Every single scenario I can imagine myself ending up in where someone yells “hey Alex, you’re a Marxist, right? Come quick!” goes about this well or worse. Especially in front of my mom. She was a child of the Cold War and it’s easier to just pretend I’m nothing more than a center-left type who likes old Soviet imagery for the shock value, than to hash out her old fears with her and permanently alter our relationship by admitting I’m “the Soviet sympathiser her mommy warned her about”. So I’d have to pretend to be worse at Being A Commie than I actually am.