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That's not an entirely fair standard to hold someone to, because extreme politics is a niche hobbyist interest rather than a general interest. It's very rare to encounter anyone IRL who has any substantive view on Lenin or Trotsky at all, unless you're very deep into communist/anarchist groups. And a non-leftist is unlikely to find themselves in such a situation for obvious reasons.
Coincidentally I've been listening to a lot of Chris Cutrone lately, a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who is quite a big fan of Lenin (1:26:39 - "The people who reject Lenin have to reject Marx").
Concerns about LLMs notwithstanding, everyone who is present online is present in real life too.
Sure, but when someone says "I know leftists in my life who admire Lenin and Trotsky," I can't help wondering where all these literal Bolveshiks are hanging out.
Yes, but we are all familiar with the phenomenon of fringe, niche freaks who'd be all alone in their community gravitating towards each other online and thus presenting an online presence that dramatically exaggerates the impression of how many of them there actually are. A lot of rightists who are convinced that every leftist is a literal Bolshevik are quick to scoff that the actual number of real Nazis is miniscule, and vice versa.
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