@mattbrowne No, they do not. If you actually listened to any number of “extreme leftists”—like myself—you’d hear that much of the actual analysis is targeted at systemic issues with capitalism itself, and not at the personalities of individual capitalists. Whether Bob the entrepreneur, or Steve the CEO is a nice person or not is almost completely irrelevant.
@ibstubro Your own question was framed in the sort of cultural and ideological terms that you are accustomed to. By calling some segment of liberals as “extreme” and “left-wing”, you are, at some cognitive level, and metaphorically—placing them at a distance, outside of the norm, perhaps even out of sight and out of mind. If this is not an example of an ideological defence mechanism, then I do not know what is.
You can call it semantics, and feign frustration at responses you don’t like to hear—but semantics, and other aspects of linguistics, are actually very important in shaping public perception and constraining what is deemed as “legitimate political discourse”. It’s why you (not just you personally) use the words you use to position particular strains of political thought, and why there’s a huge realm of political theory that simply doesn’t register in people’s minds at all.
Framing yourself as a “moderate” is itself a continuation of this semantic and metaphorical game. It’s positioning yourself in the middle, as the mainstream norm, within the band of what is “legitimate discourse” and “thinkable ideas”. Many “moderate” liberals often continue this theme with fallacious arguments to moderation, with clichés like “we need a mix of the left and the right”, ” we need some capitalism and socialism”, and so on.
I realise you really wanted some silly examples like you found on Conservapedia, but from what you call “extreme left-wing liberals”. Well, I can’t think of any. Left-wingers (from the socialist and radical traditions, not liberals) aren’t generally as stupid, and rhetorically manipulative as the American right-wing. I also think that there are so-called moderate conservatives who are actually embarrassed by the stupidity of other self-styled conservatives.
Also, I’m from the “extreme left-wing”, and I’m opposed to liberalism—just to give you some modicum of sense of where I’m coming from.