I honestly think most US/UK anarchists don't really understand what anarchism is and only ID as one because Noam Chomsky IDs as one while pushing electoralism / lesser evilism and other backwards ideas.

If their hero is going on TV and telling people to vote for Hillary Clinton / Joe Biden / Mike Bloomberg, while calling himself an anarchist, of course they're going to see anarchism as an extension of "progressive" liberalism. Monkey see, monkey do. People have been so bombarded by propaganda in the media and in schools that they're unable to grasp the fact that voting only exists to give them the illusion of power, to placate and pacify them once every 4-5 years. If their candidate loses, they'll grudgingly accept it because "democracy decided". It's magical thinking but it works to keep people invested in the faux-power of the election cycle rather than attempting to take real power.

There's a big problem in the modern anarchist Anglosphere and Chomsky is the root of it. He's the only self-identified anarchist that the media gives a voice to, so he becomes the voice of anarchy for a whole generation, even though very little of what he says is compatible with anarchist ideas.

He defends the police:

No humans are ideal. There is a lot wrong with law enforcement, and a lot right about it. Police have a difficult task and often deal with it in a praiseworthy fashion.

He blames antifa for the violence of the state.

He's made a career of watering down the ideas of anarchy to make them more palatable to the mainstream and thus, rendering them useless. I consider him a type of deliberate controlled opposition, to dilute anarchy to the point where it poses no threat to the system. Just like how the corporate media give the anchor jobs to the biggest bootlickers to push the establishment narrative, they do the same thing when they prop Chomsky up as the "authority" on anarchy. And a whole generation of people calling themselves anarchists have fallen for it.