The reason people are speaking about it more now is such Marxist groups seized part of one city (Seattle) and staged riots nationally. Generally speaking, when an ideological group uses their network to stage violent riots, people talk about it.
People such as Jordan Peterson or Michael Knowles have been speaking about Marxism in universities and other institutions for a while.
The people who seized part of Seattle are anarchists, which, if you read about the history of the labor movement, broke with the Marxists in the 19th Century over some very fundamental issues of how they view society.
Modern identity politics is diametrically opposed to classical Marxism, whatever its proponents choose to call themselves, because it emphasizes identity over class. In those circles, calling someone a "class reductionist" is an insult.
So yes, she is probably a trained Marxist, in that she knows how to do class analysis and material analysis. So are most social scientists worth their salt, it's just that not all of them know that it came from Marx. Jordan Peterson and Michael Knowles for example, are not trained in such methods of analysis because they are extreme fringe kooks.
As far as riots, read what Durkheim wrote on rioting. When a societal need is not accounted for and there seems to be no avenue for change, then rioting is the natural consequence. This was the case for what happened after the killing of George Floyd, where there seemed to be no realistic avenue to stop racist police violence, and so riots arose, as they did throughout centuries again and again. Crime in general follows a similar pattern.