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In the earliest moments of Tonight We Riot, the recently released video game from Texas worker-owned coop Pixel Pushers Union 512, a pair of pixelated, flag-waving workers square up against riot cops. Theres only one way through, a speech bubble from your comrade reads. Direct action! Through the side-scroll brawler, you liberate and rally a growing crowd of workers fighting against an evil capitalist regime. You dont control just one protagonist; instead, you control the movement. When your avatar is killed, you simply control another worker in the group.

As long as one of us survives, the Revolution will live on, another text pop-up proclaims.

As an unapologetically anti-capitalist release, Tonight We Riot arrives in a time of need. During the pandemic, labor crises and inhumane treatment of workers have rocketed into the spotlight. While Jeff Bezos barrels towards trillionaire status, Amazon workers are reporting worsened conditions and lower pay. Pre-pandemic conditions that were suspect at best are now being recognized as exploitative and evil. Rarely has there been a better time to jump into a fiction where you and your coworkers fight against the tyranny of a money-hungry regime and build a more equitable world for all.

Tonight We Riot is an explicitly socialist offering in an industry that often flirts with but rarely commits to these principles. Influential titles like Bioshock, Borderlands, and The Outer Worlds have, in their own ways, prodded at the cruelties of capitalism. Video game critic Carli Velocci dubbed capitalism the most significant in-game antagonist of 2019. But PPU512 founder and art steward Ted Anderson and programmer Stephen Meyer, the co-creators of Tonight We Riot, wanted to push the needle further.

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What if we just made an honest-to-goodness leftist game that is unapologetically so, where we show that [leftist] structure, we show that there could be this fight, that it could have an actual culmination, that we could go somewhere with it? Anderson tells Observer about the idea behind Tonight We Riot.

On one level, its a cute little pixel art game, says Meyer. But on another, theres a mechanic here thats different from normal game mechanics where theres one protagonist embracing this great man theory of history. No, no, no. Its the movement. Its the people rising up.

Like television, film and books, video games are a space where worldviews are shaped, and culture is produced and reproduced. Meyer references the popularity of military shooter games as a cultural force. Theyre sort of this neo-conservative fantasy, he says. Up until grad school, I still had that view of military might makes right. But while TV and movies are subject to rigorous analysis in mainstream media sources, video games arent subject to the same level of scrutiny outside of the gaming community.

Theres a lot of games that people assume arent political just because they see games as being set aside from other media [or] divorced from the reality that we all share, says Anderson. Its still made by people, and people have lives and biases, and make decisions unconsciously where those biases align.

Tonight We Riot is published by Means Interactive, the newly minted video games arm of worker-owned leftist media company Means TV. Naomi Burton, who cofounded Means along with Nick Hayes in Detroit, explains that theyre in talks with a number of similarly aligned developers. Means deals are structured such that the majority of sales profits go to developers, while Means takes a small percentage. The coops profits are then allocated to the next project.

There hasnt been a game explicitly about toppling capitalism before, says Burton. Seeing those anti-capitalist values that over 50% of young Americans have reflected in a video game makes all of us feel seen and heard, and reminded were not alone in the fight for a better future.

Gaming communities are committed to this vision, too. Socialist Gamers is a community for left-wing gamers to build solidarity and counter far-right gamer culture. They wanted to carve out a place for leftist video game fans to meet and connect without the toxicity thats all too prevalent in online gaming culture, says Leslie, a Boston-based gamer who connected with Socialist Gamers in 2017, and who asked to be identified by her first name. The industry itself still has a long way to go in terms of being more accessible and less misogynistic, but the themes and messaging that games are sharing with players are getting more and more revolutionary, and I think thats absolutely a good thing.

Socialist Gamer staff member Brian, who lives in West Virginia and also asked to be identified by his first name, seeks out releases that align with his left-wing values, but says that while many studios and developers are liberal, most arent anti-capitalist. Theres a large untapped market for leftist ideals to be in video game narratives, but developers are not in any way incentivized to make explicitly leftist games, he says.

California-based gamer Quinny Cascade is heartened by the visibly radical bent of Tonight We Riot and similar works. [It] was made for me, she tells Observer over Twitter DM. Or rather, it was made for Us. Much of any medias intellectual, emotional, and social priming is representative of the status quo. Deviating from that formula can genuinely upset people.

