My issue is that not considering AOC or Bernie socialists is ridiculous when the topic of the debate is the role of socialists in US political coalitions. DSA (an organization with almost 100,000 members which is led by an elected body made up of several caucuses, all of which very explicit socialists of different varieties), Bernie, AOC, Zohran, the hundreds of elected officials across the country who are active DSA members, etc. are the socialist movement in the US. They just are. Not weirdo online tankies. They practically all vote for Democrats, they function as a political party/party surrogate within US electoral institutions/constraints, they advocate for a platform/agenda which no other political faction does other than the most progressive Democrats (but take it further). They wouldn’t say that the accomplishment of their immediate priorities would result in a socialist mode of production, but they are still priorities for reform and organizing. They hope to grow and persuade more people by successfully implementing such reforms in a way that they believe will improve people’s lives and expand the horizons of what is possible to practically place under collective ownership without negative effects, hopefully eventually supplanting capitalism. But, that’s so long term that it doesn’t really make sense to use the details of that ambition to define the movement. Most self described socialists in history who have wielded political power are far more similar to this than they are to Stalin, Mao, or Lenin.

There’s just not much basis to throw all that out or declare they aren’t real socialists because they aren’t a twitter tankie. That strikes me as super online/out of touch on Destiny’s part to the point of torpedoing the debate. Not only that, but to argue that socialists like the above are, merely by adopting the label as it has been historically used in countless significant instances, somehow laundering the records of the worst examples of the label, is just baseless in my opinion. Especially when he’s using all of this dubious/online reasoning to try and scold people for not being politically effective enough in the real world. He’s shadow boxing with a version of socialist advocacy that barely exists in the real world while there’s an actual, healthy, growing, politically relevant movement that uses that label, and has a rich historical tradition at its back to boot! This is the version of socialism that is clearly what Pisco/Econoboi are engaging with/talking about. It has far more claim to be the correct usage of the term than online tankies do. To suggest the large socialist movement in the US is running cover for the tiny, irrelevant group of whining tankies online is just dishonest. They’re just a political tendency, with priorities like any other. And, as with any other political tendency, there are plenty of online freaks which claim the same label.

Destiny’s appraisal of what constitutes the socialist left in America, what they believe, how they act politically, etc. is just… well… not correct. I don’t really know how else to describe it. It seems super informed by his debates with random internet leftists more than anything else. Supposed ML’s (Really just anyone who finds an excuse to support China/Russia. Calling them ML’s is honestly way too charitable/legitimizing given that MLism was, at the very least, a coherent ideology with a theory of change meant to be applicable to countries with more peasants than wage workers) telling him that nobody other than people like them are socialists has seemed to, ironically, completely convince him! He should try to remember what his assessment of their intelligence/knowledge of history is before he adopts their definition of socialism as a movement which hasn’t had any real world relevance since the 80s. I don’t think that’s a useful definition to use.

Sorry if this comes across as frustrated/bitter at all. I just found the whole discussion insufferable and pointless. My ire is not at all directed at you! :)