The “liberals” I was referring to are more like other working class normies, not thought leaders.

If we are going to go forward with this, we will have to agree to draw a sharp distinction between members of the working class whose heads have been filled with liberal propaganda from birth - which, to a higher or lesser degree, essentially includes all of us who grew up in the liberal world - and true liberals who fetishize the "correctness" of their private domination over the means of production (and unspoken but de facto domination over the working class who makes all the production happen) because the key to their power and privilege is enshrined in the core tenet of liberalism itself (that's tenet - singular - because they only really need one).

Now, you can call these liberal elites capitalists if you wish (and if you really want to creep a working class normie out, you can use the term "bourgeoisie"), but remember... separating the capitalist from his chosen ideology - which is liberalism, not capitalism - has done more to hinder the left than it has helped. In fact, it has allowed liberal media to essentially immunise the working class against anyone who even uses the term "capitalist" in their narratives.

You can test this for yourself. Ask most working class people what a "liberal" is, and most of them will get it half-right (very few will describe Donald Trump, for instance, as a liberal - though, to be fair, plenty of leftists fails to recognise that as well). Ask them what a "capitalist" is and... well, all bets are off. Most people I talk to thinks it's somebody who works in finance.

That is how the left has missed the boat on liberalism - by separating the capitalist from liberal ideology, the left has disempowered itself and the wider working class from even recognising liberal political machinations to protect the liberal status quo for what they are.

It has made the left politically clumsy.

I’d say you are anti theory from your comments

Not really. I just think that leftists should perhaps double-check said theory before deciding that it's the working class' fault for not embracing them.

But i think there is advantages to being openly socialist,

Perhaps it's because I'm an old... but I just don't feel the need to wear a political "brand" as part of my identity. Besides... I have zero tolerance for purity testing.

you dont think reactionaries are wrong about liberals?

I think there is a deap-seated (and thoroughly justified) disaffection with liberal elites amongst the working class - and this disaffection is, with good reason, not just limited to those who can be strictly classified as capitalists. It is the liberal elite themselves which have harnassed this disaffection - at the end of the day, all reactionary politics is designed to protect the status quo.

The dilemma for the liberal elite is not complicated - manage the working class by tossing more crumbs from the table (so-called "progresive" liberals) or manage the working class through greater repression (whom I call fundamentalist liberals). The carrot or the stick. This is why you see the fundamentalist liberals roiling up those elements of the working class that have already been prepared and empowered to violently repress the wider working class for the protection of the status quo, and this is why you see progressive liberals constantly giving ground to the fundamentlist ones - the lies (ie, the carrot) is becoming less and less effective. The idea that Donald Trump is a fascist is a ludicrous one - the liberal does not do the dirty work of protecting their ill-gotten private property themselves and wouldn't know how to do so if their lives depended on it. They outsource that to the hencherproletariat - actual fascism, which is always a working class phenomenon. There's a good reason why you don't see the rich sending their children off to become cops.

do you reject communism?

Yes. The concept is far too esoteric for my liking.