From Eugene Debs to Bernie Sanders: America’s most famous socialists

Many may be surprised US history is dotted with socialists

Andrew Buncombe
Seattle@AndrewBuncombe
Thursday 24 June 2021

There was a time in the United States – especially at the height of the Cold War – when the label “socialist” or “communist” was so toxic it could get you ostracised or worse.

Yet, from the very early days of the nation, including the ideas of founding father Tom Paine, such ideas have flourished.

In the 1920s and 1930s, socialists running for office received huge numbers of votes, and many held elected offices.

Author John Nichols says that after Kshama Sawant was elected to Seattle City Council and he was asked by the media for his analysis, he often had to correct interviewers that she was in no way the first socialist voted in by electors.

But she was the first for many years, and the first on Seattle city’s council for a century.

“She's actually a sort of a renewal in many ways, of something that we saw a lot of a century ago,” Mr Nichols, author of The S Word: A Short History of an American Tradition - Socialism, told The Independent. “You used to have a lot of elected socialists all over.”

He added: “She was a new iteration.”

And just this week, India Walton, a socialist and activist, who had never before held office, won the Democratic primary for the mayor of Buffalo, all but ensuring her of victory, given the New York city has not had a Republican mayor for decades.

Given the rich tradition of socialism in the country, a fact that may surprise some, there are a lot of individuals who would fit the label “socialist”, even if if some of them would require a caveat, or footnote. Here are some of the most well known:


Eugene V Debs

Eugene Debs of the Socialist Party of the USA made five bids for the US presidency
(Getty Images)

Debs, born in 1855, was an activist, orator, trade union member and politician. Initially, he was a member of the Democratic Party and was elected to the Indiana state legislature in 1884. After becoming more interested in the trades union movement, establishing the American Railway Union, his views shifted to the the left. He help found three socialist political parties, the Social Democracy of America, the Social Democratic Party of America, and the Socialist Party of America.

He made five bids for the presidency as a socialist, one of them from a jail cell, having been sentenced for his role in a strike. He had declared: “As a revolutionist I can have no respect for capitalist property laws, nor the least scruple about violating them.

“I hold all such laws to have been enacted through chicanery, fraud and corruption, with the sole end in view of dispossessing, robbing and enslaving the working class.”

His most successful bid was in 1912, when he received 6 per cent of the total vote. He died in 1926, at the age of 70.


Norman Thomas

Norman Thomas ran six times for president as a socialist
(Getty Images)

Thomas, a church minister and pacifist who was born in Ohio in 1884, made bids for governor, mayor and the US senate as candidate for the Socialist Party of America. More famously, he also made six bids for the presidency, his first following the death in 1926 of fellow socialist Eugene Debs.

His first bid was in 1932, which saw a massive landslide for Democratic challenger Franklin Delano Roosevelt over the Republican incumbent, Herbert Hoover.

Thomas bagged 2.2 per cent of the popular vote. When he tried again in 1936, he only managed less than half-a-percentage point.

Thomas, who died in 1968 at the age of 84, once told Republican Barry Goldwater: “We are socialists because we believe this income which we all cooperate in making isn’t divided as it ought to be.”

Anna Louise Strong

Strong, who was born in Nebraska in 1885, packed in much to a life that broke down barriers, and pushed the envelope for women.

In 1916 she was elected as a member of the Seattle school board as a socialist, where she worked for the interests of poor children and their families. The daughter of Christian activists, she later became a journalist and wrote in support of the Seattle General Strike of 1919, saying: “We are undertaking the most tremendous move ever made by labor in this country, a move which will lead—NO ONE KNOWS WHERE!”

She spent much of time visiting the Soviet Union and China, where she interviewed Joseph Stalin, and founded the Moscow News, the city’s first English-language newspaper. She also interviewed many leading Chinese leaders, including Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong.

In 1949, she was expelled from the USSR amid allegations she was a spy. She returned to the US where she faced investigation from the CIA, and her passport was taken. When it was returned, in 1958, she returned to China where she befriended Mao, and where she would spend the rest of her life. She died in 1970 at the age of 84.

Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders has never shied away from word ‘socialism’
(Getty Images)

The former mayor of Burlington, Vermont, has always described himself a democratic socialist, rather than a Marxist or communist.

