This might be a silly question, so I want to preface it with an apology in advance and if you think there is a better place to ask please let me know.
I’ve come across a large number of self-described “anarchists” or “non-communist leftists,” or the like, mostly online,thanks to where I live (谢天谢地). But whenever you look a bit closer, the pattern is the same: underneath the aesthetics and language, it’s just liberalism. Pro-NATO positions, contempt toward the global periphery, and extremely reactionary responses when imperialism or capitalism are seriously questioned.
So my question is: Is adopting these leftist identities a kind of defensive mechanism (an attempt to distance themselves from the real-world damage caused by liberal ideology) or am I misunderstanding what’s actually going on?
Yes. They morally understand that liberalism is bad but they don’t take the step to stop actually being liberals. What they do instead is wear leftism as an identity and aesthetic while still fundamentally politically acting and being liberals.
It’s the same as the hippy culture of dressing up in peace and love outfits. Without taking it further to an actual change in political activity it will be a phase that many of them eventually grow out of. Arguably a lot of those hippies achieved more surrounding opposition to the Vietnam war than the current wave of aesthetic leftists, and yet those hippies grew out of it.
The problem is individuals that see politics as an aesthetic to wear to project that they are a moral person to others rather than actually changing the way they engage in political action.
That makes sense I especially like the callback to the hippie movement I feel that’s a good parallel of the modern vibes based “leftist”. However at the same time I wonder about the role of systemic forces such as the fact that liberalism is the dominant ideology in the empire which the “leftists” are materially tied to which leads them to only engaging with any politics outside of the liberal “common sense” in an aesthetic capacity as any real engagement would have real material consequences.