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Notes -
Socialists argue strenuously on this point primarily for one of three reasons:
A. Cognitive dissonance. One of the central tenets of the socialist religion is the claim that they and only they, by definition, have the nous. Similarly, all others, by definition, lack the nous. Therefore, a socialist literally cannot process a situation where a non-socialist presents facts about socialism because a non-socialist cannot, by definition, have that knowledge. Hence we recently saw:
B. Purity spiral. As a rule, there can only be one true socialism, and true socialists are duty-bound to eliminate all pretenders, or else their project will never be completed. Thus, some reactions against the idea are just socialists doing their usual infighting.
C. PR. Since ancient times, literally in the original 'mysteries', socialists have sought absolute message control about themselves and seek to eliminate disfavorable facts. Some socialists view a connection between modern, cultural Marxism and doctrinaire, Marx-and-Engels Marxism as a potential vulnerability, and so attack the association wherever it appears.
An additional reason is that wokism and such has to this point "won" the culture war. Marxists are not the only ideologs who seek to take credit for social justice as a successor movement to liberalism, you see this with Christians (particularly in some denominations such as Methodists), capitalists (there's decades of writing about how responsible capitalism requires this sort of thing culminating in ESG), and especially neoliberals. It's natural that older, more dysfunctional intellectual traditions would try to extend claims over their successor movements.
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