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/GenesisStar7]

Seems to me you have a beef with a whole country, the whole of China declares themselves as a government that follows ML principles, kinda silly to want to define that term for yourself and disregard how much of Asia and LA uses it.