For the majority of actual practicing communists in Asia, it still is that way, outside some of the more romantic peasant movements. Only the western Left is full of that, because western cultural politics are almost completely incomprehensible from a logical standpoint. Historically though, the development makes sense as the only educational class that has been consistently financially rewarded in the U.S., even under even neoliberalism, has been the engineers, whose middle class asses dominate the culture of STEM because math curriculum success and regimentation is almost entirely dictated by access to wealth and stability. There are always a few savants and outliers, but the correlation between success at math and parental household stability is enormous, which is why the U.S. struggles so much at math compared to even India and China because our social systems, governmental and otherwise, are so impoverished.
Because of this success, and the perceived rigor of their curriculum (alot more labs than the liberal arts), this has led to most engineers being either right-wing (I'm just smarter than you) or apolitical (look I don't care, and I can't know) and either way completely unable to comprehend or understand anything relating to propoganda, politics, and history, because they do not view their own financial success as being tied to any of those trends. My own engineering siblings get upset at me for being unable to 'simply explain' huge geopolitical conflicts whose histories span hundreds of years. The most solidarity I can generally find is to point out that all of their projects are completely and utterly dictated by business majors.
The western Left is dominated by those who, for whatever reason, are able to see beyond the veil, and there is little opportunity or reason for STEM people to do so.
Indeed,
The things stopping r/atheist 12 yos to develop into socialist adult nerds are classism, misoginy, and racism/jingoism.
But given the upcoming crisis and the last 50 years of history, real nerds should end up being socialists anyways because it's the fucking logical conclusion. There won't be a place in the billionaires bunker for you, dipshit. Come smoke some weed with the woo-woo hippies, there a lot of nerds here already.
I've seen people describe themselves as "technocratic socialists" but I don't think that actually means anything significant.
From what I can tell, internet succdems and ""anarchists"" tend to be majority techbros.
Middle class dudes (but sometimes queers) who are invested in the computer science -> corporate office job treadmill and have the brainworms that come with being invested in the current capitalist system.
