Midterm Media Bedwetting Over 'Socialism' Has Truly Begun

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Last week New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and a bunch of his "democratic socialist" allies won several key primaries in the city. The victories kicked several Democratic party incumbents to the curb, instantaneously triggering a massive wave of extraction class hyperventilation echoed across the corporate press.

Despite being a handful of primary victories in the deep blue areas of New York, it immediately triggered a wave of headlines about how "socialism" was now dangerously close to devouring the country alive:

To be clear, the U.S. political discourse has been so polluted by decades of corporate and right wing propaganda and substandard education, that I don't think even well-intentioned Americans operate with any coherent, grounded understanding of political reality or policy a good 80 percent of the time.

So when you mention "socialism," most Americans have been well conditioned to immediately think of AK-47 wielding revolutionaries and bread lines, not public libraries, fire departments, community-owned broadband networks, or regulators holding companies accountable for Listeria-riddled arugula.

The U.S. is such a corrupt corporatocracy, most "democratic socialism" in practice usually involves deeply under-funded progressive movements desperately clawing uphill for the barest of common-sense reforms – a tiny fraction of which ever come to fruition due to overwhelming financial and political ratfucking by the rich.

Which is to say you probably shouldn't hold your breath if you're waiting for the plebs to seize the means of production. We're a glorified shopping mall (admittedly with some nice mountains) pretending to be a country, singularly obsessed with unchecked wealth accumulation above all else.

Even then, Trump corruption has been so extreme – and the failure of the Democratic party to adapt and fight back has been so pathetic – and the corporate press coverage so enabling and awful – that the lazy veneer has been stripped away, leaving the obvious rot beneath in full view to young voters.

Enter scary socialism (haunted_house_ghost_sounds.wav).

Most of the democratic socialists that won in New York City aren't remotely radical; they're pushing for things like free child care, equitable taxation of extremely rich people, swapping out a few cops for social workers, and avoiding the industrialized U.S. taxpayer-funded mass murder of overseas toddlers.

Most of their positions are both popular and ordinary. Perhaps we should have regulators that function? Mayhap we could have a CEO or two that isn't a grotesque, comic book racist supervillain? What if we heavily taxed obscenely rich people and used the money to repair U.S. bridges and feed children?

Most of these aren't just not extreme positions, they're majority held.

But corporate media ownership very much likes the broken status quo, the corruption, and the regulatory capture. Said ownership would very much like this gravy train to keep rolling, and they very much see progressive populist reform as a bigger threat to their interests than democracy-ending authoritarianism.

This is endlessly reflected in press coverage, and they've never really been subtle about it. Propaganda-driven, right wing fake populism like MAGA is framed as "authentic middle America." Genuine, grass roots progressive populism coming from anywhere left of center is framed as extreme, unreliable, and incompetent.<br>If you flash back to 2010 or so, you might recall how the Tea Party (a billionaire-backed artificial right wing "populist" marketing rebranding of post-George W. Bush Republicanism that ultimately birthed MAGA) was heralded by the press as an authentic grass roots movement that should be taken very seriously.

Now that a populist left wing movement is gaining momentum on the back of frustration with fascism and historic levels of corruption, the corporate press is painting a very different picture.

Prominent CNN pseudo-journalist Van Jones, for example, took to Elon Musk's right wing propaganda website to unsubtly imply that Mamdani supporters mostly just hate America and free enterprise. You can clearly see he sees the authentic excitement building to his left as an enemy to be bested in combat:<br>Fading comedian and centrist Democrat Bill Maher also made press headlines maligning the "crazy" democratic socialists of New York who are somehow failing at their jobs despite not having started them yet:<br>"Democrats just elected three very far-left democratic socialists in New York who are crazy — like outright really crazy — so like, how are they gonna blow it? I don't know but they seem to be well on their way."<br>It's very clear that corporations, Republicans, and centrist Democrats alike are very upset that Mamdani's easy charm is helping rebrand a political movement they only foundationally understood through the lens of Reagan-era bogeymen and a media utterly dedicated to...