I have to disagree with you on this. I see them as hopeless romantics, like the people of my father's generation who spoke nostalgically of joining the Abraham Lincoln Bridage to fight Franco and the Fascists in Spain. I still see some of it in baby boomers who live nostalgically for the days of their youth when they were demonstrating in the streets against the war or racism or some such thing. It's a sign of people who don't want to grow up and face reality, a kind of political Peter Pan-ism.
Che, Castro, and even Stalin are still admired by the left.
McCarthy is demonized. Something is wrong with this picture.