by Anna Paulina
The “new” socialism that is rapidly gaining adherents within the Democrat Party bears a striking resemblance to the totalitarian ideology that just drove oil-rich Venezuela to the point of mass starvation.
They might not even realize it themselves, but beneath the facade of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “democratic socialism” and Senator Bernie Sanders’ “Bernie bros” movement lies the same authoritarian spirit that animates every socialist experiment.
American socialists and their liberal supporters tend to become extremely defensive when their ideology is compared to that of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro, insisting they only wish to implement the variety of socialism that prevails in countries such as Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, despite those countries constantly telling Americans they are absolutely not socialist.
Now that affairs in Venezuela have reached the breaking point and President Trump has put his foot down to call for the dictator Maduro’s departure, the Democrats’ socialist brigades are shifting gears and trying to downplay the brutality of that regime.
Sanders, the godfather of contemporary “democratic-socialism” in the U.S., is refusing to say that the reign of Maduro and his increasingly violent band of Chavistas must end, but still ran afoul of his comrades by calling on the Venezuelan strongman to allow humanitarian aid into the country.
That went too far for the diehards in the Democrat Party’s socialist wing, who excoriated Sanders for supporting President Trump’s decision to send humanitarian aid and warned that it could cost him the support of American socialists.
Even veteran left-wing journalists like Max Blumenthal castigated Sanders for feeding “into an interventionist narrative crafted by the Trump administration,” a notion that far-left Democrat Representative Ilhan Omar echoed in a recent series of tweets implying that humanitarian aid is merely cover for military intervention.
This rigid insistence on ideological conformity shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who understands the totalitarian impulses that drive all socialism — even the hip, social media-friendly brand that AOC is pushing.
Confronted with the obvious economic reality that her $93 trillion “Green New Deal” was unrealistic, nonsensical, and would destroy the American economy, AOC reacted in the best socialist tradition. She just waved her hands, explained that none of that matters, we’re going to do it anyway, and if you don’t like it, you can pound sand.
“I don’t care anymore,” the freshman Congresswoman told her critics, “I’m at least trying and they’re not. The power is in the person who’s trying, regardless of the success.”
“So people are like, ‘Oh it’s unrealistic. Oh it’s vague. Oh it doesn’t address this little minute thing,'” she scoffed. “And I’m like, ‘You try. You do it. Cuz you’re not. Cuz you’re not. So, until you do it, I’m the boss.’ How about that?”
One can almost imagine a Soviet commissar explaining to a group of starving peasants why there’s no grain on the collective farm this year because Comrade Stalin got a little too aggressive in his rush to create a classless utopia. “I don’t care anymore,” he says, mocking them. “Oh it’s unrealistic. Oh it’s vague. Oh it doesn’t address this little minute thing like you eating.”
“I’m at least trying,” the Chinese commissar might have told the starving peasants who were ordered to melt their farm tools into useless lumps of metal so that Chairman Mao could meet his steel production numbers. “The power is in the party that’s trying, regardless of the success.”
For now, let’s just be thankful that none of them — not Sanders, not AOC, and not any of their beguiled followers — are “the boss” the way Maduro is (for now) in Venezuela.
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Anna Paulina (@RealAnnaPaulina) served in the Air Force as an E-4 senior airman and is presently the director of Hispanic engagement for Turning Point USA, a conservative nonprofit aimed at encouraging student civic engagement.