Im a Native American, Pakistani trans woman with ADHD, and Im aggressively and empathetically leftist as hell. Im also angry, loud, and dark skinned. Most things are not created with me in mind [Tonight We Riot is] no more political than any other game is, it just reflects the voices of the unheard. Cascade adds, I think the truth is that most people are anti-capitalist, they just dont know it yet.

The lethal and imbalanced conditions forced by COVID-19 are disproportionately impacting communities that were already marginalized and targeted, a pattern that holds true in the gaming community. Most folks who play video games now are people of color, and almost half are women, says Leslie. Essentially, those who have been most affected by COVID-19. The workers who help make our favorite games get laid off while executives are basically unaffected.

But Leslie also highlights community-building creativity in Animal Crossing and fundraising efforts led by streamers as examples of organizing in the community to counteror at least mitigate the misery brought on bythe pandemics oppressive conditions. Game Workers Unite is an international organization building towards unionizing the game industry, while other worker coops like The Glory Society, founded by Night in the Woods co-creators Bethany Hockenberry and Scott Benson, and Motion Twin continue to create video games that are the product of equitable working conditions.

This mutual support and collectivism, says Anderson, are the only threats posed by Tonight We Riots socialism. A socialist is only threatening those rich people with living at the same level that everyone else already has to live, but improving those conditions to the point that thats not terrible anymore, he says. These arent unreasonable demands, these are demands for life.

Read more from the original source:
Tonight We Riot and the Rise of the Socialist Video Game - Observer

The global march toward socialism appeared to be over with the Soviet Union's collapse and the end of the Cold War.

Now, a wave of socialist ideology has sprung up across the US, seemingly out of nowhere.

A recent Gallup survey shows 43 percent of Americans think socialism would be good for the country. And according to a YouGov poll, 70 percent of Millennials say they'd vote for a socialist president.

How has this ideology gained such a foothold in the US?

Author and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza says a key aspect of it is what he calls "the socialist temptation." It's the idea that a person should feel entitled to another person's goods because the socialist hammers home the notion that your neighbor has essentially stolen from you.

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And, he says, socialists don't just rely on persuasion. If they tried to do that, they wouldn't be able to persuade a majority of Americans to support it.

"Socialism has never been in the mainstream of American politics until now," D'Souza said in an interview on Wednesday's 700 Club. "So how do they do it? Well, it's not just the Deep State. They also use the propaganda of academia, and the propaganda of the media, which includes digital censorship. They put people who are not on their side and get them, as they say, 'de-platformed,' get them thrown off of social media. And finally, Antifa. Look at all these roaming bands of thugs on the street. This is the paramilitary wing of American socialism," he said.

D'Souza writes about all this in a new book, United States of Socialism: Who's Behind It. Why It's Evil. How to Stop It.

To see the entire interview with Dinesh D'Souza from Wednesday's 700 Club, click on the box above.

The rest is here:
The Evils of Socialism: Dinesh D'Souza Explains What's Wrong With It and Why so Many Americans Embrace It - CBN News

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Healthcare for all

-An end to all funding cuts, closures and privatisations in healthcare.

-For huge investment into pubic healthcare to significantly increase capacity and prepare for future shocks.

-For mass COVID-19 public testing, and an expansion of the work to trace infections. Free accommodation and care for all those needing isolation.

-Personal protective equipment for all health workers. Requisition necessary resources from private companies.

-Fund extra cleaning and sanitation of public places. For free hand sanitiser stations in busy areas.

-End public subsidies to private healthcare and insurance providers. Bring for-profit healthcare into public hands so that the resources can be utilised for the public good.

-Make all healthcare, including dental and mental healthcare free.

Work or a living income

-No job losses or pay cuts because of the COVID-19 crisis.

-Extra paid leave, or a living wage subsidy, for all workers while workplaces are closed. This must include casuals, those on temporary visas and the self-employed.

-For all non-essential work to end. No compulsion for anyone to endanger their health. For workers themselves to decide what work is essential and when to return to work.

-Double-time hazard pay and personal protective equipment for all those continuing to work.

-Introduce shorter working hours with full pay to share out available work. For all changes to workplace practices to be agreed locally by workers and their unions.

