Some (I would guess most) liberals have no idea what communism actually is;

I think this is the source of a lot of friction with liberals online. It’s clear they haven’t read anything about communism written by a communist. Usually they haven’t read any liberal theory, either, but that’s by the by.

In practice, this means that when liberals (especially the ‘progressive’ type) read positive comments about communism they assume the person is an ill-educated, teenage, edge lord. They have zero comprehension that most of us have reached their Marxist position because of and after several years of dedicated study.

Unfortunately, the bourgeois playbook means that if you tell them they’re misinformed or tell them to read, they take it as a school yard insult; because that’s how they use it when arguing with other people within the frame of the overton window. They’ll read one book with a communist caricature and think they know everything there is to know.

For them it comes from a position of arrogance based on very little analysis. The instruction is often used to mask the speaker’s own ignorance and inability to fully explain themselves. Not because they’re not bright. They could be highly intelligent and well educated. But because the liberal framework provides no way of dealing with the internal contradictions in their findings. It doesn’t even provide tools to acknowledge that contradictions exist and can be valid.

There is one main category of exception: those who’ve read Isaiah Berlin. He trained himself on Marxism and managed to write a fair biography, all things considered. Then spent the rest of his life promoting the idea that contradiction is central to liberalism. It didn’t catch on, though.

Anyway, the point is, when it comes to what communists say about the world (end poverty, etc), I fully agree, that:

Anti-coms know that what communists say is reasonable[.]

But when they know that the communist is a communist, however reasonable the claim, I agree that

… their anticommunism [kicks in, which] is based entirely on bourgeois propaganda (“news”, “history” books written by both deliberate liars and useful idiots, works of fiction like Gulag Archipelago and 1984, etc.), and I’m [also] convinced that a lot of these people can be convinced.

But it does require a certain openmindedness. And a willingness to accept that they might be wrong about some things. Such as the tendency to accept works of fiction as profound works of fact. This becomes very difficult when dealing with packs/ganders/gaggles of liberals: it only takes one to belittle, deride, or smirk at the communist with a roll of the eyes. And the others will be so scared of looking stupid that they’ll shut down.

This is what leads me to accept:

… infested with various three-letter agencies, and I’m sure at least some of them have branched out to the more popular Lemmy instances

If it wasn’t true before, it should be assumed true now. It would be an immense tactical blunder to control media for so long only to leave the fediverse unmonitored. Maybe they’re planning to get in through Threads? I’d just assume they’re already here.

It might be silly to try think they could be spotted. The ones with bad politics will glow on LG but in the same colour and a similar intensity as other liberals. They’ll blend right in everywhere else. Then there are the functional agents, who do the three-letter work without an affiliation because the egg comes before the chicken.

What does this look like? I think it’s partly what I posted in the top-level comment and partly what I wrote here: ridiculing communists, name calling, etc, so that others no the punishment merely for entertaining Marxism-Leninism—exile and ostracisation.

What else we might look out for, and how to challenge it, could make for a fruitful discussion. I remember there’s a hexbear thread about this kind of thing if anyone has the link.

True, I was using the term a bit vaguely there. I was talking about the people in charge of creating that ignorance amongst the public, rather than the people who believe easy answers and don’t question things.