They seem to be exaggerating, but maybe not by much, since the democratic party defines roughly what is 'left' for all practical political purposes, due to their stranglehold on mainstream media (you're probably familiar with the overton window etc). The democratic party, that faux left, quite happily engages in 'identity politics' almost all the time, with a default sort of anemic cosmopolitanism, pretending you can and should talk nicely about every minority equally, but very little more, the sort of thing you can read about virtually everyday on Huffington post, see on CNN or listen to on NPR. Those were just articles or stories that were obviously identity related, that took only moments to find on their respective front pages, and doesn't include an analysis of their general ideological slants and discernible biases (like neo-liberal, anti-labor etc), and more nuanced propagandist techniques used.

It's not very surprising that the 'far-left', would be imagined by many as merely a worse and more extreme form of democrat, maybe actually hating specific scapegoat minorities like 'immigrants', 'capitalists', 'blacks' or 'republicans', instead of just liking all the 'good' ones like hispanics or women, or merely tolerating all equally. The fundamental problem with the inclusive identity politics of the democratic party is that it's a bit like a politics of foxes, cats, wolves, dogs, chickens, cows, horses, turkeys, goats, pigs, geese, ducks, mice, and rabbits all trying to decide what's for dinner (Representation is a more general political problem, but it's issues happen to be exacerbated by identity politics).

If you actually read and digest things in more than the most gullible fashion, then sadly you're probably among quite a small minority. Far left figures usually only appear in popular news media as figures of ridicule with tinges of anti-intellectualism, if not outright condescending dismissal, 'listen to the Ivory tower intellectual with his weird, almost incomprehensible views, now back to our regular programming'. I can't recall Marx for example ever being mentioned on any mainstream media except as someone who should be consigned to the dustbin of history like the Soviets.

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