you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 43 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (17 children)

Is mamdami really a socialist or just wants to tax oligarchs and fund buses? I swear american propaganda is shifting so hard to the right everything left of technofeudal kukuxklan hellscape is deemed as socialist

  • source
  • hideshow 17 child comments
  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (14 children)
  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    That's misleading and deliberately misses the commenter's point. The DSA explicitly rejects authoritarian models of socialism (USSR, DPRK, etc).

    The red-scare-fueled conflation of democratic socialism with basically Stalinism is largely what drives the general disfavorability of "socialism" in these sorts of opinion polls.

    It's not like people were asked, "Do you favor ordinary people having a real voice in their workplaces, neighborhoods, and society? Do you favor a higher minimum wage, universal health care (Medicare for All), strengthening labor unions, and increasing the power of working people while weakening the power of corporations?"

    People broadly support those things, but would very likely hesitate to call that democratic socialism (which, spoiler: those are the DSA's core tenets).

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago

    It's like when people say they hate obamacare but they love the ACA. They don't know what they're talking about, but they have a well worn heuristic of "what does my in-group say?"

    Or it's like that spongebob meme with patrick and the wallet

    "So you want workers to be treated with respect" : "Yep"

    "And they should be paid a fair wage for their work": "Sounds good to me."

    "And vital services like health care should be provided to everyone" : "Of course"

    "So you'll vote for the left wing candidate" : "No, I don't like left wing policies"

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It's not like people were asked, "Do you favor ordinary people having a real voice in their workplaces, neighborhoods, and society? Do you favor a higher minimum wage, universal health care (Medicare for All), strengthening labor unions, and increasing the power of working people while weakening the power of corporations?"

    Those are not socialist policies, I'd say they're more social democratic than socialist.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    That's my point. People overwhelmingly like DSA policies, but are hesitant to say that they would consider voting for a DSA candidate because of their (incorrect) association with socialism.

    McCarthyism has done such a good job of muddying the waters in American politics that any policies labeled as "social-anything" are immediately associated with USSR gulag bread lines or Maoist famine.

    A not-so-insignificant number of Americans believe the Nazis were the same as the Communists because their party has "socialist" in the name.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Uh weren't they considered communist? (Which is still a misrepresentation of what communism is)

    My point was hes a part of the DSA so he self identifies as socialist.

    When I think socialist countries I think of Nordic countries not the friggin USSR.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    The Nordic countries aren’t socialist they are capitalist countries with strong welfare states.

    Socialism is the democratic ownership of the means of production, the nordics are still very much capitalist.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    YOU are not the average voter. You're likely much more informed than the average American voter.

    When the average American voter hears "socialism", they think of "the Ruskies" or the "Chi-coms", not Scandinavia.

    They think Scandinavia is the thing that sits on your printer that converts your documents into pdfs.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    But what are his socialist policies?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Are free busses and free childcare not considered socialist?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    The country I live in is not socialist and we have those things. We also have limited free healthcare.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    So you think capitalism is the reason you have those things?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    I don't understand how Americans use the Labels "capitalism" and "socialism" especially how americans seem to use these terms as well defined and opposed systems of governance. Weren't these supposed to be economic systems? Are they as hard edged as american propaganda makes us believe? Is it all buzzwords?

    Is taxing the rich "socialist?" is putting a billionaire oligarch in jail for a crime "socialist?" Is making politicians accountable for their crimes "socialist?" the answer is yes for what I've seen of American propaganda across the aisle. Normal people would call that "bare minimum governance"

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    Economic equality is part of socialism. Which is something welfare, free healthcare, free childcare, free education, etc all help with making everyone equal.

    The entire system of economic governance doesn't have to be socialist for socialism to be part of it. We have socialist programs in the US, too. But we are still economically driven by capitalism and private ownership.

    But there are a lot of old dumb bastards that don't understand what socialism actually means and just equate it to enemies of the state (China, Russia, NK, etc).

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    He's not he doesn't support workers control of the means of production and oppose bourgeois control of the means of production and is thus not socialist no matter what others tell you.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago*

    His platform isn't socialist, nobody but him knows what his actual convictions are. I think he's a pragmatist, and knows that saying "I'm going to abolish private property day 1 and liberate the working class from their capitalist masters" is more likely to get him assassinated than spark a proletarian revolution. I personally believe him when he says he's a Democratic Socialist, it's just that he favors reform and is focusing on what's doable in the short term. The DSA has committed to what they call the "party surrogate" strategy, of which Zohran's campaign was a part. It means they intend to run insurgent campaigns on the Democratic ballot line while acting independently. With enough primary wins they can operate as a socialist faction within the Democratic party, which could theoretically split from the party and go truly independent after reaching a critical mass of support.

    Here is a link that explains it more in-depth.

  • source
  • parent