Yet, throughout his career, he has never shied away from the word socialism, and his policies have always put the needs of working people at their core. Elected to Congress and then the Senate as an independent, he has invariably caucused and voted with the Democrats.

In 2016 and 2020 he sought the party’s presidential nomination, exciting millions of progressives with his enthusiasm. He helped make a number of policies – such a higher minimum wage, free healthcare, higher taxes for the rich – more mainstream than they ever had been.

Sanders, 79, also inspired inspired a new generation of progressive and socialist politicians, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

Angela Davis


Angela Davis investigated US prison system in one of her ten books
(AFP via Getty Images)

Born in 1944, Davis is a writer, academic, and life-long communist.

Having been born in Birmingham, Alabama, she studied French, before moving to Germany where she studied philosophy and political science. When she returned to the US she became increasingly involved in socialist activism, and twice was the vice presidential candidate for the Communist Party USA, which was formed in 1919.

She once said: “The American judicial system is bankrupt. In so far as black people are concerned, it has proven itself to be one more arm of a system carrying out the systematic oppression of our people. We are the victims, not the recipients of justice.”

Davis has written more than 10 books, including an investigation into what she termed the US’s prison–industrial complex.

Now aged 77, Davis is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

In 1991, she helped establish a new socialist party, the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and has been a member ever since.

Kshama Sawant

Kshama Sawant was first elected to Seattle City Council in 2013
(AFP via Getty Images)

The 47-year-old former software engineer was elected to Seattle City Council in 2013, as a member of the Socialist Alternative, a Marxist party seeking worldwide revolution.

She immediately began pressing for policies such as a $15-per hour minimum wage, and a year after her election, Seattle became the first major city in the US to pass such legislation. She has been re-elected twice.

Sawant has frequently denounced the impact of major companies such as Amazon on Seattle, saying they have helped speed up the pace of gentrification and pushed up the cost of affordable housing. 
She is currently trying to defend herself against the prospect of a recall election, organised by critics who claim she broke the law when the let protesters into city hall last summer.

She has denied any wrong doing and told The Independent: “I don't have a crystal ball. But I will tell you exactly what is going to happen if the recall succeeds – there will be a stunning attempt to roll back many of the victories we have won. But more than that, it will be a chilling effect on social movements.”

India Walton

(The Buffalo News via AP)

India Walton, a nurse and activist, had never held office before. But she recently won the Democratic primary for the mayor of Buffalo, New York, running as a socialist.

If she wins in the general election later this year, as she is expected to do, she would be the first socialist mayor of a major US city since Frank Zeidler, who was mayor of Milwaukee until 1960.

Backed by both the Working Families Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, the 38-year-old told the New York Times she was keen to avoid labels.

“I don’t think reality has completely sunk in yet,” she told the newspaper. “I’m India from down the way, little poor Black girl who, statistically speaking, shouldn’t have amounted to much, yet here I am. This is proof that Black women and women belong everywhere in positions of power and positions of leadership, and I’m just super-excited.”

Socialism Is Gaining Popularity, Poll Shows

A person wears a protective face mask outside New York's City Hall on July 4, 2020.NOAM GALAI / GETTY IMAGES

BY Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams

PUBLISHED June 26, 2021


While a majority of U.S. adults still have more positive than negative perceptions of capitalism, less than half of the country’s 18 to 34-year-olds view the profit-maximizing market system favorably, and the attractiveness of socialism continues to increase among people over 35, according to a new poll released Friday.

The online survey, conducted June 11-25 by Momentive on behalf of Axios, found that 57% of U.S. adults view capitalism in a positive light, down from 61% in January 2019, when the news outlet first polled on these questions. Then and now, 36% are critical of the exploitation of the working class and the environment by the owning class.

Perceptions of capitalism have remained consistent among adults ages 35 and older, meaning that the system’s dwindling popularity is driven by the nation’s young adults. According to the poll, 18 to 34-year-olds today are almost equally likely to hold a negative opinion of capitalism as a positive one (46% vs. 49%). Just two years ago, that margin was 38% vs. 58%.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given the severity of the climate emergency, capitalism is particularly unpopular among 18 to 24-year-olds, with negative views outweighing positive views by a margin of 54% to 42%.

