I've noticed recently that to justify support of reformism and reformist organizations such as the DSA, many on Holla Forums have pointed to the Overton Window. "We agree that social democracy can't fundamentally change anything," it is argued, "but because of neoliberal domination in the last several decades, the Overton Window is so far to the Right, that the average person doesn't know what socialism or communism are and are even afraid of them." Because of this ignorance, figures such as Bernie Sanders are seen as vehicles to "demystify" and repopularize the terminology of the Left, such as "socialism" and "revolution."
Depending upon a reinvigorated social democracy and left-liberalism to inform the proletariat about socialism is doomed to failure. How often have we made fun of neoliberals and lolberts for saying that even though deregulation and global trade have a long history of failure if we do it one more time it will somehow work? Yet so many of you accept this same logic with absolutely no self-reflection when it comes to social democrats. When the New Deal effectively neutered the Labor movement, it wasn't socialism that stood victorious but a welfare capitalism which helped the rich create and keep even more wealth than if a revolution had taken place (Donald Trump's father, who was able to make his fortune primarily thanks to New Deal era housing regulations, is a good example). The reason a revolution didn't take place was because so many in the Left pre-empitively declared defeat of "real Leftism" and decided to collaborate with the liberal wing of the movement. To be fair there was a brutal repression of the movement, but its power was still such that the government took measures such as placing machine guns on top of the White House.
This collaboration with reformist liberalism led to the near-complete decimation of the real US Left in the 60s and 70s. The New Left, which despite revisionist histories that attempt to paint it as completely obsessed with liberal identity politics, was largely anticapitalist and wanted to go further than the New Deal of the 30s, was infilitrated and destroyed by the US government, largely with the oversight of Lyndon B. Johnson, whose politics were a direct evolution of FDR liberalism supported by the Left in the name of a "coalition victory". The Black Panthers were completely wiped out, MLK Jr and Malcolm X assassinated for their leftward pivot which brought a criticism of capitalism into their message. A right wing backlash then brewed which got Nixon, Reagan, and Bush elected the War on Drugs started, neoliberalism's popularization, and the rightward shift in the US in general, including the death of the welfare capitalist Democrats.
Tl;DR SocDems gonna socdem, stop falling for their sneaky tricks, organize for revolution
