When a person of color, especially if they're black like me, affirms their support for causes such as queer liberation, feminism, animal rights, or socialism, I immediately feel that I can believe, with minimal doubt, that they're truly convicted and principled in what they're advocating for.
However, when a white person claims to support leftism, until my skepticism is proven wrong, I immediately assume they're a dishonest and performative libshit. I then proceed to interact with them with hefty amounts of caution. If my assumptions are proven true, I'm never shocked.
I mean yeah kinda. Like Joe Biden calls himself progressive, do you feel that’s a useful term at that point? Calling yourself a communist explicitly is the only thing that can’t really be co-opted by the libs, mainly because they’re terrified of being called communists.
Libs can and will coop the word communist if we let them.