> Your point doesn't really work, if it is "at the heart of any left wing moderate is a left wing fringe lunatic" because obviously you could just claim the same of the right, and suggest that every moderate right wing has fascism at its core. This sort of reductionism ends up with nothing useful.

I disagree. Maybe we understand the terminology differently. For me both wings of the left and right spectrum are extremes, while liberals and conservatives are on another axis. Liberals and Conservatives have existed long before there were leftist and rightist ideologies. (the -isms)

> Both right and left approach a similar looking set of ideologies at their extremes. I'm arguing that the left runs the risk of being overrun by something that moderate liberal lefties like me should be very concerned about.

I agree 100%.

The terminology question is confused by the fact that, in the US, "liberal" means "leftist", whereas in much (all?) of Europe or maybe even the rest of the world, "liberal" is more associated with classical liberalism, i.e. closer to what is called "libertarian" in the US (although I do feel that libertarianism is like classical liberalism taken to the extreme).

In any case, classical liberalism was only developed in the 19th century, while the usage of "left" and "right" is slightly older: it dates back to the French Revolution where it just happened that opposing factions would sit at opposite ends of the assembly. Given the chaotic nature of the French Revolution, what these opposite ends would represent would change countless times, but in general, the left wing was more associated with progressivism and the will of the Third Estate and the right wing was more conservative. Communism didn't even exist at the time, although arguably the first proto-communist advocate, Gracchus Babeuf, did emerge later in the French Revolution (he was offed by the "left wing" itself, though).

Yes, although that "something" isn't even socialism, it's... I don't know what it is. I'm not a socialist by any stretch but I am told that some hard-core Marxists are quite skeptical of modern "wokeness" which strangely never seems to question power imbalances due to capitalism itself.