I agree with this but having been in higher education there are almost zero traditional leftists left on the academic side and even less on the administration side. I agree that you could say they are rhetorical leftists, because they give voice and support to a lot of those traditional values and concepts but only on the rhetorical level.

I am speaking only of the west and specifically the US. I’m not familiar with other countries to expand what I’m saying to them about leftists in academia.

On the “new woke left” grabbing the megaphone (I love this term lol), it’s the kids of the kids of the traditional left that are the ones pushing all the pseudo left bs. The kids of the traditional left are the baby boomers, and they largely didn’t want the megaphone at all and it’s their kids that took it and have mutilated it.

I like you brought up AOC. I think she is a perfect example of a rhetorical leftist that is largely empty. She ran spouting traditional left stuff about war, labor, and oppressive debt but busies herself making viral videos about cultural issues and sides 100% with corporatist Dems on policy and legislation.

I think what’s left of the traditional left has a responsibility but like I said they are silenced. The traditional left also suffers from their strategic thinking being frozen in time in the 1960’s. They fail to understand why the movement failed back in the day and they refuse to admit that sticking to tactics created in the 1960’s means certain failure.

All that to say that yes the woke left headlines read like it’s out of an old issue of the onion. 😂