Bernie has been faithfully playing his assigned role to keep increasingly radicalized sections of the working class and youth within the orbit of the Democratic Party.
No. This is a delusional take.
Despite my therapist not agreeing with me on politics, she thinks I am mentally fine.
She's wrong if you genuinely think the Sanders is a pro-capitalist plant. Either that or you don't actually believe this and you are arguing in bad faith because you actually simply dislike Sander's openly stated politics.
Or you have not actually paid any consistent attention to Sanders at all or read up on his history before he became politically relevant.
Stalinism was a degeneration of the workers state in the Soviet Union. Fascism is an extreme counterrevolutionary form of capitalism. Assigning one (Stalinism) to the other (Trump/MAGA) is a category error. Ahisotorical and unscientific
Even if you are technically correct, none of this matters in the current political context. You are being nitpicky at best, but more likely just engaging in irrelevant intellectual masturbation/showboating. Further, this doesn't actually explain why Sanders gives a pass to capitalism, you are just repeating the same point. Being anti-Stalinism and being open about that doesn't make you apologetic to capitalism unless you take a very "You are with us or against us" campist perspective.
(and likelh a conscious distortion given Sanders political history and experience).
Instead of ignoring now, you are misrepresenting the context of his statement. The left in the US is currently on the backfoot. (Even with a specific notable newsworthy exception in NYC) Sanders knows that liberals and conservatives alike in the US associate Stalin vaguely with very bad things and is using that cultural association. Now, do I think this is politically effective? IDK. I suspect the problem with Sanders is generally that he is not mean enough to his opposition, and this is indeed tactical but not for reasons you are laying out. Given his history the idea that hes secretly a pro-capitalism plant is actually completely flabbergastingly stupid. Like I can't take you seriously for saying that and I only continue this conversation due to curiosity.
Ironically, most actual Stalinists will have disavowed Stalin by now following his death and Krushev’s secret speech. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism, international Stalinists are largely reduced to trade union organizing and activist pressure groups. In the third world they routinely enter into coalitions with bourgeois nationalist governments. Edgy teenagers on the internet are not serious Stalinists.
OK, then it sounds like they're red fascists to me. They are fascists who just want to not be associated with fascism.
Sanders plays into this tradition because he supports it (anti-communism).
No he doesn't. He might not support authoritarianism but he's not an anti-communist. A lazy example: he has defended Castro before.
He could have criticized Trump’s cult of personality by referencing the fascist Mussolini (or just made it a direct statement about Trump).
He's compared him to Mussolini already. In 2020, "We have a president now who is a pathological liar. We have a president who is trying to undermine democracy. We have a president who admires authoritarian figures. I mean, it's not an exaggeration to compare him to Mussolini." Hes going to compare him to any historical figure views as authoritarian, because Sanders is anti-authoritarian.
Possible if not likely, but also being an anti-Harris leftist indicates the sort of person who doesn't touch grass anyway.
Though, I had seen handmade anti-Harris sign in Chicago once shortly before the election. "A vote for Harris is a vote for genocide" is what it said. I suspect that if there are some of those people do touch grass at all, they are aware of how incredibly unpopular they'd be in most progressive spaces if they openly stated they advocated against and refused to vote for Harris and would keep very quiet. Thus cowards.