Fox News Makes The Case For Socialism
Accidentally Proving The Point
Fox News Makes The Case For Socialism
Accidentally Proving The Point
Fox News has run multiple segments with their usual brand of pearl-clutching and fearmongering. In one segment, they cited a poll showing that 62% of Gen Z have a favorable view of socialism, and 36% even have a favorable view of communism. The anchors flabbergasted, asking the eternal question: “Who’s teaching this to our kids?”
No shadowy Marxist professors are responsible.
Neither are some underground communist TikTok influencers holding secret book clubs. The answer is you, America. You’ve been the teacher the whole time.
When you call literally anything that helps people “socialism,” you’re basically handing out free advertising for it.
When someone goes to the doctor and ends up with a bill larger than their annual income, a bill that might bankrupt them, and they suggest maybe we should have universal healthcare so people don’t die from preventable conditions… you scream “socialism!”
When young adults realize they’re going to be paying off student loans until the day they die, and someone suggests maybe we stop predatory interest rates or, heaven forbid, make education affordable… you yell “socialism!” like it’s an exorcism chant.
When people can’t afford rent because housing is treated like a luxury commodity instead of a human right, and someone proposes rent control or public housing… you shriek “That’s what they do in Cuba! That’s communism!” as if that’s supposed to end the conversation.
The very arguments meant to scare people away from socialism are instead showing them that socialism, or at least policies labeled as such, often means getting the things you actually need to survive. If you tell people, “Socialism means you can go to the doctor without going bankrupt, you can get an education without selling your soul, you can have a roof over your head without sacrificing half your paycheck to a landlord,” guess what?
People will start thinking socialism sounds pretty good!
Gen Z didn’t come to these views because they were indoctrinated in some smoky basement with a hammer-and-sickle flag on the wall. They came to these views because they watched their parents lose their homes in the 2008 crash while Wall Street crooks got bailed out with U.S. tax dollars.
They saw billionaires add trillions to their wealth during COVID while ordinary people struggled to keep the lights on. They live in the richest country in human history and still have to crowdfund medical bills on GoFundMe.
The countries Fox News loves to warn us about, the ones they call “socialist hellholes”, often outperform the U.S. in ways that matter to ordinary people.
Meanwhile, the “free market” paradise that Fox News worships has given us:
Medical bankruptcies (something that doesn’t even exist in most developed countries), crippling student debt, skyrocketing rent and homelessness, and the worst work-life balance in the industrialized world.
So thank you, capitalism, for making socialism look so good.
Thank you for the $80,000 hospital bills for appendectomies, the $200,000 student loans for degrees that pay $40k a year, and the landlords who think “market rate” means raising rent 50% because they can.
Thank you for treating healthcare as a luxury and housing as an investment opportunity. Thank you for building a system so outrageously exploitative that even people raised on Cold War propaganda are starting to think, “You know… maybe Cuba’s onto something.”
Fox News wanted to scare Gen Z straight. Instead, they reminded everyone why capitalism is the best marketing department socialism ever had.