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Older people forget that even if younger people know a history, the context is often lost. So here's a story about Leninism & the US Left for late millennials & Zoomers. Until at least Nov '99, Leninists (inc Trots, Maoists & Stalinists) were omnipresent & usu dominated the Left.
They were literally everywhere once you got to the left of the Dems (and not infrequently even there on the edges). Any issue, any demo, any open meeting, they were there - almost always with newspapers, slogans & often trying to hijack it. You see the same thing today but...
you have the imagine that this was EVERYWHERE. These three annoying tankies and the right-wing of DSA? Now imagine they switched places with everyone into identity politics today. The Leninist sects were all-pervasive and to avoid them you had to literally meet in secret or have
an issue so repulsive to them that they'd quickly go away (radical environmentalism or animal rights). It was only with the anti-WTO demo in Seattle in Nov 99 & ensuing movement that this switched; and then it went back to the Leninists, whose front groups dominated the anti-war
moements of 2001 and 2003-4. After that they faded (largely b/c of age if you ask me), finally with Occupy being clearly in a subordinate position (or they would have taken it over if it had been a decade or more prior). Anyway, no point to this other than I was surprised that
someone I was talking to who was younger than me didn't understand this, and what an uphill struggle anarchists had in the 70s-90s. And don't get me started on how the RCP were everywhere all the time....
to this day, when someone says something about a non-class/economic issue, I still hear in my head "But what about the working class!" and/ or "After the revolution that problem [racism/homophobia/ patriarchy] will go away because it is a product of capitalism!"
