So full disclosure I’m not American; I’m armchair strategizing from the other side of the world here.

Go to a Fighting Oligarchy Tour event where they are actively leading,

Yeah that’s the thing: That’s not leadership; that’s agitation. Now agitation is also very important work, but it’s not leadership. For instance, Bernie will never call for an occupation of Washington or hold a meeting on the merits and demerits of calling for a general strike. Bernie and The Squad are strong allies to the resistance, but they’re not the resistance, if that makes sense. If you’ll notice, Bernie never actually tells specifically people what to do, only that they should act. The latter is agitation, the former is leadership.

We are always going to need a vanguard pushing us left - Malcolm X was just as successful as MLK Jr. However, MLK worked with politicians to make reforms become real.

I never said the resistance shouldn’t work with politicians; it absolutely should. What I’m trying to argue against is the idea of waiting for a politician to come and lead the revolution to victory, and that many popular progressive icons like Bernie and AOC simply aren’t fit to lead the resistance (but this part is less important because they’ll never try to take up leadership).