I’m talking about people like Vaush, Adam Something, even Elon Musk. Hell, even people like George Orwell claimed to be socialist so it’s not a new thing. They’re not “Marxist but not Leninist”, or anarcho socialists/communists or whatever, but people who don’t even come close to being any sort of leftist at all!
It’s not like socialism is a very glamorous thing to be in the West, or ever was. The average Westerner either thinks socialism is even worse than fascism, or thinks fascism is a type of socialism. Those two are generally for people like and don’t like fascism respectively. It’s definitely not like being an athlete or being in a band or something where you stand to actually impress the general populus if you lie about it.
So I genuinely don’t understand this: if you’re a Westerner, why would you pick socialism as part of an already fake character you’re casting yourself as? What favours is it doing for you?
Like, I’m a Westerner (at least, I live and grew up in the West, not born there and not white tho), and I’m genuinely a socialist (Marxist-Leninist). And I do the opposite to these fake socialists: I keep that identity on the down low in public places IRL, because I’m worried I might actually get persecuted for it (physically attacked, probably not unless I’m in a really far right crowd, I’m mainly worried about things like job prospects). I definitely don’t do things like broadcast that identity to people who know me IRL (most probably think I’m Sanders-esque socdem at best), and especially not to random people I come across on the street. I genuinely can’t imagine anyone in the West getting brownie points for being a socialist, so why wear that hat unless you actually believe in socialism?
I think a lot of it comes down to being stuck in the capitalist media and culture bubble while at the same time cluing in to the fact that capitalism is the root of our problems. Then you end up with a sort of “radical centrist” who force themselves to think a middle ground is the only “reasonable” option. Something along the lines of “I know capitalism is bad, but we can’t replace it with communism because Stalin and Mao were demons, there has to be a different way.” There aren’t any other serious alternatives so you end up in this wishy-washy ultimately pro-capital middle space with anarchists and socdems and rad-centrist crypto-fascists (ok maybe they’re just grifters) and of course none of them have read any theory so they don’t have the analytical tools to get out of that rut.
Pretty much what my answer would be. Sometimes I’ll run into someone way off the deep end on the right and I’ll ask ‘how did they get like this’. The answer is “why would they be any different”. If your whole life is just church, AM radio, fox, its hard to end up any other way. Something really has to knock you off course.
It’s the same on the left. Chomsky, Orwell, etc are the “safe” “reasonable” avenue you’re presented if you lean left and aren’t satisfied by mainstream politics. Anarcho-bidenism is where you’re supposed to end up, why would you be any different?
Yup, that was me 2-3 years ago. A “progressive”. But thankfully I kept reading and learning and became an ML, because the liberal idealistic explanation of the world didn’t satisfy me.