Even young Republicans appear to be changing their views. Whereas 81% of Republicans and GOP-leaners between the ages of 18 and 34 perceived capitalism positively in 2019, that figure has plummeted to 66% in 2021.

Between the January 2019 poll and the latest survey, the world has been rocked by severe public health and economic crises caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Jon Cohen, the chief research officer for Momentive, predicted that “the pandemic is sure to have lasting impact for decades to come.”

As a result of the deadly catastrophe that has unfolded over the past year and a half, Axios argued, millions of Americans have been forced “to re-evaluate their political and economic worldview.”

The news outlet attributed shifting views to two factors. First, the coronavirus crisis exposed profound injustices in the U.S. and globally. And second, government responses to the calamity demonstrated the extent to which state intervention has the potential to mitigate or exacerbate hardship.

Although 52% of Americans still take issue with socialism, the percentage of U.S. adults with favorable views of socialism increased from 39% in 2019 to 41% in 2021. While positive perceptions of socialism dipped slightly among young adults — from 55% two years ago to 51% now — that decline was offset by an increase in the number of adults over the age of 35 who view socialism in a positive light.

Socialism is especially appealing to Black Americans (60% now vs. 53% in 2019) and women (45% now vs. 41% in 2019), two groups that would benefit disproportionately from the downward redistribution of resources and power. Less than half of women in the U.S. (48%) view capitalism in a positive light, down from 51% two years ago. It is worth noting that working-class mothers have been hit particularly hard by the ongoing economic crisis, in large part due to a lack of affordable child care.

Deciphering the meanings of “capitalism” and “socialism” can be difficult, given that both are abstractions being interpreted by Americans through the highly distorted lens of more than a century of pro-capitalist and anti-socialist propaganda.

Looking beyond those terms, the survey found that 66% of U.S. adults want the federal government to implement policies to reduce the worsening gap between rich and poor. That’s up from 62% in 2019, which is before the nation’s 660 billionaires saw their combined fortunes surge by more than $1.1 trillion amid a devastating pandemic.

Two years ago, just 40% of Republicans under 35 said the government should pursue policies that close widening gulfs in income and wealth. Today, 56% of people in that group want lawmakers to curb inequality.

“Politicians looking to attack opponents to their left can no longer use the word ‘socialist’ as an all-purpose pejorative,” noted Axios. “Increasingly, it’s worn as a badge of pride.”

CANADIAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
C. B. Macpherson Wanted a Socialism That Didn’t Lose Sight of the Individual

Canadian thinker C. B. Macpherson insisted that capitalism’s “possessive individualism” constrained human flourishing. In its place, he wanted a democratic socialist society where people could build meaningful relationships and express the kaleidoscope of human individuality.

BYMATT MCMANUS

JSCOBIN

06.26.2021
THEORY
LIBERALISM

Review of The Political Thought of C.B. Macpherson by Frank Cunningham (Palgrave, 2019).

C.B. Macpherson was a legend in Canadian political theory circles, known for his close reading of dense theoretical texts. He managed to bring to light hidden assumptions and tensions with a rare combination of scholarly acumen and bite. But as the author of books with dry titles like Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval and Democracy in Alberta: Social Credit and the Party System, Macpherson’s reputation mostly stopped at the university gates.

Fortunately, Frank Cunningham’s excellent recent book, The Political Thought of C.B. Macpherson, gives us a more complete and interesting view of both the man and the democratic socialist core of his writing. In Cunningham’s able hands, Macpherson is revitalized as a figure who can not only teach us about the limitations and strengths of the classical liberal tradition but offer us an inspiring vision for a democratic socialist future.

What is Possessive Individualism?

The work that made Macpherson’s name was 1962’s The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Nominally a history of early modern English political theory, the book had much grander ambitions.

Macpherson’s aim was to analyze the roots of what he called “possessive individualism” — the idea that in the state of nature each of us is an atomic individual, separate from all others, defined by a relentless pursuit of desire that requires us to develop our skills and labor to acquire what we want. Natural human beings owe nothing to society or others, neither when developing their capacities nor enjoying their property.

Far from natural, possessive individualism came into being through a contingent combination of historical events and changing ideological notions, Macpherson shows. In particular, the epic clashes between aristocratic absolutism and capitalist parliamentarianism in seventeenth-century Britain provided fertile soil for philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, James Harrington, and John Locke to reconceive the nature of society along market lines.