-Employers should use the profits theyve made to cover the costs. Those who claim they cant pay should open their books and show us where the profits have gone.

-Cheap loans and support for small business given on the basis of proven need. Bring big companies threatening layoffs and pay cuts into public hands.

Welfare and social support

-A living wage subsidy of at least $1000 per week for all those unable to work. This must include the unemployed, students, people with disabilities and the elderly.

-An end to the demonisation of the unemployed. No to mutual obligations or having to prove youre looking for jobs that dont exist.

-Food packages and the free delivery of goods for all who need it. This will help facilitate physical distancing and ensure that no one goes without.

-Introduce price controls on basic goods to stop price gouging and profiteering.

-Freeze payments on all high interest loans like credit cards with no penalty. No one should go into debt to pay for the basics.

-Free and unlimited mental health support for all those who want it.

Free education and care

-Close all schools, TAFEs and universities to help stop the spread of infections. Teachers and students should not be put at risk.

-Free ongoing care for all students who are unable to stay at home. All care and education facilities must be clean and adhere to physical distancing requirements.

-Expand resources for online education. Supply every student with a free laptop and make fast internet connections free and available to all.

-Refund all fees and course costs for the 2020 year. Give students appropriate extensions for work and exams where required.

-All changes to education practices should be agreed locally by students, teachers and their unions.

-Abolish all student debt and make education free for all from childcare to higher education.

Safe and secure housing

-Requisition empty properties from speculators to house the homeless, those living in overcrowded conditions, and all those who need refuge such as victims of domestic violence.

-Waive all rent, mortgage and utility payments for the duration of the pandemic. For no debts or fines to to be accrued during this time.

-Make evictions and mortgage foreclosures illegal in every state. No adverse rental history reports or credit ratings.

-Expand public housing stock to wipe out the waiting lists and make affordable housing accessible to all. End the rule of private landlords.

-Build campaigns of tenants and mortgage holders to fight for housing to be seen as a human right. Prepare for pickets and occupations to stop evictions in the event they are carried out.

Democracy and rights

-For health experts, in conjunction with workplace and local committees, to decide on recommendations for social distancing. Remove the profit motive from decision making.

-For mass education campaigns not repressive laws to promote physical distancing and hygiene etiquette.

-No restrictions on democratic rights including the right to strike and protest.

-Full work and welfare rights for all those currently in Australia, including migrants and refugees. No forced deportations.

-Free all refugees from detention centres and hotels, and release all prisoners detained for minor or economic crimes.

-No to excessive police and military powers. Use the resources of the military for cleaning and sanitary services rather than repression.

A workers bail out

-Reverse plans to lower corporate tax rates and taxes on high income earners.

-No handouts to big business and the rich with coffers full of cash. Taxpayer money should be used to directly benefit workers and the vulnerable.

-Crack down on big business tax cheats. Tighten the loopholes and increase taxes on those who can afford to pay.

-Use the mega profits and cash horded over the years by big business to pay for the pandemic measures we need.

-No to the winding back of extra funding to healthcare, housing, welfare, education and care. Defend and extend living conditions beyond the pandemic.

-For a trade union-led campaign to stop the rich sending the bill for the pandemic to the poor and working class.

Struggle for socialism

-For solidarity and unity between workers, the unemployed, students and the poor, both within Australia and across the world.

-End racism, nationalism, sexism, ageism and homophobia. We wont let the top 1% divide us for the sake of profits!

-Put an end to the anarchy of the capitalist market. Organise production for human need not profit.

-Bring the key parts of the economy into public ownership, starting with the big pharmaceutical companies, medical suppliers, the banks and major utilities.

-Run society in a democratic way where decisions are made by the workers, consumers and communities they effect.

-For a sustainable plan of production that caters for human health and well-being, as well as the long-term needs of the climate and environment.

-For a democratic socialist world free of exploitation, oppression, war and poverty.

View original post here:
COVID-19 crisis: What Socialist Action fights for - The Socialist

2 June 2020

In an act unprecedented in American history, Donald Trump has repudiated the Constitution and is attempting to establish a presidential dictatorship, supported by the military, police and far-right fascistic militia acting under his command. The Socialist Equality Party appeals to the working class and all those committed to the defense of democratic rights to oppose this criminal action.

