Rebranding The Devil

by digby

When the McCain Palin people started blathering on about Obama being a socialist I wondered whether it would blow back on the conservatives. After all, only old people like me, who grew up during the cold war, still have that reflexive freakout over the word. Young people just see it as another political ideology.

So, when the rightwingers went nuts and startedcalling this very popular young president a socialist, rather than tarring him with an unpopular label, they ended up validating socialism by applying it to a popular, mainstream politician.

Here's Ian at Overruled:

A somewhat surprising poll was just released showing that only 53% of Americans “believe capitalism is better than socialism.” Amongst the under-thirty set, the two enjoy almost equal support, 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided.

[...]

I see this poll as even more evidence of how widespread the American people’s rejection of conservative values has become. Ever since Sarah Palin ceased to be an attractive-but-unknown face from Alaska, conservatives have railed against any attempt to use government spending to mitigate the present economic downturn, labeling it “Socialism!” The alternative, they say, is to double-down on George W. Bush’s policies, cut taxes on the super-rich, and rely on the invisible hand of the market to make everything all better again.

In other words, the American people have been subjected to a months-long campaign which defines President Obama’s popular policies to improve the economy as “socialism,” and George W. Bush’s disastrous policies as “not socialism.” Is it any shock, then, that many Americans no longer find the word “socialism” very scary?

One irony of this turn of events is that the conservative campaign to redefine Keynesian economics as “socialism” may have the effect of legitimizing actual socialists. Not that long ago, anyone who was properly labeled as a socialist was appropriately excluded from the American economic debate—virtually no one, including myself, has any interest in nationalizing the entire private sector. Now that conservatives have associated the word with the popular President Obama, however, I fear that real socialists now have an opportunity to latch on to the President’s popularity and ride it to greater relevance.

I don't fear that, myself. I think it would be a very good thing to have some real socialists participate in our political discourse. As long as we have disaster capitalists holding the kind of political sway they clearly hold, there is a need for balance from the other side of the ideological spectrum. We've seen the results of allowing the Big Money Boyz to have their way in all things. A little dose of socialism (or fear of socialism, anyway) might mitigate their influence a little bit .

And it would serve the wingnuts right for dredging up what was essentially a dead ideology in America and applying it to the politician whom young people nearly worship. Bad tactic all around. But then that's their specialty these days.