Excerpt from this Substack post: https://nickrafter.substack.com/p/the-rent-may-always-be-too-damn-high
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2026
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A Boring Dystopia
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"Fluffy Kitty Cat calls themselves a Zorbloxianist, but that's just because they're too ashamed to say what they really are: a socialist."
Even in cases where people aren't just trying to come up with another word for socialist policies, they still get accused of being socialists. There's a whole narrative of environmentalists secretly being socialists, using the environment as a cover, there's people calling Joe Biden a socialist, etc. The Democrats have been doing everything they possibly can to avoid the label for at least the past 40 years and it just doesn't work, it's how we got into this mess in the first place.
Imo there's no shortcuts. Embrace the label, and say, "Well yes I am a socialist, and what's so bad about that? Here's what we socialists believe and why." And when they try to say socialism means this or that you can push back on it and have some credibility in terms of what socialism means because you've accepted the label. That's what Mamdani actually did, and it worked.
If you deny being a socialist, then you'll be expected to denounce it, and then the other side is free to say, "Socialism is when you eat babies" and if you try to say "That's not what socialism means" it will be met with, "Well if you're 'not a socialist' then why are you defending socialism?" And if you agree, then you're validating and strengthening the boogeyman, and if socialism is the most horrible thing ever, then it's just a question of who can look less like a socialist, which will always be the right.