Speaking on national television, Trump proclaimed: I am your president of law and order Our nation has been gripped by professional anarchists, arsonists, looters, criminals, Antifa and others.

Trumps fascistic rant came only minutes after he ordered massively armed military police to launch a violent attack on citizens engaged in a lawful and peaceful assembly outside the White House to protest the police murder of George Floyd.

The cowardly and vicious assault by military forces on unarmed citizens exercising their First Amendment rights in Washington DC will live in infamy as the beginning of a coup dtat by a criminal administration.

These are not acts of peaceful protests, Trump said, These are acts of domestic terror.

Trump is enraged by the most significant display of multi-racial, multi-ethnic unity of workers and young people in opposition to racist police violence in the history of the United States.

Trump declared that he will deploy the military, in violation of the Constitution, to suppress protests. Referring to a conference call with governors that he held earlier in the day, Trump said that a number of state and local governments have failed to take necessary action, and that he had strongly recommended that they deploy the National Guard in sufficient numbers so that we dominate the streets.

He then issued the following criminal threat: If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the US military and quickly solve the problem for them.

Trump also announced he was using the nations capital as a staging ground for a national military deployment: I am also taking swift and decisive action to protect our great capital, Washington DC. As we speak, I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement to stop the rioting.

Trump declared that protesters will be arrested, detained and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I want the organizers of this terror to be on notice that you will face severe criminal penalties and lengthy sentences in jail. This includes Antifa and others who are leading instigators of this violence. One law and order is what it is. One law, we have one beautiful law.

These are the threats of a would-be tin-pot military dictator. Trump provided no legal or constitutional basis for his unprecedented actions. His invocation of the 1807 Insurrection Act is historically fraudulent and legally invalid. The Act does not allow him to deploy the military in cases where the governors of the states refuse to request intervention.

In his earlier call with state governors, Trump demanded that they violently suppress protests against police violence. This is a movement, and if you dont put it down it will get worse and worse. You have to dominate, and if you dont dominate you are wasting your time. They are going to run all over you, and youll look like a bunch of jerks.

Trump called the governors weak for failing to mobilize tens of thousands of national guardsmen against the demonstrators, saying they must wipe them [the protesters] out.

To oversee the domestic deployment of the military, Trump announced that he was appointing General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to be in charge of the government response. Trump did not explain on what legal basis he made this decision, which violates the Posse Comitatus prohibition on the domestic use of the military.

In the call with governors, Attorney General William Barr also explained that federal prosecution of demonstrators had been placed under the Joint Terrorist Task Force, a multi-department military-intelligence agency in charge of prosecuting combatants captured in the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. Trump demanded that the Department of Justice put em in jail for 10 years.

The presidents congressional ally, Florida Republican Matt Gaetz, called for widespread assassination of political opponents: Now that we clearly see Antifa as terrorists, can we hunt them down like we do those in the Middle East?

A turning point in American history has been reached. Trumps efforts to establish a personal dictatorship on the basis of military rule is the product of a protracted crisis of American democracy, under the impact of extreme social inequality and endless war.

The defeat of Trumps attempted coup dtat depends on the intervention of the working class, which must take the lead in the defense of democratic rights.

No serious opposition to Trumps actions can be expected from the Democratic Party. It has responded to Trumps proclamation with characteristic fecklessness. The favored response of Democrats to Trumps illegal actions is that the president is not being helpful by inflaming social tensions. As if being helpful was part of Trumps political agenda!

After Trumps conference call with governors, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker meekly called for Trumps removal at the ballot box in November, while former presidential candidate Hilary Clinton urged the population to vote. But Trump may not plan on holding an election at all. If an election is held, it may be under conditions of martial law, with massive intimidation by the military, police and right-wing paramilitaries. Such were the conditions under which the Nazis presided over the last legal election in Germany in March 1933, six weeks after Hitler had become chancellor.

For the past three-and-a-half years, the Democrats have worked to suppress mass opposition to the Trump regime and direct it behind their own reactionary anti-Russia campaign, channeling the demands of dominant sections of the military and intelligence agencies. The Democrats are no less terrified than Trump of the emergence of a mass movement of the working class.

