Vijay Prashad can be corny a lot, and holds a lot of optimism which can come across as naïve to some more cynical types. But I would not ever consider him an opportunist. Dude is a genuine communist, has been for his whole life and is properly well informed on communist theory and history. In one of his recent videos he made a passing comment that financially life has been a struggle. He doesn’t have health insurance. If he’s an opportunist then he’s bad at it. He could make a lot more money selling out his principles to talk on cable news.

‘I’m just a Marxist, not any specific sect’ shtick.

I believe this is based in principle, not aesthetic. He is a big proponent of left unity. This is not to say he compromises on principle. I have seen him frankly disagree with people to their faces on several occasions. But he highly values that people sit and talk to each other, that that’s a necessary prerequisite to solving our problems. Especially in an era of capitalist antisocial fragmentation. Getting people into association together has to happen so that they can come to discuss politics and build class consciousness, just as the concentration of workers into factories and neighborhoods developed the proletariat as a class during the early capitalist era.