Saturday, February 8, 2020

BERNIE SANDERS IS A DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST NOT A COMMUNIST, HERE'S THE DIFFERENCE

Beware anyone who demonizes democratic socialism while promoting the patriarchal neoliberal predatory capitalist system that’s long been destroying our country and the planet.
We need to understand the truth about how we’ve been horrifically effected by the plutocrats and predatory capitalists who’ve brainwashed us into turning against each other rather than recognizing the brainwashing we’ve all been immersed — propaganda that has normalized endless wars, the vast redistribution of wealth upwards while 43% of Americans live at or below the poverty line, and fuels the sixth major extinction and climate and ecological crises which threaten our children and grandchildren with unfathomable suffering and ultimately an unlivable planet Earth.
The capitalist system we’ve been indoctrinated into believing is the best in the world is in reality killing us! We need to learn why Martin Luther King and Bernie Sanders and others who’ve long fought for economic, racial, social, and environmental justice were/are democratic socialists.
Everything we love and cherish is dependent upon our informing ourselves, shedding our layers of indoctrination and illusions, and uniting as never before to dismantle the systems of death and greed and destruction and instead create together a New World and a New Story to live by with values committed to life and the well-being of us all. 🙏 Molly
As Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has surged in the polls, President Donald Trump has begun to up his criticism of the independent senator from Vermont.
"I think he's a communist. I mean, you know, look, I think of communism when I think of Bernie," Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity for an interview broadcast this weekend.
Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr. reiterated the criticism in an interview with Fox & Friends on Monday morning. "I kind of want to run against a communist in Bernie, but he's also got a very motivated base," the president's eldest son said.
While Sanders self-identifies as a democratic socialist, which many right-wing lawmakers and pundits often conflate with communism, the two political ideologies actually have major differences. The idea of democratic socialism has also been gaining support in the U.S., which is evidenced by the recent rise of progressive lawmakers such as Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, among others.
"Communism does not respect or esteem formal or procedural liberal democracy," Dr. Jean Louise Cohen, a professor of political thought and contemporary civilization at Columbia University, told Newsweek. Cohen noted that communism in practice, has "embraced the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat" while claiming to "foster social justice rather than political democracy."
"Democratic socialists obviously esteem democracy and social justice and reject a need for a trade off," she said. "They seek to enhance liberal democracy with social democracy and a plurality of forms of participation."
Dr. Eileen Hunt Botting, a professor of political science at Notre Dame University, told Newsweek that the ideology of communism means there would be "no private property, and no class distinctions." Botting explained that democratic socialism, conversely, does not do away with private property or all economic class distinctions.
Democratic socialism "aims to use democratic government to promote a more fair and egalitarian distribution of social goods and opportunities among all people in a society," she said.

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