By left-leaning they mean leaning 2° left of total fascism

Anyone who openly identifies as "a leftist", "extremely progressive" or "socialist leaning", or any other variation of some mealy-mouthed description gets all of my skepticism and disdain, especially when these people always do it to insist upon themselves.

When tell people that I'm a Marxist it's because it's relevant to the discussion (e.g. when discussing theory) or that I'm an ML when it's a matter of stating my political biases or using shorthand to skip over describing that I adhere to dialectical materialism etc., or that I'm a communist if someone accuses me of being a liberal. That sort of thing.

But when people hedge their statements or they feel the need to qualify what they're about to say by asserting their political identity, I look on it with about the same enthusiasm as a statement that opens with "I'm not racist but..."

At least have the guts to say "I'm an anarchist" or "I'm a communist" or plain old "I'm a liberal" ffs.

It's also worth noting that the pearl-clutching anti-"tankie" left often spends time in their echo chambers lamenting the fact that the evil MLs have sullied the good name of socialism amongst the unwashed masses (completely whitewashing the ongoing history of McCarthism and liberal indoctrination btw - and in fact I'd argue that this is an example of internalising this), and how they either must abandon those terms or they must redouble their efforts to exclude MLs from their precious definitions.

I mean, to be honest the majority of MLs I've come across have a very lukewarm attitude towards identifying as a socialist at the best of times. The idea that MLs need to be forcibly excluded from the label of socialist is largely a non-issue because they already avoid the term in most situations and saying this stuff just serves as in-group reaffirmation and grandiose statements of intent from the Anti-Praxis Aktion gang.

"MLs are the ones who are responsible for anti-communist sentiment in the US! We should all concede ground to liberal indoctrination and use a more palatable term which is more amenable to liberals to describe our political identities with!! Tankies bad!!! Updoots to the left."