What is a radical? A personal view, and some propositions

I have always understood myself as very political and on the left. For me this has always had the character or quality of a will to fight. Furthermore, as you might guess from that statement, the idea of "feminism" also posed, and meant, a problem. Are the feminists against the capitalist injustice that we are, or are they for it, and even part of it, or determined to be? This is a real question, and it reveals as a reality that there are left and right possibilities of feminism. For me, it started with a need to hate the authority systems that I was subjected to and that were used against me. Yes, they were "patriarchal," but if the enforcement usually was violence done by men, it didn't have to be, and even when it was, it was done with women participating. It was not patriarchy that I learned that I was oppressed by; it was unjust authority, and above all capitalism, but also what we may call "familialism," which is when authority is located in the family or in social relationships modeled on familial authority. Opposition to this is radical leftism, at least of a certain kind; and for me, other forms of opposition were based on this. People learn their social oppression first and most powerfully in their families. Most social authority of any kind is at least partially affirming and mediating of the broad forms of social authority that people generally find they have to live with, and make some accommodation to. To me, it was obvious, starkly so: I had an abusive, violent stepfather who offered me nothing but threats; he would have liked to get me away from his family, and spoke of his fantasies of protecting his innocent wife (who not so innocently played a crucial supporting role in his violence and general authoritarianism). He eventually succeeded in that, and I started to hate him less when he no longer had power to hurt me. My own father fatally took sides with the stepfather against me, and the resulting conflict defined the rest of my adolescence. Let me say that I did and do have no love lost for all the females in authority who were quick to condemn us both, but effectively only me, because they saw my rebellion as macho and made it very clear they did not like men who acted the way they expected boys and men to. I learned that in the California of the late 70s, 1) being a political man on the left was detested and generally treated as a psychological deviation or mental illness, 2) being a guy was out of fashion; in fashion was only girls and gays. All that was left of radical politics was the critique of men. Later I learned that a critique of Europe was added to this, among other things, to make up the popular pseudo-left-wing politics, especially on evidence in academia. I remained, almost inexplicably, on the left. I was not amused by most of what people said politically and in ways that are implicitly a politics, who were black, gay, or just about anything else, including Jewish, because in the 80s the officially recognized Jewish world had already become right-wing, and Jews on the left never identified as Jewish, only as leftists (or they did identify as Jewish, but in ways they had no way to speak of; this simply had disappeared from the popular and available discourse as a recognizable possibility). I eventually came to the following conclusion:

The left is composed of opposition to authoritarianism and capitalism. Authoritarianism can be defined as the belief that some kind of authority of some persons over others is legitimate without any dependence on anything else, so that that authority need not be just, rational, democratic, tolerant, or anything else, just authority, exhibiting its power. I hated this sort of thing when I came of age, and I never forgot that hatred, which remains the basis for me of radical left politics. This is not a popular position today, but it is a consistent, and well-founded one, and I believe it is correct.

I have always encountered so much shit from people and so much hatred, whenever my basic attitude is guessed at. Most people hate us leftists, or anarchists, if that is what I am better called. Feminism is to us sometimes interesting, but usually wrong, and the same is true of every other identity politics. Putting more black people in millionaire CEO positions is not a radical politics. So another proposition I put forth is that:

Radicals do have loves, but we also hate injustice. It is not wrong to hate if what you hate is injustice (and you use your hatred of it in the right ways).

Finally, I have always noticed that the front line of attack against the radical left is usually psychological. The idea is basically that radicals are all sick in the head, along with lots of people. As a result:

A radical left politics will most often encounter social repression in the guise of the claim that the antagonist is "mentally ill."

But:

Antagonism or conflict is itself what is opposed by such people, who may be called "liberals." I would also call them "legitimists."

A "legitimist" is someone who believes that the existing social order is legitimate. It should be as it is. Therefore, it should not be opposed. Necessarily, most people most of the time, in every possible society, will hold this belief, and thus are conservatives. Conservatives want thing sin the social world to be as they are. For this not to be the majority view, a delegitimation in the popular mentality would have to have taken place, such as could lead to a revolution.