And here I thought Gooning was just Edging, but for terminally online NEETs

…but the people who coined the word Tankie were also MLs

Lemmy is by far mostly actual leftists and fake leftists like tankies.

I know I have a scary .ml handle, but please bear with me, because I genuinely want to understand.

Marxism-Leninism, whatever you think of the vicissitudes of its theoretical claims, has been the form of socialism which has seized power, more than any other.

Otherwise there are maoist insurgencies that dot south Asia, some anarchist projects throughout the world, and Trotskyists haven’t made Revolution anywhere.

If you ask me, those other tendencies are still my comrades, I support their struggles, and their histories are mine as well. But I don’t see them proliferating themselves much further than they already have.

What Socialist experiments would you consider “real”, and how are they more real than ML?

Venezuelan communes and participatory democracy is flourishing. In addition, massive social programs have been implemented, focusing on housing, food security, and poverty eradication

I think this really needs to be stressed. Venezuela is a country building Socialism. Maduro and the PSUV is in power because of a genuinely incredible mass movement of communes, neighborhood committees, and other organs of grassroots democracy. This is qualitatively different from say, any of the Gulf oil monarchies

I highly recommend the books Building The Commune: Radical Democracy in Venezuela, and Commune or Nothing: Venezuela’s Communal Movement and Its Socialist Project, for a look at these aspects of Venezuelan politics, because it’s often papered over in discussions about the country.