How Anti-Socialism Fuels Anti-Science Extremism in America
Republicans and the political right generally have routinely characterized President Joe Biden’s social and economic agendas as “socialist,” hoping a residual Cold War anti-communist hysteria will resonate with and terrify American voters, turning them reflexively and unthinkingly against policies and practices that would actually serve their interests and well-being.
This tactic succeeded significantly in Florida’s Dade County in the 2020 presidential election where the electorate played a large role in handing that state’s electoral votes to Donald Trump.
At the same time, Republicans and the political right have also demonized science, a phenomenon we see quite clearly in the dangerous prevalence of climate change denial and in the resistance to COVID-19 vaccines, as well as the overall downplaying of the seriousness, if not outright denial, of the pandemic.
While, in my voracious consumption of American political discourse, I have seen really no analysis at all that links anti-socialist and anti-science political rhetoric as mutually reinforcing, as working cooperatively, it is more than a little compelling, as I’ll analyze below, to understand the damaging way anti-socialism validates, even fuels, the anti-science worldview that has been responsible for so much death and division in the United States.
Beyond compelling, though, recognizing this connection between anti-socialist and anti-science politics is crucially important not just for helping us share an understanding of reality but also for advancing a progressive political agenda designed to be responsive to our pressing human needs by addressing the facts of the shared material reality in which we live.
We still see, indeed on a routine basis, elements of the Democratic Party, including self-identified progressives, distance themselves from the term “socialism.” Biden, of course, despite the progressive content of his agenda, eschewed the term in trying to differentiate and distance himself from Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary. He has since boasted, when accused of being a socialist, that, “I beat the socialist.”
Arguably, though, a belief in science supports a socialist philosophy and worldview, and to slander or dismiss…
