Why do Democrats represent themselves as socialists?

Question

I noticed that the American Democrats represent themselves as socialists, communists, human rights fighters, leftists... I cannot believe it. They didn't introduce socialism in the USA. In Serbia, there are Democratic party. They also claim that they are socialists but it is clear that they support neoliberal capitalism. 

Answer 1

Political campaigning under false pretenses is not new.  The German National Socialists pretended to be socialists of a sort (at least until Roehm was shot), and it soon became clear that they were nationalists of an extreme kind.  Politicians will say whatever they think will lead them to power.

Comments

Tink, with your grandmother, and the two WWI widows who raised her...do you know, was there a sense of virtual unbelief that their country could have gone in such a direction?

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I think of one of the German-born, brilliant physicians whose work I studied: He tried VERY hard to convince his eleven siblings to emigrate to USA with him. They all refused, and being of Jewish extraction they all died in the Holocaust, all eleven of them. 

The physician himself only became convinced after he saw Nazi soldiers, or maybe police?... enter a passenger train...I don't recall the circumstances, but they were so violent with the passengers that the physician saw clearly the direction of the country, took his family and left pretty much everything behind.

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Well, to my grandparents and great-grandparents, it was pretty obvious what Nazism was leading to, and they were not going to fight and/or die for those hooligans and criminals, who could be seen marching and brawling in the streets.

Here is an excellent website where you can find lots of pictures of life in the Weimar Republic.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hen-magonza/24746988948/in/photolist-DGNMDf-21QEqRr-21QEpm2-21QEqwP-21QEpxV-21QEpX2

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I could open it Tink, and yes it helps explain why the destructive direction was obvious to your folks.

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Another branch of my family left Germany in the wake of the unrest of 1848, only to be later drafted into the American Civil War, the 11th Corps of the Union Army, to be exact. That corps had so many German immigrants, that commands were given in both English and German. The corps took terrible beatings at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, but my relatives survived, as far as I know, later becoming beer brewers. In WW1, a distant cousin of mine from that branch of my family served in the US Rainbow Division in France.

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I had heard of that corps, where commands were given in both languages, and which lost so many.

Answer 2

Hi Kninjanin,

Well I don't think I can answer your Q, but as you know I AM interested in trying to figure out capitalism...so, I googled "neoliberal capitalism," because I didn't really have any idea what THAT might be...

I found an interesting YouTube video that explains neoliberal capitalism in five minutes, so I will post it for you. But it seems to me that socialism and neoliberal capitalism are VERY different, with neither of them very good, I thought?

I did read somewhere that Bernie Sanders represents himself as socialist, but that technically he would be considered as more of a social democrat.

Okay, here is your video, and ima keep coming back to your interesting Q and see what the others say!

Comments

Thank you!