Gucumatz
JS, secretly Rod Serling
- Joined
- Dec 11, 2011
- Messages
- 6,181
I find this an interesting subject. When center left politicians in the US propose policy options, we have all heard calls of "Socialism" before. I am curious when the word/term itself became a taboo in general.
You had Eugene Debs at one point who managed to gain 4-7% of the US vote at one point in the 1910s. There were local state assemblies and local races across the country in the early 1900s that were competitive for Socialist candidates. I have been reading the origin of the distrust comes from this period of time and the association of violence and with anarchists that some socialists had during this period, leading to the first red scare. I read somewhere else the assassinations of McKinley, the Empress of Austria, the Prime minister of France, the Prime minister of Spain, the tsar of Russia, and the king of Italy were all connected together by the press - painting socialists and anarchists in a light, not unlike modern day terrorists. Was it the associations with anarchists like Most and Goldmann that sank the political feasibility of socialism and indirectly populism in the US? If these anarchists hadn't manage to incite a scare - would more leftist parties still be politically feasible options in certain regions today?
You had Eugene Debs at one point who managed to gain 4-7% of the US vote at one point in the 1910s. There were local state assemblies and local races across the country in the early 1900s that were competitive for Socialist candidates. I have been reading the origin of the distrust comes from this period of time and the association of violence and with anarchists that some socialists had during this period, leading to the first red scare. I read somewhere else the assassinations of McKinley, the Empress of Austria, the Prime minister of France, the Prime minister of Spain, the tsar of Russia, and the king of Italy were all connected together by the press - painting socialists and anarchists in a light, not unlike modern day terrorists. Was it the associations with anarchists like Most and Goldmann that sank the political feasibility of socialism and indirectly populism in the US? If these anarchists hadn't manage to incite a scare - would more leftist parties still be politically feasible options in certain regions today?