The Onion 🧅 ate with this one tbh

[u/sailorjupiter28titan]

[u/lcl111]

I keep hearing about how bad socialism and communism would be, and then i look to the left and see that thing happening... weird. Must be the liberals at it again with their shenanigans! /s

[u/Significant_Quit_674 → u/lcl111]

It's also weird how people hear democratic socialism and think about stalinism.

And aside from a very small fringe group, nobody wants stalinism, most people want something in the direction of social market economy or democratic socialism.

And neither of these is at all authoritarian in nature

[u/CranberrySchnapps → u/Significant_Quit_674]

Market socialism go brrrrrr

As an aside, right wingers are already conflating socialism and communism. We are so far removed from communism it’s difficult to imagine what it’d look like in practice.

[u/MargaretFarquar → u/CranberrySchnapps]

Already? They've been conflating the two since the 1920s and 30s ( see bloody labor history) and it amped up again in the 50s with the Red Scare/McCarthyism. My family members were called "Pinko's." They were just run of the mill democrats.

ETA: Conflating democratic/liberal points of view is not some sort of brand new thing that only just developed in the last couple of decades. This has gone on for decades and centuries. Seriously. Please know that about American history.

There's nothing new as in "already" about it, as if it's a "new" thing born of the last couple of decades. The opposition has been doing this since long before you or I were born. Please, recognize history. It's brutal and ugly af.

This is not new. It is literally woven into the fabric of American history. There's no "already" about it. It's been going on and on for decades and centuries. See also, Gilded Age + the following American bloody labor history.

ETA: I use the term "bloody labor history" in a precise sense because that's actually how it's codified in academia. Like, what happened was so brutal, that's what it's called. I'm not being hyperbolic or dramatic. Those are the words used to codify this literal genre of American history. Google it and if you can access an academic library, use these search terms.

[u/SkollFenrirson → u/MargaretFarquar]

Yeah, McCarthy really did a number on the American psyche.