According to these theorists, property emerges through the mixing of one’s labor with matter, which creates an entitlement to whatever is produced. A farmer who puts up a fence around a plot of land and then tills the soil is mixing his labor with the soil, which consequently becomes his property, along with the carrots and potatoes that sprout from it

.

John Locke, by John Greenhill (died 1676). (UK National Portrait Gallery)

This workmanship ideal — we should get to keep what we labor for — has remained ideologically powerful. American conservatives like Ben Shapiro still use it to justify stark inequalities.

But as Macpherson points out, the workmanship ideal is unworkable even as the moral basis for capitalist society. If it’s true that we are entitled to the fruits of our labor, how is it that laborers make something but capitalists are then entitled to it as their property? After all, it wasn’t Ray Kroc who flipped a million burgers or Donald Trump who built the Trump Tower. If we really believe that people are entitled to what they labored to create, then it’s impossible to defend the capitalist system.

Locke’s solution was to extend the notion of a contract to the relationship between capitalist employers and laborers. He argued that workers are not entitled to keep what they make if they have contractually agreed to labor for their employers.


Of course, workers could eventually refuse to hand over what they created and instead decide to enjoy it for themselves. Or they could decide to band together and democratically demand changes to society. Possessive individualists therefore came to recognize the need for a powerful state that could guarantee the rights of employers to live off whatever their employees’ labor produced.

The irony here was that possessive individualism moved from conceiving of people as atoms owing nothing to anyone else, to requiring a leviathan that would safeguard the interests of the privileged few. As Macpherson put it near the end of Possessive Individualism: “It is not a question of the more individualism, the less collectivism; rather the more thoroughgoing the individualism, the more complete the collectivism.”
Rethinking Liberal Individualism and Socialism

Macpherson’s critical history of possessive individualism forms the cornerstone of his legacy. But Cunningham reminds us that in addition to being a sharp reader of classical liberal thought, Macpherson was also a democratic socialist who spent much time theorizing about the problems of contemporary capitalism and what might replace it.Macpherson insisted that liberalism was right to emphasize the value of individualism, but wrong to assume the only kind of individuality was possessive.

Macpherson’s socialism sprung from his belief that capitalism prevented human beings from fully developing their “productive powers” and “capacities.” Capitalist markets generate stratification: a select few have the material luxury of developing their capacities while everyone else is confined to improving the narrow range of abilities necessary to perform their jobs. On top of that, possessive individualist societies cultivate an atomistic, alienating sense of self that encourages individuals to compete for scarce goods and honors. Greed is both good and inevitable. The state’s job, meanwhile, is to encourage capitalist competition up to the point where individuals begin physically harming one another — and even that line can be crossed if capital demands, say, an imperialist intervention or the suppression of radical movements.

Macpherson insisted that liberalism was right to emphasize the value of individualism — chastising authoritarian socialist states for trampling on individual liberty — but that it was wrong to assume the only kind of individuality was possessive. Better, in Macpherson’s eyes, was a “normative individualism” where we cooperate with each other to form meaningful and democratic communities that mutually empower members to express their individuality. This position resembles what I’ve called the “expressive” rather than “possessive” individualism of John Stuart Mill. But Macpherson gives it a much more democratic tint.

There is a lot to like in this argument. Atomistic, possessive individualism is both theoretically implausible and empirically unsound. People construct their sense of self not simply through laboring and acquiring but by forming meaningful relationships and developing and exercising their diverse capacities. Possessive individualist society is undesirable precisely because its competitive mania erodes human relationships, and, worse, because its inequalities mean that many will never be able to develop more than a fraction of their capacities.

At the same time, Macpherson is right that we shouldn’t run in the opposite direction, subordinating individualism to either cultural traditionalism (as social conservative critics of liberalism would insist) or political movements (as with some socialist experiments). Instead, our aim should be to create a more sincerely individualistic society that recognizes how being able to form deep connections with others and mutually empower one another in the pursuit of the good life is what enables us to become truly self-determining and free.

