protip: if you're a libertarian socialist, don't give your liberal friends ammo by distancing yourself and explaining how bad authoritarian socialism and socialist states are.

That is another conversation for other people at another time. They're just going to discourage and discredit leftist politics as a whole. Liberals cannot fathom the concept that Communism is anything but Stalinism and Anarchism is anything but The Purge. They need an understanding of the problems of Capitalism first. They need to know what the fuck Socialism even is. Then maybe have a candid convo about how the material conditions of Russia led to where it is now.