How Bernie Sanders Should Talk About Democratic Socialism - by ERIC FONER

Found here. Our comments in bold.
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We find it very nearly hilarious when the Left wants to explain Socialism. "How should we talk about it," they ask themselves. "What's the best approach to changing the way people think about Socialism?" "How can we make our message resonate with people?"

Socialism must be contextualized. Framing is important. Messaging, sayings, and slogans are evaluated. A constant topic with the Left is how find ways of diverting, changing the subject, or flipping the script.

The question never is, "Should we tell the truth about Socialism?" "Should we tell people about what we actually want to do?" "Should we just be honest?" 

The answer is no, because Socialism cannot be presented honestly. It would be summarily rejected by everyone. In fact, it would be rejected by Socialists if they ever allowed themselves to think honestly about it. No, Socialism at its core depends on painting a caricature of present capitalistic despair contrasted with a rosy picture of a bright future in the worker's paradise.

That is why Professor Foner is writing. He has some advice for the vivacious, energetic face of Socialism in the United States known as Barry Sanders.

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Dear Senator Sanders,

Congratulations on the tremendous success of your campaign. You have energized and inspired millions of Americans and forced the questions of economic inequality and excessive corporate power to the center of our political discourse. These are remarkable accomplishments. (Sanders' "accomplishments' do not include writing or sponsoring legislation, reducing the number of poor or unemployed, improving the health of millions by advocating for new medicines or innovative treatment techniques, or any such thing. Nope, he is being complimented for the effectiveness of his rhetoric, his success in advancing The Narrative.)

So take the following advice as coming from an admirer. I urge you to reconsider how you respond to the inevitable questions about what you mean by democratic socialism and peaceful revolution. (The author doesn't want to help Sanders with programs, legislation, or spending priorities, but rather, rhetorical strategies.

Further, the author uses the modifier "democratic" as a smokescreen. "Democratic" Socialists are no different than the garden variety Socialist. Perhaps a "democratic" Socialist would prefer that the people vote themselves voluntarily into Socialism [thus the "peaceful" part], but as we saw in the summer 2020 riots, they are not adverse to violence and bloodshed.)

The next time, embrace our own American radical tradition. (Actually, Sen Sanders should recontextualize American radical tradition, because the American radical tradition is a complete opposite to the goals of Socialism.)

There’s nothing wrong with Denmark; we can learn a few things from them (and vice-versa). But most Americans don’t know or care much about Scandinavia. (Nor do most Americans know or care much about Socialism. The author aims to keep Americans ignorant but engaged. Ignorant about the real motives of Socialists, but engaged in the cause of overthrowing the bourgeois.)

More importantly, your response inadvertently reinforces the idea that socialism is a foreign import. Instead, talk about our radical forebears here in the United States, for the most successful radicals have always spoken the language of American society and appealed to some of its deepest values. (Interpretation: American Socialists have tried their best to tap into the American way of life and turn it against itself. Socialist rhetoric is at its base manipulation.

Now comes the misrepresentation of half-remembered history...)

You could begin with Tom Paine and other American revolutionaries who strove not simply for independence from Britain but to free the new nation from the social and economic inequalities of Europe. (Notice the subtle use of language. In a sense it is somewhat true that the Founders wanted to free us from "the social and economic inequalities of Europe," but not the way the author means. This is a key concept to understand: Socialists employ words that a typical person would take at face value, but those words mean something else. 

So "social inequalities" does not mean that the colonies were being treated unjustly by the Crown, and "economic inequalities" does not mean "taxation without representation." 

One must interpret these phrases from a Socialistic understanding.)

Embrace the tradition of abolitionists, black and white, men and women like William Lloyd Garrison, (Anti-Semite and anarchist.)

Frederick Douglass, (A Christian, pastor, and Republican.)

and Abby Kelley, (Known for "non-resistance," which included the belief that all government was coercive.)

who, against overwhelming odds, broke through the conspiracy of silence of the two major parties on the issue of slavery (There was no "conspiracy of silence." Slavery was vigorously and repeatedly debated.)

and helped to create a public sentiment that led to Lincoln’s election and emancipation. (It is ironic, indeed, that the author invokes Lincoln, whose courage in freeing blacks from the yoke of repression, tyranny, and the inability to choose one's own life course is exactly the opposite of what he and other Socialists want. They would happily enslave the whole of American society into the utopia of Socialism.)

