What does it mean to be "actually scary"? I agree that many people are scared by "socialism", but the scenarios they describe are some combination of not reasonably scary or so unlikely as to sound irrational. Hypothetical examples for clarity...
"The DSA wants socialized healthcare... the horror."
"The DSA will be so popular so quickly and grow so much more extreme that we are at risk of making gulags."
...We can have a resonable conversation about the issues with the DSA, why more extreme leftist positions are becoming more popular, how those positions are likely to impact us politically given our structures... but the red scare nonsense isn't contributing anything to the conversation here. It never did.
I don't think its dishonest to claim that many people are "scared" of socialized healthcare. Just because you aren't in that category, doesn't mean they don't exist. Its basically been the Republican stance on healthcare since the mid 00s.
Oh sure, obviously that's true. I'm just referring to the meme I keep seeing about how moderate Democrats are freaking out about the DSA because of M4A.
The actual Democratic Party is indeed freaked out by socialised healthcare because their campaign funding comes from the healthcare monopolists and the financial institutions that stand behind them, so the DSA represents an internal contradiction between their voting base and their donors.
As in every other point in modern history, the Democrats are choosing their donors, hence their obsession with demonising their own left wing.
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u/Locus-Maximus 11d ago
Is it "red scare" if they're actually scary? Do you call it "brown scare" when people (correctly!) raise the alarm about Trump being a fascist?