Kropotkin is a nice start, though if you want an introduction I think Errico Malatesta’s work is a lot better for that. The essay “Anarchy” is short for leftist standards and is very good. Also “At the cafe” is honestly an amazing introduction piece and it’s written in a regular language as socratic dialogues, so it’s perfect for starting. It even adresses a lot of counter arguments from many perspectives.

Otherwise Anarchy Works by Peter Gelderloo is also amazing.

For the standards of leftists in the USA, they’re massive.

What would be different about this revolution that would see it go right (or what examples am I missing?)

I would say there’s no way revolutions of today will go in exactly the same path as before. Remember that China’s and Russia’s revolutions happened in extermely rural, agrarian, over exploited and basically completely ruined countries. If there’s a revolution in the global north, just the difference in conditions and systems is already going to make a huge difference. But even if it happens in the global south, most of it is at least partially industrialized and not agrarian, as far as I know.

Anyway, other than that, I can’t really give you an objective, unbiased answer. I was actually the same as you a couple of years ago, actually. I had the same concerns as you. I think you would really resonate with anarchist theory, analysis and critique of past revolutions, if you’re interested in digging into it.

Enormous by socialist standards. The fact that they can have so many members in this day and age is commendable. A few decades ago any socialist thought being given an honest platform at all among the general population was a miracle.

I think you’re seriously underestimating what most young socialists believe. It is true that they don’t believe in revolution, but many of them change when they grow older and they lose faith in the system. I’m confident that will keep happening.

No, an average person in the DSA believes in wayy more than any regular social democrat. I agree that they’re not radical enough, but they’re an enormous organization of people against the status quo and so many of them genuinely care, so it’s no surprise that a huge part of current radicals are ex-DSA members.

That’s what the media has always done. It’s just that in this age it’s the easiest it’s ever been to see past red scare propaganda.

Actually socialism is more popular now than ever. Enough that mainstream media constantly writes scare articles about how socialist the young generations are.

It’s not just about the inconvenience though. Windows is paid. It’s at least 100 bucks. It’s not even “free but you are the product” like Google drive or whatever. Yet it still abuses you, controls you and exploits you, and you have to do tons of workarounds for it to not get in your way. Most of them are always temporary, as a new update reenables everything again or directly circumvents the workaround you used.

If you are locked into the ecosystem, then I do agree that it’s annoying that people think moving to Linux is seamless. It wasn’t for me, it even cost me money since I had to buy an AMD gpu for things to work well + another GPU to passthrough to a windows VM and still use Clip Studio. But if someone only uses their computer for things that can be done seamlessly on Linux, and they genuinely dislike and are against all the bullshit Windows always does, it’s worth it to tell them there is a viable alternative, and what they heard about “you have to use the command line for everything meaningful!” or “everything breaks all the time!” hasn’t been true for years.

If you hate being used by Windows so much, you really should try an alternative, unless you’re a professional that uses software that just can’t run on Linux at all, chances are you can get most of what you use a computer for working fine. In return you get freedom, privacy, choice, performance.

Or if you hate it but are too reluctant to change for whatever reason, that’s totally fine, but just say that. Don’t spread misinformation about Linux.

It’s worth it to be FOSS to take three weeks to get your Arch install just the way you like it.

Literally no one ever says this. Just use Fedora. Almost completely seamless. There’s a KDE version if you want to have the same workflow as windows without configuring anything. You don’t have to use firefox, brave or ungoogled chromium are FOSS too.

The correct term for nazi sympathizer is nazi. The correct term for nazi enabler is nazi.

You’re the one that doesn’t want to see us. I’m more than fine with seeing you.

What I’m trying to say is, if you push rhetoric that supports and subscribes to a state’s narrative, that doesn’t change no matter how nuanced or informed you say your rhetoric is. The effects of it are the same.

You know, as a general internet arguing advice, when you have no points to make anymore, and the response you write to the other person is literally just a bunch of insults, it’s probably better to just disengage.

Labour unions are not the same as a communist party or vanguard but to claim they’re not mostly organized and consisting of socialists is just immensely naive and stupid.

Just because you redefine a narrative in Russia’s favour as “nuanced” doesn’t mean you’re now somehow not saying pretty much exactly what Russia wants you to think and say. Same for all the defenses of China and Vietnam.

Then make your own instance and turn it into a safety bubble just for you. Don’t ruin it for everyone else.

To give you the less complicated answer, communism is an economic system, not a form of government. Communism can and has been authoritarian, but it can also be libertarian or anarchistic. There’s nothing inherently authoritarian about an economy without money and without classes, based on need. It’s just the ideologies that want to (or say they want to) implement it in authoritarian ways that got to run the more famous socialist experiments. If you want to see how non-authoritarian communism worked, there are also historical examples of it, they’re just smaller and lasted less.

Answering your question - in the period where most countries that called themselves communist existed, no capitalist countries accepted trans people either. But you are a capitalist nonetheless no? Huh, I wonder why.

Not every ideology is equally deserving of respect.