Trumps authoritarian moves cannot be separated from the broader crisis facing the entire ruling class. With the support of both parties, the corporate and financial oligarchy has utilized the coronavirus pandemic to hand trillions of dollars to itself. It is now implementing a homicidal back-to-work policy that will ensure a massive expansion of cases and deaths.

Already more than 100,000 people in the US have died from the pandemic, while more than 30 million workers are unemployed. The pandemic has triggered growing opposition within the working class to social inequality, of which the mass protests against the murder of George Floyd are an initial expression.

If demonstrations over the killing of George Floyd are illegal, how will the government respond to strikes and demonstrations of tens of millions of workers that threaten the survival of capitalism? It was the growth of the class struggle that Trump had in mind when he told the governors that protests movements must be suppressed before they get worse and worse.

There can be no greater mistake than believing that Trumps threats are not for real, that the crisis will quietly fade away, and that everything will return to normal. In fact, this crisis is just getting started.

American democracy has exhausted itself. It cannot be reconstituted on the basis of the existing capitalist social structure.

Trumps threats must be countered by a massive movement of the working class. It is clear that the fight against police brutality, inequality and authoritarianism is inseparable from a fight by the working class against the government. As the WSWS wrote in its June 1 statement, Trump incites violent police rampage against protesters:

The working classupon which the functioning of society dependshas the power to stop the assault on democratic rights, create a massive political movement to drive Trump from power, break the back of the corporate-financial oligarchy and begin the restructuring of economic life on a socialist basis.

Moreover, the power of the working class in the United States is vastly augmented by the opposition of the international working class to the Trump administration, which is seen as the unvarnished expression of the brutality of American capitalism. During the past week, there have been mass protests around the world over the murder of George Floyd. Trumps attempt to establish a dictatorship in the United States will vastly expand the scope of international working class protests.

The Socialist Equality Party and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality have immense confidence in the power of the American working class. We will continue to provide working people with the information, analysis and perspective they require in developing a strategy to defeat Trumps bid for dictatorship and advancing the fight for socialism.

Statement of the Socialist Equality Party (US)

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Coup d'tat in Washington: Trump declares war on the Constitution - World Socialist Web Site

Merlin Chowkwanyun, The Washington Post

COVID-19 stimulus bill by the numbers

As the Congress and Senate reach an agreement on a $2 trillion stimulus bill amidst the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, Stacker looked at news and government reports to provide a by-the-numbers breakdown of how those funds will be allocated. Click through for an explanation of notable inclusions in the historic relief package and updates as they come in.

This slideshow was first published on theStacker.com

COVID-19 stimulus bill by the numbers

As the Congress and Senate reach an agreement on a $2 trillion stimulus bill amidst the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, Stacker looked at news and government reports to

Photo: Chip Somodevilla // Getty Images

COVID-19 stimulus bill by the numbers

As the Congress and Senate reach an agreement on a $2 trillion stimulus bill amidst the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, Stacker looked at news and government reports to provide a by-the-numbers breakdown of how those funds will be allocated. Click through for an explanation of notable inclusions in the historic relief package and updates as they come in.

This slideshow was first published on theStacker.com

COVID-19 stimulus bill by the numbers

As the Congress and Senate reach an agreement on a $2 trillion stimulus bill amidst the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, Stacker looked at news and government reports to

Accusations of socialism have lost their bite

Recently, Joe Biden declared that any future stimulus would need to be a "hell of a lot bigger" than the $2 trillion Cares Act. He isn't alone. On Tuesday, House Democrats proposed a coronavirus rescue bill that would appropriate more than $3 trillion for health agencies, state and local governments, an extension of unemployment benefits and a second round of stimulus checks to Americans, among other components. Other prominent Democrats are pushing for even more, like monthly $2,000 payments.

Proponents of these and other measures do not seem afraid of being called "socialist," and many of them have historically leaned toward the center, not the left. That's obviously because of the moment. But it may also be among the legacies of Sen. Bernie Sanders' historic run in the Democratic Party primary. In unapologetically embracing the "democratic socialist" moniker, Sanders, I-Vt., dulled the socialist label's stigmatizing power and may have even normalized the term. In turn, it's expanded the universe of policy solutions to support Americans during the pandemic - and beyond it.

