Nicely said. I fall into the anarchist camp for that very reason, because the ML cultural vanguard routinely results in people like me getting shafted. The beautiful and intoxicating world MLs describe shatters rather violently when everyone in your particular community gets treated as some foreign actor simply for not adhering to a traditional social hierarchy. It’s hard for people like me to not see the direction ML takes communism as a complete betrayal and abandonment of the principles behind deconstructing unjust hierarchies.

A lot of people in post Warsaw Pact countries like my parents are so traumatized by this shit, that you can’t even mention the word communism around them without them throwing a tantrum. And while they are objectively wrong for doing so, the damage done to them is real and should not be ignored. And sadly, most MLs I have met so far willfully distance them selves from this or label me a foreign actor and start accusing me of reading news I’ve never heard of, or start telling me that china is not tyrannical, as if I said anything of that kind. I’m yet to have a conversation with a proud ML that doesn’t immediately become them accusing me of things I didn’t say or start recommending me books on irrelevant topics I already agree on.