House Republicans introduced a measure this week calling for Congress to condemn “the horrors of socialism.” It was bait. And most Democrats took it.
The 109 Democrats who joined every Republican in the House to vote in favor of the nonbinding resolution lent their voice to the initiative, but their support will have no tangible effect on policy. Still, it is a victory for the GOP, which has succeeded in a strategic effort to jam a wedge into the Democratic caucus, further stigmatize the left, and cook up some cynical ads for the next election cycle.
The resolution states that “socialist ideology necessitates a concentration of power that has time and time again collapsed into Communist regimes, totalitarian rule, and brutal dictatorships.” Its specific condemnations of the horrors of socialism focus primarily on the brutal communist regimes of 20th century authoritarians like Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong.
But it deliberately makes no distinction between those regimes and more contemporary leftist projects with commitments to democracy. For example, in the resolution Stalin is puzzlingly grouped together with late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Stalin was infamous for horrific autocratic repression, which included mass imprisonment and executions. By contrast, Chavez operated as the popular head of an affluent modern democracy in Latin America, and he did a great deal of transformative economic good for his country with his interpretation of socialist principles, even while under siege from the United States. (This isn’t to defend everything Chavez did, but to say he committed some of “the greatest crimes in history” is absurd.)
The purpose of the resolution is to eliminate any difference between 20th century authoritarian communism and the rising popularity of democratic socialism in the U.S. today.
More broadly speaking, the purpose of the resolution is to eliminate any difference between 20th century authoritarian communism and the rising…
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