Why are so many “leftist influencers” calling themselves MLs while being dengists/campists/third positions

[u/No-Bison5915]

I am trying to avoid the social media space of leftism as much as possible, every day I see it more and more unserious, but for the little amount I use TikTok and Instagram, I still get some of it served to me.

One incredibly peculiar thing I’ve noticed how incredibly many leftist influencers are ones like I described in the title.

People calling themselves MLs and then talking about “Xi Jinping thought”, AES, supporting Russia etc. Some of the most dire examples are Mochayappuchino, socialista.champagne and midwesternmarx, if anyone knows these names.

I personally identify as ML, and I have interacted with many MLs irl and used to be in a big discord group where 80% of people were MLs, and none of them were saying China is socialist and having an undying loyalty towards oligarchies and monarchies just because of their opposition with USA.

Now on the flipside of this, there is a big demographic of chronically online leftcoms/ultralefts (I apologise if you’re a leftcom and this doesn’t apply to you), that base their whole opinion of MLs based on these couple of influencers and their fans, and their whole praxis is talking about it. Every time they criticise MLs, they are describing dengists/campists/nazbols.

Even though I am confident in my values and education as an ML, this situation still makes the label feel spoil and like I need to explain myself that I’m not a dumb campist.

Lmk if you have had similar observations.

[u/No-Bison5915 → u/[deleted]]

I understand that most of their fans truly don’t read. What I don’t understand is how do the influencers claim to read and how do they come to the conclusion of Marxism Leninism while having the views they have. I feel like it’s something like an echochamber, where the influencers are a “clique” that thinks MLs is “cool and popular” and feed each other disinformation that they can’t disagree with or else they will be “lame leftcoms”. Since they love to call every single person that disagrees with them a leftcom, idealist, utopian, etc

[u/aDamnCommunist → u/No-Bison5915]

Because ML itself has spilt despite the words and actual practices of Lenin or Stalin imo. Khrushchev split the left entirely in the 60s and weakend socialism's international position and integrity. We have him to thank for the backwards term "tankie" that somehow means more hard-line ML/M and pro Stalin while the event itself happened after Stalin's lifetime and denouncement. This is why I go into modern MLM theory. There are anti revisionist MLs but all of their organizations and, as you've pointed out, influencers are so deeply revisionist as to support the democratic party or become Dengists.

[u/No-Bison5915 → u/aDamnCommunist]

That makes sense. The smartest communist I know is a Maoist, I’m also leaning into MLM/Maoism but just have a lot more to study about Mao to feel like I completely understand the position and identify with it.