>>24236237
>But really I don't think many of these people are actually communists. It's a thing they call themselves, but I think most of them are ex-Bernie supporters who became "radicalized" because Bernie lost
I agree with you there. But it's worth remembering that communism in the 20th century became a fashionable sort of thing that really only served as a signal that one was hostile to capitalism and open to the prospect of moving to a system beyond it. That's how you get guys like Deleuze and Guattari who identified as communists even though an orthodox Marxist would have a seizure reading their work. It's worth being open minded about who or what a communist is though surely a familiarity with Marx is key.

Bernie is an interesting one because his early life does paint the portrait of a genuine communist, so it's likely that he stowed away some of his radicalism for a political career. His campaigning cleverly leverages rhetoric to do with revolution in order to convey that kind of communist aesthetic even though his policies are mostly quite tepid. Even so, there is this tendency for the center left to try and coopt the position of the far left for itself. To sort of say "we're carrying out a revolution!" while doing the exact opposite. This is the point behind Zizek's critique of the queer rights movement. It's not that it's bad necessarily, but it's not actually making any kind of structural change while often pretending to do so.

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ITT: post "left-wing" authors/philosophers who are secretly reactionaries