I consistently see two big pitfalls for people who are sympathetic to leftist ideas but aren’t quite leftists:

1. They’re soft on U.S. imperialism
2. They’re inadequately critical of U.S. propaganda about AES states

Trotskyism seems to lead people directly into both. It’s built around a sort of leftist Lost Cause mythos, where all these revolutions were good at one point but betrayed by those dastardly MLs. This means criticism of MLs that goes far beyond reasonable (Parenti’s line about utopian socialists never having to address the problems inherent in running a state come to mind), which leads into 2, then 1 seems more palatable because opposing these evil ML states is good, actually.

It’s mostly because of who the western left has been for the past 50 years. Like I don’t mean to be critical of anyone here, but the strands of leftism that we represent are sort of new in the west. Or rather, haven’t been around in great force in a long time. American leftism had been largely dead since maybe the Weather Underground. It wasn’t until around Occupy Wallstreet (2012) and the revitalization of the DSA (~2016) did American leftism begin to grow again, and become more coherent rather than an ambient feeling in the air.

But when I say it was dead, I don’t mean it was inanimate. From between around 1972 to 2012 there were communists in America but the dominant ideology was Trotskyism. They wiggled their way into being the only game in town for a long while. You wanted to join a student org? Ok, here’s 6 students on campus who swear they’re not Stalinists. You wanted to join a party? Ok, here’s ISA. You were randomly handed a newspaper at a protest by some type of communist party? Probably Trotskyites (or the other pejorative, Marcyite, although Marcyism today is much more aligned with international Marxism-Leninism)

It can’t be overstated how they much they dominated discourage and organization in North America for decades. They were the primary leftists around, and honestly I think they’re where some of the American leftist stereotypes came from. “That’s not real communism” or how we’re all students or we’re pushy with pamphlets.

So anyway, since people here by and large represent a break from that, there’s going to be tension. I’m going to guess most people here have no association with American leftist organizing as far back as the 80s or 90s. I’m close, I remember going into leftist chat rooms and forums around 2003 and they were all largely Trotskyists. Even our beloved Marxists.org is ancient enough to have Trot founders.

So that’s it really. Newer leftists are breaking away from the previous parties/orgs and trying to find new ground, since the perception is the past 4 decades of American leftism have been highly ineffective. Saying those decades have been ineffective is synonymous with criticizing Trotskyists, since they were the dominant voice for much of that.

Taimur Rahman - Why I am not a Trotskyist.

TL:DR, it’s eurocentric, rejected the revolutionary potential of the peasantry in a way that was proven 100% wrong by history, and rejection of socialism in one country expects every country to stay in a state of paralysis rather than build their own socialism. It’s also nearly defined entirely by it’s opposition to AES states, so it’s had quite an overlap with the US imperial project in helping tank communist movements esp in latin america, and that rabbit hole goes really deep.

It’s a meme cuz in the cringe world two or three whole generations turned out to be plants or genuine reactionary dipshits, and in the rest of the world they were innefective while always shitting on AES

In any case, as any other leftist they are always annoying and the True One Leftists