by Christopher Barnard
The American Institute for Economic Research
According to a Gallup poll from 2019, around 50% of young Americans aged 18-39 view socialism favorably. Nothing captures this “socialist” zeitgeist better than the narrative surrounding climate change, so vociferously promulgated by youth movements around the Western world. When Senator Ed Markey, one of the original Green New Deal co-sponsors, jokingly said at an event that the right “call it socialism,” the audience of Sunrise Movement youth activists burst out in raucous cheers and applause. As Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 34-year-old former chief of staff once admitted about the proposal, “It wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.”
My guess is that they don’t know what socialism is. After all, we’ve witnessed a gradual popularization of socialism, now disguised with an emotionally manipulative, environmental facade. For example, the website of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), prominently featured on Bernie Sanders’ own presidential campaign website, proclaims a mission to “advance an ecosocialist perspective.”