Do you ever see something that is absolutely horrifying, the implications of which are terrible, and no one else seems to really notice? These two tweets are one of those things for me:
Anyone with a basic understanding of politics is aware that Nazism is separated as a unique political
So if socialism is bad because it’s in the name of Nazis, then democratic republics for the people must be pretty horrible too, going by the DPRK.
While we’re cherry-picking, the Kingdom of Norway is consistently one of the best countries to live in across several metrics. So clearly we should go back to kingdoms, because it’s in the name. Sometimes the old ways are best XD
There’s a much more-fundamental example:
Socialism is when parents shelter, clothe, & feed, their children, who don’t have earnings to shelter/clothe/feed themselves.
Every parent who feeds their babies is demonstrating socialism, no matter what their politics purport to be.
Keep the framing universal, & that guts the gaslighting’s position MUCH more effectively.
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Thanks for sharing that idea! I appreciate what you’re getting at: that basic care (food, clothing) embodies the tenet of equality in socialism. However, the example of a parent feeding a child doesn’t quite capture the power-relations, freedoms, and systems aspects of socialism. I don’t think we really want to say a master feeding/clothing their slave or a king feeding/clothing a favorite court jester is really “demonstrating socialism”. Socialism is about how society as a whole arranges ownership, production, and resource distribution (i.e. collective ownership of the means of production). It’s a counter to capitalism.
Parental relationships are, ironically, a special case where limiting freedoms and greater power disparity are justified in most egalitarian systems. We usually don’t give children ownership over the means of production.
Good formal description: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/socialism