May 7, 2006:
These people are dishonest.
More than mere confusion. Moral slight of hand.
The meaning of key terms are changed. "Revolution" becomes a particular form of mobilization with the potential to last decades; "Socialism" becomes the movement itself. The substance is Bernsteinian, the vocabulary is radical posturing.
Why?
Partly, I think, to pretend that violence belongs to the other side.
Partly, to preserve the words "revolution" and "socialism" which presumably serve some peculiar personal emotional purpose one can only guess at.
The result is a type of sectism based on a weird moral corruption. Self-referential, self-reinforcing, self-congratulatory. The narcissism of a successful trick.