It’s stunning to me how much impact the word “socialism” had on the 2020 election.
You would think America was on the verge of becoming Venezuela. We are not. Yet socialism is one of those loaded words that when you throw it around out of context, it scares the hell out of people. When you read about it in other countries like in Europe or Canada, though, it is not that scary.
What I find interesting and frankly alarming is that while tens of millions of our fellow Americans fear socialism, they somehow cannot see the authoritarianism of Donald Trump. A man who in real time has undermined our free democratic elections. Who refuses to concede he lost the election. Who attacks our intelligence agencies and public health officials. Who has fired military and homeland security personnel. And who has called for militias to “liberate” states from federalism. Yet rail about socialism his followers do—and loudly.
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Consider incoming freshman Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who tweeted on Friday that “masks” are a violation of her rights, and her body. Ironic, given she is a “pro-life” Republican woman who wants to end abortion for good. Masks are now considered a form of oppressive socialism by the “deep state.”
Let me be clear. I am a capitalist and I believe in free markets, small business, the stock market, and America’s innovative ingenuity to lead the way. However, socialism has gotten a bad rap. It has become the rallying cry of mostly white working class onetime Reagan Democrats who have been very effectively coopted by cynical politicians who no longer run on their ideas or what they can offer to citizens but run on fear and scaring citizens into believing that their current way of life and freedoms are in danger. And it’s all because of the likes of conservatives like Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck, who is obsessed with talking about the coming socialist danger on his daily “The Blaze” show. He even wrote a book about it last year called, Arguing with Socialists.
Members of my own family and friends have bought the goods these guys are selling. They are convinced that programs like Obamacare or Medicare or other programs are a precursor to America’s death. They believe that “progressives” like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) are really socialists who are going to change America into a really bad version of Canada or those European countries where the state controls and regulates the people’s economic freedoms away (so they imagine) in place of government-run everything.
Beck and his ilk are not alone. Donald Trump used the socialist refrain a lot during his 2020 re-election campaign against Joe Biden, and while it didn’t stick with Biden, it apparently hurt Democrats down the ballot. Republicans held their own in a year where polls had them losing the presidency, and the Congress.
In Virginia, moderate Democratic congresswoman Abigail Spanberger railed against her own caucus after the election (where she narrowly defeated conservative Republican Virginia Delegate Nick Frietas) saying they should never embrace or use the word socialism again—as it hurt candidates like her in suburban swing districts who were bombarded with attacks on “defunding the police” and socialism.
The message was effective, because people (mostly older, and mostly white) see the America they knew slipping away to people who do not look like them or come from where they come from. The rise of Black and brown elected leaders, the rise of women leaders, and the openness of the LGBTQ community have many white evangelicals and suburbanites looking to authoritarians like Trump for a return to social “norms.”
A great example of why Trump did well with Florida’s Latino community is seen in an ad he ran on YouTube linking Biden to socialism in Venezuela. Moreover, he had help in the form of Venezuelan-born actress Lilibeth Morillo, who is a pro-Trump activist. She is known to wear a “Keep America Great” hat and a face mask bearing both the Venezuelan and American flags. On Instagram, she wrote, “Do you know why I support Trump? Because he is literally the wall of contention between communism and the world.”
Whether you agree with these views or not is not the issue. The issue for America going forward into the 2020s is, who are we going to be politically? A thriving, inclusive republic, or a divided, angry nationalist nation sliding toward authoritarianism?
The reality is while people rail against socialism, they are missing something much more dangerous that is right in our face right now in America: the rise of white nationalism, authoritarianism, and cult of personality. Donald Trump holds all of that in his hands. He is demonstrating to the world that America is vulnerable indeed. But not to some mythical socialist agenda that will never happen under a centrist Biden-Harris administration. And particularly so if Republicans hold on to the Senate. There is no way Biden and McConnell will run some leftist agenda for America.
What Donald Trump’s supporters fail to see is that he, not socialism, is the threat to democracy. That it is he and his cronies who have really harmed democracy over the past two weeks, and again on Friday when he held a press briefing on the COVID vaccine, by not acknowledging Biden’s victory, or respecting the integrity of our electoral process. That he and his enablers who caged children, separated them from their families, attacked immigrants, emboldened racism, appointed right-wing judges, and turned Americans against one another are the real and lasting danger to America.
