Maoism is a potent leftist black magic that can induce political brainrot, such as becoming right wing, apolitical, horrid geopolitical policies and pseudo-intellectualism to people with bad intentions
If you can catch people going down the Maoist pipeline before they get into a hardcore, "everyone is a revisionist but me" org they can remain cool and do good work.
Most of the leftists I encounter in my country that are not in the main party and the vocal sorts are all in this "hardcore, "everyone is a revisionist but me" org" sorta thing already it's kind of sad
Ah that sucks. Well at least you have some armed Maoists possibly doing good work? Around here the orgs that call themselves Maoist are 100% MLMs that rationalize themselves into near-complete inaction.
Well I don't know where parent lives and it's hard to make assumptions. Some of the armed Maoist groups have problematic habits like picking violent fights with what they would call opportunists, like killing CPI(M) members in India. But there's a diversity of Maoists (including in India) internationally so it's hard to broad brush.
Mao went very hard on the principle of “damn we gotta literally destroy everything before us because it sucked man” which I imagine would attract very angsty, emotional people. Most other theorists usually just explain the application of Marxism Leninism for their country and not expand it with original thought like Mao lol
Political defeatism is a real thing, especially with people who don't have a rational thinking that building something is hard and take time. People with Maximalist political orientation will eventually become disillusive of their beliefs because it's unrealistic. After awhile, they just realize that it is not the political ideologies that is important, it's power and the power express on other and they'll move to where the power is at.