Edit: I’m from the Global South, I should’ve clarified that on the post. The lesson has been learned.
Many leftist movements, legit or not, call themselves either Trotskyist or Maoist and keep dissing Stalin for his “socialism in one state” policy and “ruining” Comintern and Deng Xiaoping for his “liberal” policies.
I want to know what they are trying to do by distancing themselves from the USSR and PRC while fetishizing Cuba and Vietnam—you’ll only hear them talking about the Vietnam War, btw—and following either the guy who lost the power struggle or a literal Marxist-Leninist who supported one of the refused countries and founding the other.
I’ve seen an ML here in Brazil saying something to the tune of: Maoism is a left deviation. Trotskyism is a right deviation pretending to be a left deviation.
I want to add that there are several Trotskyst and Maoist lines. Those have fractured enough to be more umbrella terms than specific lines. As a result, some trotskysts and maoists are more reasonable than others. This might come as a surprise when you’ve only dealt with the more unreasonable ones.
Another curious thing: trotskysts and maoists will often agree in their conclusions while denouncing each other for the different arguments they made. “You’re right for the wrong reasons.”