Someone I've known for a long time, who has described himself as liberal, recently posted a meme on Facebook that equated Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayana Press, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar with Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladmir Lenin, and Stalin. His comment: "Bad commies all".
My first reaction was that whoever made the meme in the first place had to be horrendously racist and sexist. All four women are elected Democrats and people of colour. To put them on the same level with four white men who were noted communists seemed extremely over-the-top and a false comparison.
I was immediately called out on this viewpoint: "These women are radicals, socialists, and aggressively pushing identity politics, which is just Marx class struggle rebranded around ethnicities. They are bad news."
I refrained from pointing out the obvious, that ethnicities have always had difficulty being heard and treated equally in an otherwise homogeneous society. These women and their supporters are pushing back with the truth.
Not to mention, the concept of socialism has been bandied about for decades as an evil thing and something to be fought against. Many people conveniently forget that it helped bring about some of our modern systems such as socialized health care and other tax-supported programs.
Someone else chimed in with the following: "(They) are advocating for a degree of government control that was never foreseen in the American Constitution; her crowd are OK with unequalled levels of government control."
A brief look at the Twitter feeds of the above Congresswomen shows none of this. They are principled, understand the issues, and call out BS when they see it. They are advocates for LGBTQ rights, equal pay, and immigration reform. All of them are disdainful of corporate greed and blatant government cruelty. Just because others gain equal rights does not mean that you lose your own. So why is this considered by so many to be a bad thing?
Perhaps the men in power are afraid. Afraid of the truth, of having to admit they're wrong, of losing their positions. Perhaps they are angry because these upstarts aren't being meek and subservient; rather they intend to stop the men from doing whatever they please. The men could be insecure because their standard tactic of doubling down on the threats and vitriol doesn't work any more.
One has to ask, do the men in power really want a world where capitalism and environmental destruction run rampant, where women and ethnics are inferior, and where they can do whatever they want to keep their hands on their money? The answer seems to be yes - particularly since the president himself removes crucial protections and regulations while spouting lies every single day.
I've toned down my political discourse and stopped posting anti-Trump rhetoric on my social media feeds because I've been accused of lying and spreading hatred. People whom I've known for decades have taken stances that surprised and disappointed me, and so I stopped talking to them on the subject. Today's politics, particularly in the U.S., has become divisive and irrational, and the flood of memes on social media makes it worse.
As for my friend, well, I know he'll probably never change his mind.
