don't like lying. It catches people off guard and I end up having to over explain myself like I'm doing here.