(And don’t forget to mention that slaves represented by far the largest concentration of wealth in the United States on the eve of the Civil War, (??? Slaves, by definition, have no wealth at all.)

that slaveholders were the richest Americans of their time, and that nothing could be accomplished without confronting their economic and political power.) (Notice that for the author even the slavery of blacks is about the powerful wealthy vs. the poor and disenfranchised [this is otherwise known as "the struggle"]. But he hasn't even discussed the torture, abuse, and exploitation of human beings based on nothing more than the color of their skin.

The reason is, the causes Socialists embrace are never about righting a wrong or correcting an injustice. Socialists don't care about blacks, gays, women, or the poor. They care only about The Agenda, which is the overthrow of The System. They want to be in charge, and will only embrace these causes for their utility in advancing The Agenda. 

The reader should keep this firmly in mind when it comes to Socialists.)

Refer to the long struggle for women’s rights, which demanded not only the vote but also equality for women in all realms of life and in doing so challenged some of the most powerful entrenched interests in the country.

You should mention the People’s Party, or Populists, and their Omaha platform of 1892, which describes a nation not unlike our own, with inequality rife and a political system in need of change, where “corruption dominates the ballot-box, the Legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench…. [and] the fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few.” Or what about the Progressive platform of 1912, for a party that nominated Theodore Roosevelt for president, which called, among other things, for strict limits on campaign contributions, universal health insurance, vigorous federal oversight of giant corporations and other measures that, over a century later, have yet to be realized. (Another feature of "democratic" Socialism is incrementalism. Though they will not exclude the idea of bloody revolution, they prefer to infiltrate and transform institutions over time.)

Of course, every politician gives lip service to the idea of enhancing economic opportunity, but you have, rightly, emphasized that to secure this requires the active involvement of the federal government, not simply letting the free market work its supposed magic. (We have had the "active involvement" of government ever since the New Deal. Does the author not recognize that despite decades of "active involvement" government has fixed nothing?)

Your antecedents include not just FDR’s New Deal but also his Second Bill of Rights of 1944, inspired by the era’s labor movement, which called for the government to guarantee to all Americans the rights to employment, education, medical care, a decent home, and other entitlements that are out of reach for too many today. You could point to A. Philip Randolph’s Freedom Budget of 1967, which asked the federal government to address the deep economic inequalities the civil-rights revolution had left untouched. But beyond these and other examples, the point is that the rights we enjoy today—civil, political, economic, social—are the result of struggles of the past, not gifts from on high. That’s what you mean when you say we need a citizens’ revolution.

As to socialism, the term today refers not to a blueprint for a future society but to the need to rein in the excesses of capitalism, (There is no such thing as "the excesses of capitalism.")

evident all around us, to empower ordinary people in a political system verging on plutocracy, (Another result of decades of government interventionism, and the author wants even more.)

and to develop policies that make opportunity real for the millions of Americans for whom it is not. This is what it meant in the days of Eugene V. Debs, the great labor leader and Socialist candidate for president who won almost a million votes in 1912. Debs spoke the language of what he called “political equality and economic freedom.” But equally important, as Debs emphasized, socialism is as much a moral idea as an economic one ("Moral?" Upon what morality is Socialism based? What are the tenets of this morality? And why should we accept this morality, especially considering the fact of tens of millions dead at the hands of Socialists?)

—the conviction that vast inequalities of wealth, power, and opportunity are simply wrong (Why are they wrong? Upon what basis is this moral judgment asserted?

We want to know the moral code the author is appealing to. Knowing that Socialists use every day language with different meanings, we have no confidence that "moral" means to him what it means to us.)

and that ordinary people, using political power, can produce far-reaching change. It was Debs’s moral fervor as much as his specific program that made him beloved by millions of Americans.

Each generation of Americans had made its own contribution to an ongoing radical tradition, and you are following in their footsteps. So next time, forget about Denmark and talk about Paine, Douglass, FDR, and Debs as forebears of a movement that can make the United States a fairer, more equal, more just society. (Again, the use of language. The author is not using the conventional meaning of these terms. This is the kind of manipulation we always see from Socialists. This is how they enlist the support of people, who simply take them at their word.

History has shown us that Socialism is a cancer, a destroyer, a repressor. Nothing written by the author here has refuted that.)

Sincerely,

Eric Foner
DeWitt Clinton Professor of History
Columbia University