they get it from seeing history as a collection of discrete, disconnected events and they believe individual ideology is the primary thing that rules the world. These people are fundamentally liberals. They hear about Cuba's history with labor camps for queer folk and assume that's simply a part of communist ideology. I hear it from chuds too, about how Stalin would have put people like me in a camp. Yeah and my home country of America would have put me in an asylum, so it's not like I had a lot of options in 1930.

The other one I've seen is that a Marxist-Leninist party in America would empower largely white, privileged people. This one is absolutely bonkers, but just follow me here. The claim is if power were distributed equally among the proletariat, and since the proletariat in America is something like 60% white people, that this means handing over more power to people like southern reactionaries who would then use their newfound regional authority to hunt down LGBT folk and minorities. I've heard horror stories of how an ML America would mandate the English language everywhere, how there would be mandatory enforcement of white culture, all sorts of wacky stuff. I've heard this scenario compared to how Han in China are the majority ethnic group, and that fact is blamed on communist ideology as well. It makes no sense whatsoever and assumes no material conditions and no historical circumstances