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There's at least three groups among modern progressives. The "Resigned" are very liberal but don't really do much about it. They feel betrayed and left behind by the system and this depresses them and leads to apathy and inaction. There's the College Crusader who are usually white and well-educated, and very politically active, and have socialist sympathies. They are usually the stereotype, where they are in favor of equality and equity and want drastic solutions to accomplish it. They typically don't have much sympathy for opposing viewpoints. Economic and racial lenses on many issues are very common views. Then you have the Radicals. They are a bit harder to define, probably because as a demographic group, they aren't very big (Progressives broadly are only like 12% of US adults, using Pew's numbers). These are the people where actual Marxism might start showing up more overtly. And they are the only ones for which, at least in my opinion, Bolshevik comparisons should be made for.
Zooming out, and looking at one actual mass movement, BLM had broad appeal beyond conservatives because some of the core pieces of the message were generic enough for large parts of the liberal coalition to get behind, on top of a few highly-publicized cases of cops actually doing some pretty horrifying things (not all the time, of course as you note, but the cop kneeling on his neck is a pretty powerful image, whether you think drugs were a big factor in his death or not). But notice how ACAB and stuff specifically didn't actually gain much traction beyond Fox News which loved to use it as a very easy boo-outgroup target.
And when you get into the apparent apathy behind Black deaths, you actually do start to see a split, and not a new one -- it dates back to at least the Civil Rights era. You have some people who think that white people should do something about it -- but feel powerless, and thus redirect this energy into anti-gun and so a lesser extent, anti-police crusades. As noted, much of this group is white, and thus this is all they "can" do. You also have the more Malcolm-X style progressives who think the solution has to come from Blacks themselves.... but the problem? Blacks are rarely progressives. Most Blacks are vaguely generic establishment Democrats on the spectrum, or uninvolved in politics. Here you can see that not only are only 10% of Progressives (themselves only 12% of the total population) Black, but the density of Black adults falls much more among other Democratic sub-groups. So basically, white College Crusaders leave the problem to Black true-believers, but there aren't enough of them to make meaningful amounts of noise in the general space.
Ngl guys it’s pretty cringe that this really interesting comment got a bunch of downvotes.
As an aside I wonder if it’s worth subclassifying your Radicals into further groups around eg the “class-reduction” debate with StupidPol/bro socialist types vs the queer Marxists etc. Then again the former has effectively been exiled from mainstream progressivism so maybe they wouldn’t even count.
The asks question -> receives answer -> downvotes response is so bizarre to me. It's like the forum version of the Who killed Hannibal meme. It makes me think that, in aggregate, the "why can't I understand progressives" question is more rhetorical and boo-outgroup than an actual attempt at seeking understanding, which is sad.
Regarding the actual makeup or splits among Progressives, it's hard to know. Progressives are at least somewhat loud by themselves, but they are also signal-boosted by both right wing outlets looking for a boogeyman as well as left wing outlets who don't want to talk back too loudly or they will betray some cause. But my main point was that they aren't actually a very big group! At least according to the best polling data we have. And at some point, attempting to slice and categorize such a small group becomes both statistically and philosophically questionable.
You bring up a great point however. Classifying them all as Radicals is a bit lazy and is also a bit of centrist bias. Maybe I should do a deeper dive and see if there's some good polling data specific to progressives.
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I still see it in women's online dating profiles.
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And not exclusively liberals either. I remember at least one person who's conservative reacting to Floyd dying after being restrained at his neck. Though he wasn't in favor of the riots, of course.
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