Authoritarian leftists. Stalinists, basically. The kind of people who look at protests being crushed by tanks and say “Good, those reactionary civilian pigs deserved it!”
Authoritarian Leftists seems to be an oxymoron
Edit: I meant sounds like; I’m super dumb lol. Thanks for educating me on what it actually means :)
Liberalism and authoritarianism are opposites just like progressivism and conservatism are.
For historical (and arguably nefarious) reasons Western society has largely lumped liberalism and progressivism into “Left” and authoritarianism and conservatism into “Right”.
But this ignores the reality that you can have progressive authoritarians (Stalinists/Maoists), and liberal conservatives (Libertarians).
Either you’re using a definition of “progressive” that doesn’t relate to progressivism, or we’re looking at some very different definitions of Stalinism.
Stalinism was never about improvement of human societies. One could argue that Trotskyism was at least pretending to (it’s incredibly hard to attribute real humanitarian intent to anything bolsheviks did, once you look closer at their methods), but Stalinism was unabashedly explicit about seizing control and shutting down dissent. It embraced Russian Empire’s secret police approach and was closer to early Muscovite monarchism, with a despot deciding who gets to enjoy privileges and control, than to anything progressive.
