i realize i just used a term i used to use more often but don't use as much anymore.

left libertarian.

nowadays, i usually just call myself an anarchist, but i haven't clarified the point in a while. due to the co-option of the term by hard-right classical liberals, anarchism has become kind of a damaged label - i know that, i get that. but, i guess at some point i stopped caring. or, maybe i decided there was enough writing out there at that point to make the distinction unnecessary.

but, as i'm ranting about masks in a way that is not that different than the ancaps are (and, this is the rare scenario where our shared libertarianism overpowers our diametrically opposed economic views), maybe it's a good time to remind you of the point: when i call myself an anarchist or a libertarian, i use the term in a mostly french/european context, just as i use the terms liberal and conservative in very british/canadian ways. i insist that i'm using the language correctly, and that i am right to use the language correctly, but i realize that the fact that americans are hopelessly lost in backwards colloquialisms may make my writing a little hard to follow if you watch too much tv.

this is a succinct quote:
anarchism is really a synonym for socialism. The anarchist is primarily a socialist whose aim is to abolish the exploitation of man by man. Anarchism is only one of the streams of socialist thought, that stream whose main components are concern for liberty and haste to abolish the State.

that's me, isn't it? spot on.

i realize that it's a contradiction within the americanized spectrum to simultaneously argue for individual liberty and the socialization of production at the same time, but that's where we are here on the libertarian left, and we don't see it as a contradiction at all but as two halves of a greater vision for a society where people are freer to live in less statist restrictions because they've socialized the means of production.

the last thing to point out is that a lot of the confusion comes from the fact that the word socialism, itself, is so warped in the americanized spectrum. in this highly colloquial americanized spectrum, the words liberal and conservative have almost perfectly reversed meaning and libertarianism has been co-opted by what most of the world calls liberals (and americans call conservatives). so, it's only natural that the world socialism has been colloquialized as well to mean a reference to big government, when socialism has always been about abolishing government everywhere else in the world.

so, of course you're confused - you don't really understand what any of the words i use mean, because you've managed to destroy the meaning of virtually all of them.

but, i'm not going to conform to your colloquialisms, i'm going to insist on the proper terminology and demand you try harder to keep up.