The Redefinition of Socialism by the Moderate Left and Crypto Communists, Respectively.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are
presenting 99% the same policy choices but when Bernie Sanders presents those policy choices he calls them socialism and when Elizabeth Warren presents those policy choices she calls them capitalism and they're the same policies they were very fundamentally genuinely that even the same specific tax reforms the same social programs it's the same slate of priorities and proposed new legislation but one of them calls it socialism and one of them calls it Cavaliers so there's a problem here so if you're gonna sit here and say well there are failures of capitalism yeah of course I'm gonna agree with you I'd be an idiot not to I lived under a lot of those failures but it's not fair when I say hey your system failed to address this or failed to do this for you to point to go well these are still some problems under capitalism sure but we're not having everybody in the state of Arkansas or Texas die because of some famine and then killing people may try to escape the country somebody finds out about it right he's at one there's a difference in scale and two I'm not claiming that capitalism on its own and the purest most libertarian pipe dream system will fix all these problems capitalism needs to be heavily regulated the profit interest doesn't always work in the public Savior favor but I don't think you can just say well because there are problems with capitalism let's try central planning when central planning has not effectively worked for any economy ever the difference is we have to be a little bit more honest when we look at why certain people die or why certain things happen under economic systems States when somebody goes to the hospital and they can't afford to get some tests to screen for cancer and then they later died of it because they didn't catch it early enough this is a failure of capitalism we have the resources there literally right there and the person can't access it okay that is 100 failure capitalism when you have a people who are told to stop farming and then food isn't rationed it to them and all of their crops are requisitioned by the central government as a part of central planning and then those people starve three and a half to seven and a half million of them that is a failure of central planning of socialism or communism do you agree or do you think that these two things are fundamentally different all right we are living through a period of time when the meaning of the word socialist is being redefined in the mainstream media in mainstream political discourse not just the United States all around the world and then on the other hand the concept of socialism is being used insincerely by left-wing extremists by communists crypto communists to hook and draw in a broader public to draw in more public interest and support for an ideology that most people find abhorrent morally repugnant and a historical by which I mean they find it to be based on oh hi it's about history in the same way that the neo-nazi movement rests on lies but let's let's talk about the mainstream use of the word socialist first and foremost that is changing right now and the way in which the meaning of the term has become slippery and unintentionally deceptive ie it's deceptive even when people don't mean to deceive you it can be shown in contrasting the rhetoric of Bernie Sanders to the rhetoric of Elizabeth Warren Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are presenting 99% the same policy choices but when Bernie Sanders presents those policy choices he calls them socialism and when Elizabeth Warren presents those policy choices she calls them capitalism and they're the same policies they are very fundamentally genuinely that even the same specific tax reforms the same social programs it's the same slate of priorities and proposed new legislation but one of them calls it socialism and one of them calls it capitalism so there's a problem here now on a very practical level if I were a gambling man I would bet that in the in the future within the next 10 years we're gonna see the Bernie Sanders approach collapse that his style of rhetoric will cease to be popular and we're gonna see the Elizabeth Warren style of rhetoric succeed Elizabeth Warren says of herself quote I am a capital to my bones that's her approach but she is presenting a set of priorities again the same as Bernie Sanders that many people today would describe as some kind of moderate socialism now what is moderate socialism or what do moderates mean when they say socialism I think the turning point here was the turning point in the popular perception of these options for the future not just the United States but in Europe in Australia and many places in the world was a 2015 film by Michael Moore so this is a film that was titled where to invade next the title is a joke Michael Moore is a famous documentary filmmaker my claim here is not that everyone on earth saw this film my claim is that everyone who is employed in the mainstream media saw this well the type of people who sit at CNN and even Fox News whatever the type of people who sit and broadcast on the radio and on TV media professionals they all saw this film and that's because Michael Moore is the darling of that social class in this film in 2015 Michael Moore naked Lee and directly and honestly makes the argument that the United States should imitate high-tax countries in Europe it is an argument that the United States should have higher taxes and higher quality social programs delivered to the public paid for by those taxes so if we take Denmark as the example of this and please remember Denmark is a capitalist country it really is Denmark is a free-market capitalist country but it's a country with high taxes and high quality social services if we take Denmark as the example here then we could call this the Denmark if occation of the United States of America now if we took Japan as an example we could talk about the Japan off' occasion or Japanese ation s it but it was mostly focusing on examples of affluent countries in Western Europe that Michael Moore put together this argument now another rhetorical approach to this is Bernie Sanders currently on his campaign standing in Detroit standing in the united sates american detroit and pointing across the river to canada and asking the question why is it that in canada getting prescription drug benefits is so much cheaper in the united states of america why can't we just imitate canada this would be the canadian ization the united states of america which does not take too much imagination for Americans really - but I have to emphasize again here like the contrast between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren a conservative a conservative Christian Republican politician could have just as