@coolboymew @nozaki @animepfp
>There's been theories all over that the CIA/whatever has basically completely fucked over "the left" and the overall current states of online and big outlets politics is confusing on purpose
I think it goes back further than that. Once upon a time, liberalism, republicanism, and populism were considered "left". There is theory that communism, socialism, and left-anarchism are all controlled opposition ideologies made to undermine the enlightenment and liberal movements in Europe by being extreme versions of what the enlightenment movement wanted, and those ideologies were made to devolve into fascism (i.e full top-down control) by design.
>And then there's the "the commies!!!" thing. You'll see online, all of the big breadtubers, twitter accounts with communist sign, socialists, etc... They're basically just shitlibs
>And then there's the weird disconnection between the actual socialists (they're usually not completely 100% socialists nowadays), communist and co. that rages when... let's say Sargon as an example, use the term "communists"
In their purest definitions, socialism is where the workers control the means of production, and communism is a classless, moneyless, and stateless society. So I guess you could make the argument that the "not real communism" counter-argument is correct, but that leaves the question on whether a communist society is even possible or desirable, assuming they aren't controlled opposition ideologies like I suggested earlier.
Also, just how people are confused by the definitions of communism and socialism, I think people are confused about the definition of capitalism. A far-leftist will argue that rich people buying/bribing politicians, wars for economic gain, etc are all examples of the "evils" of capitalism, yet a right-libertarian would say otherwise as those examples violate the non-aggression principle. Every ancap vs ancom debate I've seen devolves into these types of arguments.