I suppose. I feel the message is clear and accurate without the joke. With the joke, concerns about the anti-authoritarian left are being unduly exaggerated.

I feel your pure motives are in tension with practical constraints.

Messaging achieves efficacy through simplification. We pick the most important priorities, while still maintaining more rigorous discourse for anyone specifically able to engage more deeply. As movements evolve, and public consciousness develops, we find newer priorities, perhaps ones more favorable generally.

Being overly earnest in seeking a pure form of communication simply keeps the larger mass alienated that we rather need to be participants.

Regardless, state capitalism is not any kind of opposition to capitalism. We certainly should exclude opposition that is not meaningful.

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I acknowledge differences as well as commonalities, yet you select one particular facet of my explanation to insist I am “collaps[ing]… different projects”.

The situation we face is that much of the public believes leftism to be inherently authoritarian. The proposed “stethoscope” diagram is effective in separating the authoritarian versus anti-authoritarian left, keeping the latter close to rightism but not fully merged.

Breaking through the prevailing misconceptions requires us to emphasize specific relationships while keeping others as less prominent. We are not abandoning proper theory, only adopting messaging appropriate for the current circumstances.

Everyone cannot read a treatise on every subject.

We need simple devices to break through entrenched misconceptions.

Such devices complement, not replace, properly nuanced discourse.

We seem to agree generally on the concepts, but for some reason you seem to be objecting, through the use of quote mining.

I think the concept is effective at lest in exposing the inaccuracy of horseshoe theory.

Overemphasizing the distinction among different justifications of power plays into the myth that certain consolidations of power are a path toward liberation. We should critically examine the differences while also remaining aware of the commonalities.

Ultimately, rejection of all authority is essential, even if not sufficient, for emancipation. Thus, it is constructive to propagate the understanding that authoritarian leftism is in many ways quite similar to rightism.

We break capitalist domination by expanding consciousness that both liberal capitalism and state capitalism are authoritarian systems that rob the working class.

Every state generates a class antagonism. Every state protects its oppression by a narrative about the ruling class serving the interests of the working class.

A distinction may be found between those whose power is justified by an intention to abolish class versus those relying on other justifications of power, but all are incapable of delivering liberation. A people may be liberated only by rejecting the narrative. The distinction ultimately is superficial. Once authoritarian communists consolidate power, they dismantle every current in society that is authentically liberatory, because they cannot endure the challenge.

Thanks for the pro tip.

Tankies and rightists are both authoritarian, whereas leftism is anti-authoritarian.

Horseshoe theory inaccurately conflates authoritarian leftism with generally all leftism.

Marxism represents a diverse range, from council communism to campism.

Anarchists should consider cooperating with Marxists who share generally common criticisms of authority and the state, but should not feel obligated to seek relations with authoritarians and statists, with whom they cannot possibly find adequate common ground.

The system prevents every cop from behaving benevolently.

The slogan emphasizes that no prize may be won by seeking a cop who is good. There are no good cops because there are no cops free from the system.

The current system is authoritarian.

An extremely narrow cohort of society controls the corporations that determine our fate. It plunders the earth for profit, regardless of the consequences.

A sustainable system is one in which those who make a decision are the same as those affected.

Such is the complete opposite of authoritarianism. The planet will be saved when no one any longer benefits from its ongoing destruction.

To be honest, I am not perceiving the modifications as an improvement.

The original cleverly shows, quite simply, that the authoritarian left develops from reaction, that is, regresion toward the right, within leftism.

It also exposes as misconception that leftism generally is authoritarian.

Did you intend “intellectual property”?

Regardless, I understand the meaning of the symbol, but not its applicability to the context.

The framing of separating the “authoritarian left” from the actual left is basically accurate.

Why is “Far Left” marked as a trademark?

Thousands were killed in the uprising.

The demands largely emphasized national sovereignty and labor conditions, not restoration of appropriated property to the bourgeoisie.

Justifying an invasion, an act of aggression over international borders, under the characterization of sedition is simply begging the question of the legitimacy of the established structure of governance.

By this point, Soviet governance was failing to produce improved conditions for workers, and much of the working class was disinterested in further personal sacrifice for a prolonged struggle against the capitalist core.

The term mostly had been invoked by anti-authoritarian leftists derisively toward anyone who still supported the Soviet Union. In time, the usage generalized to apply broadly to authoritarian leftists, such as Marxist-Lenininsts (or Stalinists).

Now is it largely misused by liberals to designate anyone strongly critical of Western imperialism, which includes everyone from anarchists to campists.