By Abe Greenwald
Wednesday, August 19, 2026
How do you know when you’ve made it in America? When your
grown-up kid declares he’s a socialist. It means you’ve given your family a
level of material comfort and security so unquestionable that your child has
never even thought about how it happened. The very life you’ve provided him is
like a seamless work of art in which all the grueling spadework has been
successfully hidden. Good for you. Bad for everyone else.
The New York Post has a terrific piece today that provides a detailed example
of this phenomenon. The co-chair of the New York City Democratic Socialists of
America, Gustavo Gordillo, lives in a two-story, $1.5 million home that his
parents purchased in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
They didn’t buy the place for themselves but for the
38-year-old Gordillo and his brother. What, after all, would his parents want
with a 2,000-square-foot house in Brooklyn when they own a “sprawling more than
5,000-square-foot, five-bed, six-bath home in Boca Raton that is currently on
the market for $3.1 million” and “another $3 million home in Weston, Fla., that
is just slightly larger and has five beds and seven baths”?
Gordillo, you see, comes from an exorbitantly prosperous
and enterprising family of Peruvian immigrants who came to the U.S. and struck
gold. Naturally, he hates American capitalism and the country that has showered
him in miracles.
The most prominent American socialists who call for the
U.S.’s destruction tend also to be among the most blessed by American liberty
and the free market. They are exemplar beneficiaries of the American dream. If
a TV network were to greenlight Lifestyles of the Rich and Socialist,
they’d have no shortage of subjects. Gordillo, Hasan Piker, Zohran Mamdani,
Bernie Sanders, Graham Platner, and the socialist-adjacent Abdul El-Sayed are
all millionaires or come from millionaire families. The list grows the more you
look.
Gordillo’s supporters will not be put off by his
hypocrisy. Recall that the exposure of personal wealth hasn’t hurt the other
socialists/Communists up to this point. The reason is that Americans who
support socialists are also hypocritical elites. Polls show that DSA candidates
score big among young, educated professionals while driving away working-class
Americans.
There’s a time-worn theory in political science
explaining that America is a terrible candidate for the emergence of socialism
or Communism. Unlike Europe, we don’t have a feudal past that would lead
inevitably to bourgeois revolution. Nor do we have an unbending and defined
class system. Moreover, individual liberty is in our national DNA, and
capitalism enjoys broad legitimacy.
All this is true as far as it goes. But perhaps it makes
more sense to look at socialism’s potential in the U.S. through a different
lens. Instead of using the evolution of European socialism as a comparative
model, we might consider a model that dispenses with the political almost
entirely. I’m thinking here of the European elite’s historical fascination with
Mesmerism and other fantastical cults. Beginning in the 18th century, European
aristocrats would sit around in salons where Franz Mesmer would “treat” their
assorted ailments with magnetized water and metal rods. And they’d inevitably
find that his pseudoscientific voodoo had “cured” them.
Today in the U.S., we might say that these high-society
neurotics were suffering from what has been dubbed “affluenza,” an emotional
condition characterized by guilt and purposelessness, brought on by extreme
wealth and comfort. The same goes for our rising socialist stars. They’re as
ignorant of political science as the aristocrats were of human biology, but
they know that Marxist voodoo makes them feel better—while not having to give
up a thing. The question is: How many of us will ultimately be enlisted to
administer therapy to the rich and stunted of America?
No comments:
Post a Comment