easily made that argument it would have been dynamite for anyone in the Republican Party to go and stand on the river and point across the river and ask why is it that when Americans get sick they have to pay this much money for this medicine and when Canadians get sick they have to pay this much mean there's nothing inherently left-wing about the argument there's nothing inherently socialist about the argument there's nothing Marxist about it um you know this is uh this is a concern that could be expressed by conservatives Hagan can say it should be expressed by conservatives in the same way when Bernie Sanders points the finger at China and points the finger at Mexico that Bernie Sanders openly uses the rhetoric of saying China and Mexico are stealing American jobs that is that is paleo conservative that is the definition of conservative over the last 50 years his whole policy position on imports protectionism trade and even migration both legal and illegal immigration Bernie Sanders is in effect a conservative now of course Bernie Sanders takes these policies and packages them and presents them to the public as socialist again Elizabeth Warren almost the exact same policies packaged and presented as left-wing capitalists so we have a problem here the fundamental problem is that since the breakdown of neoliberalism almost all of these terms have been bending to the point of breaking it's becoming almost meaningless it's like we're going down a highway and the meanings of the signs on side of that where there are signposts and the signposts use words that once had a very clear and simple meaning but today they have to have a footnote in a paragraph of text to let you know what these words really mean right now what does socialists really mean the discourse in the United States of America that's now influencing the whole world is a form of moderate socialism that really means capitalism with very high taxes and very high quality benefits provided the public with those taxes that's what I mean and that's really historically that's not the meaning of socialist even economically it's not the meaning of socialist and Bernie Sanders himself will openly say he does not support the government's taking over ownership of private enterprise his definition of socialism is not about public ownership of the means of production say state subordination of the free market that's not what socialism is room and that's why exactly the same policy that he presents as socialist can be presented by Elizabeth Warren as capitalist whew I'm tempted to end the video there but here's the problem we also lived through a period of time when this mainstream use of the word socialist is being cynically employed by people in the far left by crypto communists who want to create more sympathy for communism through the overly vague and misleading use of socialism and - there are communists who are actively trying to recruit new members and supporters and followers through a series of stages of first saying oh well do you agree with socialism as defined by Bernie Sanders and then asking oh can we get you to agree with anti capitalism with blaming capitalism oh now step three is can we get you to participate in making excuses for the historical failures of Lenin Stalin Mao Zedong can we start to get you to participate in a kind of a historical revisionist history oh can we oh and now can we fully radicalize you that is going on at exactly the same time and that is to be profoundly disturbing immoral and really sickening and it's basically you know the little boy who cried wolf they say you know oh you can't have free healthcare that's socialism they say fine I'm a socialist you know and that's really what's going on with the Bernie Sanders debate right now and I think it's amusing and it shows that the hysterical anti-communism has kind of taken the the tank off the word or the the onus off the word people aren't afraid of the word anymore I think that's good but I must say that socialism is not the government spending money it's not progressive taxation that kind of thing goes on in every society to some degree or other so when you say socialism so are you implying like a fully planned economy then now well you'd have to define what a fully planned economy means if you ask the average American what is socialism the answer they would probably give you is stealing money from the rich and giving it to the poor okay I'm not here to defend the average American sentiments for socialism or communism that's absurd however your counter points are just as propaganda Laden to try to say that industrialization and the Soviet Union was successful even though these were done on the backs of massive famines that were a great showcase of the failures of central planning as a support for central planning if Germans never happen under capitalism people never substantiate and becoming a superpower this is what ridiculous that would be like me saying that that you know the mass deaths in the u.s. Civil War proved that American capitalism doesn't work that would be like me saying the Great Depression proves that capitalism doesn't work I mean that's that's that's ridiculous you could think the country becomes a global superpower totally superpower the invent space travel electrifies the entire place is building some the biggest hydroelectric power plants in the world people that lived in huts are suddenly living in modern apartment buildings with electricity but none of that counts because there was a famine along the way what's going on here in this debate from the far-left perspective the crypto communist perspective it's not as spontaneous as it may seem for them the crucial challenge is to get you you in the audience to loosen your grip on reality to be willing to take that step from fiction into nonfiction to make you a believer where you're willing to start participating in these lies about the tragic history of the Soviet Union the tragic history of China under Mao Zedong under communism were you're willing to valorize and make excuses for some of the most despicable and notorious dictatorships in the history of the world if they can get you to do that they've won and that is the sense in which they're taking the moderate use of the word socialist and they're making it into bait on a hook and what I see happening on the Internet again and again and again is people taking that bait and they're basically conditioning themselves to be more receptive to communist propaganda without realizing that that's what they're buying into when they take the first step of basically settling for a policy package that is no more socialist than Elizabeth Warren or the modern state of Denmark these are the dangers of how ideology gets packaged and repackaged in the 21st century on the Internet I mean people like to disrespect my truth but the fact is that you know my name is I don't know