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Socialist (insult)

From EverybodyWiki Bios & Wiki


Communist, or more broadly socialist, has been used as a pejorative epithet against a wide range of individuals, political movements, governments, public, and private institutions since the emergence of the communist movement and the wider socialist movement. In the 19th century, the ruling classes were afraid of socialism because it challenged their rule, and socialism has faced opposition since then, and the opposition to it has often been organized and violent. During the 20th century, as socialism became a mainstream movement and communism gained power through communist parties, the political right, alongside organized anti-communism and critics of socialism, became their main opponent.

The United States are a notable exception among the Western world in not having had a major socialist party, and for having engaged in red-baiting, resulting in two historic Red Scare periods during the 1920s (First Red Scare) and 1950s (Second Red Scare). Such usage as an insult has been used as a tactic by the Republican Party against Democratic Party candidates, and has continued into the 21st century, including conflating German fascist Nazism as socialism and for left-wing politics.

Background[edit]

Further information: History of anarchism, History of communism, and History of socialism

Both communist and socialist movements have faced hostility since their breakthrough in the 19th century. Friedrich Engels stated that in 1848, at the time when The Communist Manifesto was first published, socialism was respectable, while communism was not. The Owenites in England and the Fourierists in France were considered respectable socialists, while working-class movements that proclaimed the necessity of radical change denoted themselves communists; this latter branch of socialism produced the communist work of Étienne Cabet in France and Wilhelm Weitling in Germany.[1] While liberal democrats looked to the Revolutions of 1848 as a democratic revolution, which in the long run ensured liberty, equality, and fraternity, communists denounced 1848 as a betrayal of working-class ideals by a bourgeoisie indifferent to the legitimate demands of the proletariat.[2]

In countries such as 19th-century Germany and Italy,[3] socialist parties have been banned,[4] like with Otto von Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Laws.[5] In the 1950s, West Germany and the United States banned the major communist party, the Communist Party of Germany[6] and the Communist Party USA,[7] respectively.[nb 1] With the expansion of liberal democracy and universal suffrage during the 20th century, socialism became a mainstream movement which expanded for most of the world, as center-left and left-wing socialist parties came to govern, become the main opposition party, or simply a commonality of the democratic process in most of the Western world; one major exception was the United States.[9] In the Eastern world, communist parties came to power through revolution, civil war, coup d'état, and other means, coming to cover one-third of the world population by 1985,[10] while in Western Europe communist parties were part of several post-war coalitions, before being ejected on the United States' orders, such as in Italy.[11] Those parties in the West continued to be an important part of the multi-party democracy process;[12] those in the East became a driving force for most of the 20th century due to the Soviet Union's role in World War II as part of the Allied powers against the fascist-led Axis powers, and later in the Cold War.[13] Socialist parties greatly contributed to existing liberal democracy.[14]

Usage[edit]

Communist or socialist have been used as insult, mainly in reference to authoritarian state socialist regimes and Communist states but also for any proposal that may further expand the role of the government,[15] by anti-communists and the political right for both communists and socialists, and for those who are neither but are alleged to be adopting socialist policies, as is done by Republicans for Democratic candidates in the United States.[16] Those terms have also been used as an insult for several left-wing politicians in center-left socialist parties to describe them as farthest left and more extreme than they actually are in an effort to marginalize them.[nb 2] For some scholars, communist and socialist, and the memories of such authoritarian regimes, are used as an insult to dismiss any criticism of capitalism and support for socialism by positing that any form of communism or socialism would always and inevitably result in 20th-century Communism and authoritarian regimes.[24]

United Kingdom[edit]

Further information: 2017 United Kingdom general election, 2019 United Kingdom general election, and Labour Party leadership of Jeremy Corbyn

In the United Kingdom, former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn was called a communist or Marxist,[25] and a communist spy by The Daily Mail, The Sun, The Telegraph, and The Times, despite experts and researchers stating that no evidence exists.[26] During the 2017 general election campaign, Steve Bush and George Eaton of the New Statesman commented that the Labour Party's manifesto was more Keynesian than anything,[27] with Eaton stating that the adopted policies "would be regarded as mainstream in most European countries."[28] According to some studies, media coverage of Corbyn has often been hostile and misrepresenting of his views.[29]

United States[edit]

Further information: 2020 United States presidential election, First Red Scare, Red-baiting, and Second Red Scare

