What Right Wingers Mean When They Call Obama A "Socialist"

[Swede]

On Saturday, Georgia Congressman John Lewis went nuclear on John McCain, releasing a statement that seemed to compare McCain to segregationist George Wallace. "George Wallace never threw a bomb," Lewis wrote. "He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who only desired to exercise their constitutional rights." The civil rights icon continued, "Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed one Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama."

Lewis accused McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin of "sowing the seeds of hatred and division." He was referring to the angry tone of recent McCain rallies, where cries of "kill him" and "off with his head" have made many people anxious about the potential for violence against the Democratic nominee.

It's no wonder that the tone at McCain rallies remind Lewis of the bad old days. In recent months, conservatives have sounded increasingly retro with their attempts to paint Obama as a socialist or communist. In some ways, this accusation is typical far-right boilerplate. Obama certainly isn't the first Democrat running for president to be accused of communist sympathies. And as usual, the accusations are rarely linked to policy specifics. But the difference with Obama is that, in the eyes of the right, it's not just his political affiliation that implicates him as a socialist. It's his ethnic background.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=is_john_lewis_right_after_all

[Tommy_Carcetti]

1. They mean he actually want to**GASP**see government work in the interest of the people...

...instead of selling itself out to the highest corporate bidder.

What shame!

[JDPriestly]

2. You mean because the grandmother who raised him worked for a bank?

Is the bank his grandmother worked for being socialized along with all the other banks in America? Is that why the Republicans think Obama is a Socialist?

[Lautremont]

3. Most of them have no real idea what socialism is

and are just repeating what they've heard.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. They just know it's supposed to be something "bad"

For a true right-winger, "socialist" is applied indiscriminately to anything they don't like.

[Joe Chi Minh]

5. I'll never understand why they want to compliment their bitter adversaries

by calling them Socialists. You'd think they'd want to keep quiet about it.

Most people in the reality-based community loathe an ANTISOCIAL political party with a loathing. Why would they not? The members of Antisocialist political parties do everything in their power to arrogate to themselves as much of the money earned by the general public, society, at large - the Socialists' notion of society - as possible.

Only in the US, can the poorer, the most exploited people, be conned into taking Socialism for a dirty word. And I'm not at all sure that's not a thing of the past, now.