Animal farm made me a trot until I read a bit of actual history and political texts and by the end of the year I was a materialist kind of Marxist. Consider doing that.

"Authoritarianism" is an abstraction that sees the state as outside and above class struggle. All states are tools for whatever the ruling class is, and the degree by which it is used depends on the sharpness of the class struggle in a given society. The USSR was run by the working classes, and has to work to combat bourgeois and fascist elements left over from the Tsarist era and through infiltration, black markets, etc.

Taking a scientific view is the very advantage of Marxism.

animal farm(...) great resource for people with basic reading comprehension.

I was in the middle of typing out some kind of "couldn't have said it better myself" type joke, but honestly it's not even true. There are much better resources out there for people with only basic reading comprehension.

I want to point out I didn't reply to the person who mentioned animal farm, because they were arguing with a point I didn't make. I agreed with someone suggesting it's very limited in scope. Which it is. I understand it's considered a shallow analysis of the specific era it was satirizing, but I don't know enough to provide my opinion on that aspect. It's okay that it is satirizing a very limited thing, that was the intent!

Maybe what I needed to add is that very rarely is any distinction made between a shift further left and a shift towards authoritarianism. I expanded in this in another comment where I talked about what I really hate about the political spectrum. If you design a spectrum where you put the authoritarian group on the end, it's not some lightbulb moment to be like, hey these guys on the end have some similarities in how they execute their plans! It makes my engineer brain fucking crazy.

I'm also not screaming at anyone? I made a meme because I think it's funny that this near useless concept (the political spectrum) gets turned into gotcha moments. I'm poking fun at this absurd thing people are happy to say while maintaining the status quo. Any criticism of the status quo is met with accusations of wanting the fascists to win. It's always "the far left". What does that even mean?

do you remember the atheism feminism war not too long ago? or the gender war? or more race-wars than you can shake a stick at?

I don't? Do you mean online discourse?

I didn't answer your question in your last reply so I will now: I'm an anarchist, so yes, I do think we can prevent authoritarianism in the shift left.

you even see a lot of tools such a slander being used against people like hasan or other progressives right now. animal farm has a lot of good examples of character assassination. great resource for people with basic reading comprehension.

Or, this shit doesn't happen IRL in the leftist spaces I exist in, and if it does it's discussed and we get to the root of the issue. I don't think you can shift the US (or any country for that matter) away from capitalism by voting. So shit talking in electorial spaces has no impact on my interests.