During the 20th century, the United States underwent two Red Scares, first in the 1920s and then in the 1950s through McCarthyism.[30] In a speech on 10 October 1952, outgoing United States president Harry S. Truman (Democratic Party) lambasted Republicans for having "opposed almost all our programs to help the economic life of the country" and "having blindly turned [their] back on the tradition of public action for the public good", referencing then-Republican United States senator Robert A. Taft, who made the 1952 United States presidential election campaign about "creepy socialism", a scare word "they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years" according to Truman.[31] Socialism and socialization have been mistakenly used to refer to any state or government-operated industry or service (the proper term for such being either municipalization or nationalization); both terms have also been incorrectly used to mean any tax-funded programs, whether government-run or privately-run.[32]

Into the 21st century, with the rise in popularity and to the mainstream of self-declared democratic socialist United States senator Bernie Sanders, socialist has continued to be used as an insult, mainly by conservatives.[33] Among conservatives, socialist is used as an insult to imply that Nazism, and by extension fascism, was a left-wing ideology, which is contrary to the consensus among scholars of fascism as a far-right ideology.[34] An example of this is conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg's book Liberal Fascism, where modern liberalism and progressivism are described as the child of fascism, which is considered to be socialist.[34] For conservative figures such as Dinesh D'Souza and Candace Owens, American Left figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren are not only socialists but since the Nazis are wrongly considered to be socialists in this view, they are dangerous, and in turn anyone who oppose them cannot have any link to Nazism or the far right.[34] In an effort to erase leftist victims of Nazi violence, usage of socialist as an insult to falsely imply that the Nazis were leftists is seen as a way to disavowal far-right history, and justify escalation of retaliation and violence against leftists.[35]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ↑ The former's decision was upheld in a landmark case establishing limits on freedom of expression or speech by the European Commission of Human Rights in Communist Party of Germany v. the Federal Republic of Germany,[8] while the latter was applied through the Communist Control Act of 1954, which remains standing even though it has not been enforced, apart from two minor cases in the states of New Jersey and New York.[7]
  2. ↑ Those politicians disagree with the politics of triangulation and the Third Way politics adopted by their own parties like through New Labour,[17] such as by moving to the right in an attempt to regain political power and see a return to laissez-faire capitalism was a more pressing immediate concern;[18] they are generally opposed to neoliberalism,[19] or reject the Washington Consensus, and advocate a return along the lines of the social-liberal paradigm of the post-war consensus and the Golden Age of Capitalism, where Keynesian economics formed the base,[20] and there was more economic interventionism and nationalization policies, in contrast to the deregulation and privatization of the neoliberal era.[21] Those who left their center-left parties to found parties to their left are categorized by political scientist as Left parties within familles spirituelles,[22] and as left-wing populist parties.[23]

References[edit]

  1. ↑ Todorova 2020.
  2. ↑ Evans & Strandmann 2000, pp. 207–235, "1848 in European Collective Memory".
  3. ↑ Berman 2006, p. 52.
  4. ↑ Dolack 2016, p. 30.
  5. ↑ Sabry 2017, p. 164.
  6. ↑ Major 1997, p. 17.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 McAuliffe 1976.
  8. ↑ Petaux 2009, p. 166; Benedek & Kettemann 2014, p. 86.
  9. ↑ Foner 1984; Lipset & Marks 2000.
  10. ↑ Lansford 2007, pp. 9–24, 36–44.
  11. ↑ Leeden 1987, p. 63–64.
  12. ↑ Leeden 1987, p. 137–139.
  13. ↑ Columbia Encyclopedia 2007.
  14. ↑ Pierson 1995, p. 71.
  15. ↑ Astor 2019.
  16. ↑ Nichols 2011.
  17. ↑ Cassidy 2015; Cassidy 2019.
  18. ↑ Romano 2006.
  19. ↑ Hinnfors 2006; Lafontaine 2009; Corfe 2010.
  20. ↑ Klein 2008, p. 55.
  21. ↑ Hale, Legget & Martell 2004, pp. 9–26.
  22. ↑ March 2011.
  23. ↑ Damiani 2020.
  24. ↑ Ghodsee 2014; Ghodsee & Sehon 2018; Engel-Di Mauro et al. 2021.
  25. ↑ Fisher 2019.
  26. ↑ Harding et al. 2018.
  27. ↑ Bush 2017.
  28. ↑ Eaton 2017.
  29. ↑ Cammaerts 2016; Cammaerts et al. 2016.
  30. ↑ Walker 2011.
  31. ↑ Mikkelson 2019.
  32. ↑ Reinhardt 2009.
  33. ↑ Goodman 2015.
  34. ↑ 34.0 34.1 34.2 Granieri 2020.
  35. ↑ Berlatsky 2021.

Sources[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

  • Nichols, John (2011). The S Word: A Short History of an American Tradition ... Socialism (paperback ed.). New York City, New York: Verso Books. ISBN 9781844678211. Search this book on

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]


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