[dragonwriter]

> They are only "strongly leftist" in a far-right banana republic (i.e., the USA).

Even in the US, they are, at least some of them, more prominent in the more centrist faction of the Democratic Party than even the Democratic “left”, much less the actual (for the USA) “far left”. Remember that one of the establishment arguments early on against Sanders was that he had a historically weak voting record on gun control.

The American Right tends to confuse the degree to which a position is associated with the Democratic Party with how far “left” it is.