Kevin Williamson, “The Bard of Anti-Socialism”

“Perhaps Williamson’s own ability to overcome those obstacles has led him to underestimate how formidable a challenge they can pose, a clear example of upward mobility hardening the hearts of the precious few it bestows itself upon.”

In the conservative blogosphere, few terms inspire as much anger and discomfort as the word “socialism.” It may seem only natural for conservatives to squirm at any talk of socialism. For them, socialism conjures up nightmarish scenes of North Korean gulags, Venezuelan bread lines, and crafty KGB operatives. Of course, the word socialism brings to mind more than just the totalitarian nightmares of the twentieth century; for an array of diverse thinkers, socialism has been seen as a reasoned alternative to dog-eat-dog capitalism.

Kevin Williamson, a dedicated contributor to the conservative magazine National Review, has taken it upon himself to be the conservative movement’s ‘Bard of Anti-Socialism’ and lead the counter-offensive against the growing socialist movement bubbling in the Western world. Indeed, the recent issue of National Review can be best interpreted as a reaction against the growing interest in socialist politics and principles, particularly among younger Americans. In any case, Nathan Robinson from Current Affairs magazine has already done a superb job responding to their various arguments and narratives, and a whole array of magazines and publications on the Left (such as Jacobin and n+1) have arisen to offer compelling defenses of socialism to a nation that hasn’t seen true ideological competition in decades.

In a recent article for National Review entitled “The Democrats are the Socialist Party Again,” Williamson took a jab at the socialist-inflected politics bubbling within the Democratic Party. Williamson alleges that the growing leftward shift in the Democratic Party signals a return (interestingly enough) to the party’s socialist origins, while never actually demonstrating any history of socialist politicking on the part of old Democratic stalwarts such as Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon B. Johnson. He goes on to distinguish the Democratic Party’s newfound fascination with “socialist” policies such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal with the more “market-based” alternatives existing in various European welfare states, a contrast intended to shatter the progressive illusion of a European socialist paradise. This is also arguably an attempt to soften the conservative movement’s historic hostility to social programs such as Medicare.