That's striking, given McCarthyism's effect on American politics over the past 60 years. Most know McCarthyism as driving loyalty oaths and investigative boards throughout the 1950s that scrutinized people for associations with communism or broader left-wing sympathies. But its residual effects endured long after the House Un-American Activities Committee closed up shop. They're on display any time an ambitious domestic policy proposal is denounced as "socialist."

Consider, for example, health care. Every proposed expansion of government-funded coverage has had to deal with the boogeyman of socialism. The Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill in 1947, which would have created national health insurance, was smeared along those lines by opponents such as the American Medical Association, which characterized it as "socialized medicine" and government monopoly on medicine. The same happened with Medicare, though it eventually passed successfully. In 1962, future president Ronald Reagan declared, in a speech for the AMA, that if Medicare were to become a reality, the country would soon "awake to find that we have socialism."

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama's health-care proposals also attracted McCarthyist attacks, even though both relied heavily on private insurance companies and the market. Yet the distance between these proposals and socialism didn't protect them from being attacked as "socialism." Through his time in the White House, Obama constantly fended off persistent charges from right-wing groups that he was a socialist, largely because the Affordable Care Act expanded government intervention in the health-care market.

It's not just medicine, though. Historically, the threat of being publicly labeled a socialist has exerted powerful chilling effects in many areas. Officials investigated by the government during the 1940s, as part of the "federal loyalty program," sometimes dropped out of government altogether or advocated diluted positions to preempt political innuendo and attacks. One former advocate of public housing, Catherine Bauer, subsequently went so far as to repudiate much of the idea altogether by the late 1950s.

Ellen Schrecker has found a similar impact in academia, identifying a de facto blacklist in the 1940s and 1950s, whereby universities regularly denied promotion or nixed the hiring of leftist professors. It affected all fields, even the basic sciences, medicine and mathematics, and led to self-censorship and the marginalization of leftist thinking in the social sciences and humanities. The latter wouldn't be reversed until the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s trickled into the universities and reshaped academic knowledge.

McCarthyism's long shadow is what made Sanders' popularity as a democratic socialist all the more remarkable. Young people, increasingly removed from the Cold War, didn't see his democratic socialism - in reality, a mix of New Deal liberalism and a hodgepodge of reforms collected from Western Europe and Taiwan - as all that threatening. Nor did they seem to care what term he used to characterize his proposals.

Sanders, meanwhile, invoked safe American political iconography, most prominently Franklin D. Roosevelt and major pillars of the modern American welfare state, such as Social Security and collective bargaining. And he consistently connected economic autonomy to liberty and freedom, which historians such as Eric Foner have identified as a core tenet of political thinking during the American Revolution. Sanders' socialism was much more American than Soviet.

This rhetorical strategy bore similarities to that of one of Sanders' heroes: Eugene Debs, who ran for president as the Socialist Party nominee four times, winning nearly a million votes in his last two campaigns in 1912 and 1920. But, Debs consistently wrapped a socialist program in palatable American tropes, and he regularly peppered his speeches with references to Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and abolitionists, not to mention Emerson and Thoreau.

Unlike Debs, Sanders didn't run as a third-party candidate; he had a far greater impact and influence, fighting on the turf of the Democratic Party in 2016 and 2020, and both times, came stunningly close to securing the nomination. In the process, he defanged "socialism" of its power as a political epithet.

That matters a lot now. In a coronavirus world, sweeping domestic legislation may be floated over the next couple of years. Its opponents will no doubt open the old playbook and hurl "socialism" its way. Yet I suspect such McCarthyist histrionics will carry less weight than they once did and feel more like relics of a Cold War mausoleum. At a time of near-record unemployment, many are hungry for fresh economic policies and care less about what they're called or what connotations people attach to old labels. That's partly because of Sanders' unapologetic embrace of domestic socialism, his tying of it the United States's biggest social welfare triumphs, and his unlikely emergence as a prominent critic of our modern brand of capitalism with its stark inequalities and fraying safety net.

For decades, the shadow of McCarthyism has lingered and made it easy to marginalize critics with the socialist charge. Sanders confronted it head-on and weakened the tactic's power. Whatever you think of Sanders himself, it's a big reason to appreciate his two campaigns.

- - -

Chowkwanyun is an assistant professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

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Accusations of socialism have lost their bite - SFGate