Which is why I was making a point of saying “in the US”. Most of what I’m arguing in this thread is directly in response to the US situation, which is an extreme case.
The UK situation is different (although not entirely, as Akala points out), and I don’t follow it nearly as closely as I do US politics. So I don’t talk about it much, although I do generally think well of Jezza and co.
BTW, for a UK-centric thing coming from an upper/middle-class establishment source, check this out:
For more recent examples of the middle class siding with the authoritarian right against the workers, see the 20th century history of pretty much every country in Latin America. Or current-day Hungary, Poland, Greece.
Or current day USA: more than half of the US middle class are Trumpists. Or, to keep the focus on the liberal middle class, see the Dems recent votes on military funding, police powers, foreign affairs, etc.
No, it doesn’t. I wouldn’t be here talking to folks if it did.
Half of the US middle class aren’t fascists, and a substantial minority are lefties. And liberals don’t always side with the fascists over the socialists. Just regrettably often.
And it’s a high-intensity epithet amongst the left, too. Putting that label on someone is a sure-fire way to start a fight.
Tankies are despised; see the post about the RevLeft Radio Marxist/Leninist episode for a demonstration. Just talking to ML’s draws fire from across the left; the anarchists tend to see MLs as the enemy, while much of the rest of the left thinks of MLs as catastrophically destructive fools.
Socialism is not Stalinism, just as Capitalism is not Nazism. The fact that socialism is so easily painted as such is a sign of the dominance of the capitalist side in the propaganda wars of the 20th century.
Actual Stalinists in the 21st century left are about as rare as NAMBLA advocates at a gay pride march, for similar reasons.
