When people finally have distance from this whole period of history, it’s going to be difficult explaining to later generations just how sophisticated the psyops of Zionism and American fascism were. From popular media, to weaponization of the Holocaust, to the right latching onto antisemitic conspiracy theories in order to alienate people from the left, etc.
I agree with you too. Theres nothing wrong with labels inherently, especially as signifiers of an ideological lens. But the danger is forgetting that Marxism-Leninism is, in fact, a lens not a dogma. When the lens is treated like a dogma, then it’s proponents can take on a religious or subculture tendency.
Neither of us are describing the users here. I think both of us are describing a specific type of person. People especially in the West like to box themselves into labels as placeholders for their identities.
For example, “attachment styles.” The whole point of the attachment model is to help a person become conscious of the ways they let trauma influence their relationships with others. But instead of using that awareness to move towards becoming more secure, they treat being “anxious/avoidant” as an identity unable to be changed.
Yep. We need to always be interrogating our own positions and if they continue to be relevant to our current conditions, which will be different depending on where the struggle is located. People becoming too attached to labels encourages people to treat socialism like a subculture.
My experience as well. I think it might be fairer to day that less and less of Gen Z are adherents to status quo ideology. Most of the young people I meet are either commies, anarchists, socdems, or fascists. Liberal has become the dirty word.
Your point about a revolution having to build a socialist society from the soil of the previous one is such an important point that ultras and anticommunists conveniently fail to acknowledge. A revolution doesn’t reset society into some neutral starting point. You can’t just immediately kill, imprison, or exile everyone who isn’t on board with the vision, and to believe so is to also greatly overestimate the capabilities of the revolutionary force with newfound state power.