just to build on this a little further, disillusioned people are more attracted to the familiar than something that requires more internal effort to change. in my observations many of the most adament ML/Stalinist adherents are more supportive of imperial structures with a liberatory aesthetic than they are of structures that are truly challenging to their named enemies. ML/Stalinist thought offers a form of resistance to capitalist structures that doesn’t require as much internal change than anarchism, zapatismo, or trotskyism.

what i find interesting though, and that i’m still examining, is that self reported MLs have a tendency to announce that ML/Stalinism/Maoism is the movement of the global south even though leftist movements in the global south tend to hew much more closely to anarchism and trotsyism with a little bit of maoism mixed in. i haven’t fully drawn a conclusion yet, but i think a form of confirmation bias is at play. they’ve divided in their heads the world into East vs West with East being the great global protector of South. they think themselves, as all people do, the good guys. so they look for things in the global south that confirms their perception that they’re the good guys rather than examining how leftist movements in the global south differ greatly from the ML model of vanguard revolution