Over the last five years especially, I’ve noticed that the baseline squishy ‘leftist’ position on a bunch of topics has quietly, begrudgingly inched closer to what communists have always been saying, while many of the people themselves still take every opportunity to rail against communists. It’s starting to feel like the Life of Brian “what have the romans ever done for us” bit. “Other than (this, that, a litany of events past and present)…when have the communists ever been right about anything?”

Or like you said, it’s a crazy tankie conspiracy theory right up until it isn’t.