Over the last five years especially, I've noticed that the baseline squishy 'leftist' position on a bunch of topics has quietly, begrudgingly inched closer to what communists have always been saying, while many of the people themselves still take every opportunity to rail against communists. It's starting to feel like the Life of Brian "what have the romans ever done for us" bit. "Other than (this, that, a litany of events past and present)...when have the communists ever been right about anything?"

Or like you said, it's a crazy tankie conspiracy theory right up until it isn't.

Indeed.

Tribalism means that individuals will convince themselves that the group they feel that they belong to are "the good guys" and that the "leaders" of that group are the best kind of leader and doing the right things. This in turn reinforces their feeling of satisfaction with being a member of the group they think they're a member of.

It's a self-sustainable positive feedback loop.

However, if for some reason people lose the feeling of belonging to that tribe and start feeling that "I'm not like these people", all that starts to unwind.

Labor aristocracy

The WHAT?