Prefacing this with #NotAllAnarchists - I know there are plenty of actual anarchists out there who are actively involved in their communities. I'm not talking about you here.

There are a lot of self-ascribed 'anarchists' (those jokingly referred to as 'anarkiddies') in the west who have no connection to any kind of theory or real practice, who are rightfully jaded about capitalism but identify as anarchists because it is the most accessible anti-capitalist label. Others who call themselves 'socalists' but reject AES states are in the same boat. The CIA has spent many years and a lot of money cultivating the 'compatible left' - a dead-end ideology that serves to innoculate against revolution. As they control funding for western academia, they have largely cut off actual Marxist thought from acceptable discourse. Despite the protestations of conservatives, you will rarely encounter actual Marxists in a US university.

This is why the support of AES states is an easy litmus test. The compatible left can promote whatever it likes, as long as it is essentially idealist and not materialist. It is always opposed to revolution, usually decrying it as pointless or pointing to an imagined human cost. It considers human beings inherently selfish and greedy, and uses this as a reason why socialism is impossible, and therefore we should just have more welfare programs under capitalism. As individualism is already heavily promoted in the west and people are increasingly atomized, anarchism is more accessible as an idea than socialism. Anarchism also has more cultural cache in the west; anarchists are depicted as cool and socialists are depicted as stodgy Russians if they're depicted at all.

In the third world, the lived experience of imperialism and US repression of socialist movements is less likely to be successfully memory-holed. Marxism is more accessible in places where the CIA has less immediate influence, and more communal life makes socialism seem more possible than it does to atomized westerners.

That doesn't mean it's impossible to come to Marxist-Leninist thought as a westerner, but it's a lot less likely if you never encounter it in your daily life or online. This is why big corporate platforms are so hostile to actual communists - any exposure to ideas outside the compatible left increase the odds one will come around to them. This is why a project like Lemmy is so important for us.