Democratization is a necessary complement, since it enables us to deliberate about what kind of shared world we want to construct. Not coincidentally, this is one of the reasons why hyper-possessive individualists like neoliberals are so wary of democracy.
Macpherson and Neoliberalism

Cunningham spends much of his book applying Macpherson’s thinking to contemporary issues, from neoliberalism to feminist and racial justice struggles. He rightly chides Macpherson for endorsing the aims of the civil rights and feminist movements without taking up the issues they raised — an unfortunate omission since both would have leavened Macpherson’s analysis of possessive individualism.

For instance, Domenic Losurdo points out that Locke’s arguments for possessive individualism weren’t just central to justifying capitalist coercion at home (the argument is well summarized by my late friend Connor O’Callaghan); they animated his denigration of Indigenous people’s labor as inefficient and his argument that they had no claim to the land they’d inhabited for centuries. Far better for them to be replaced by hardworking, industrious white settlers who would actually make good use of it.



One of the most interesting sections of Cunningham’s book is where he extends Macpherson’s analysis to the topic of neoliberalism. Plenty of classical and egalitarian liberals still held to humanistic ideals of fairness and moral equality that made them skeptical of extending the logic of possessive individualism to all areas of life. Some liberal thinkers like Mill even reached the conclusion that liberalism and capitalism were fundamentally incompatible. Neoliberal thinkers had no such misgivings: they crafted a “pure market” theory, Cunningham argues, that reduced the liberal ideal to what was required by capital. Macpherson died in 1987, during the glory days of the Reagan and Thatcherite counterrevolutions. He was deeply anxious about their assaults on the welfare state and democratic rule, arguing strenuously against figures like Milton Friedman that neoliberalism wasn’t in keeping with either justice or human nature.

Here I think we should part ways with both Macpherson and Cunningham. Neoliberalism is intriguing precisely because it is the historical moment that capitalism’s defenders realized possessive individualism didn’t reflect human nature. Most of us don’t think of ourselves (and don’t want to think of ourselves) as disconnected, sybaritic machines jostling with each other, eager to transform our very personalities into social capital.

Recognizing this reality, and wanting to turbocharge the market’s colonization of all spheres of life, neoliberals tried to both insulate capitalism from democratic pressures and build institutions that could remold people in the image of possessive individualism. Simultaneously, they sought to graft their ideas onto the institutions of the US-led international order, forever banishing the specter of social democracy, much less socialism.

Their project was magnificently successful for a time, and only recently have we seen widespread revolt against the effort to cram the square peg of humanity into the round hole of hyper-possessive individualism. Whether this will end with a revived left-wing politics or an even worse reactionary explosion remains an open question. But Macpherson’s democratic socialist vision can inspire us to think more comprehensively about the ideological zigzags of capitalism’s defenders — and the positive elements of liberalism that can be extracted from its contradictory legacy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Matt McManus is a visiting professor of politics at Whitman College. He is the author of The Rise of Post-Modern Conservatism and Myth and the coauthor of Mayhem: A Leftist Critique of Jordan Peterson.

‘Socialism’ Isn’t a Dirty Word Anymore

By Sarah Jones

POLITICS JUNE 25, 2021

Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Most Americans still think positively of capitalism, but that’s beginning to change among young adults, a new poll suggests. According to an Axios/Momentive survey released on Friday, adults ages 18 to 34 “are almost evenly split between those who view capitalism positively and those who view it negatively.” Those numbers have changed significantly over the last two years, when 20 percentage points separated those who viewed capitalism positively from those who did not. Among adults aged 18 to 24, capitalism is in even deeper trouble: 42 percent say they have a positive view of it, and 54 percent do not.

If capitalism has begun to lose its shine, what solutions do people prefer? Socialism, for one. While positive views of socialism have slipped slightly among adults under 35 over the last two years, falling from 55 to 51 percent, it’s picked up some support from older adults and especially people of color. Axios reports that 60 percent of Black Americans view socialism positively, as do 45 percent of women, and even 33 percent of non-white Republicans. “Those numbers have grown over the past two years from 53 percent, 41 percent, and 27 percent respectively,” Felix Salmon writes. Capitalism is still more popular than socialism nationally, but there’s not much evidence that Americans categorically despise the anti-capitalist ideology any more.

The Axios/Momentive poll didn’t measure attitudes toward common socialist ideas though. Asking the public about the wealth gap is not quite the same as asking them if they support redistribution of wealth to close it. Nevertheless, the poll did indicate some broad support for a form of social democracy. 66 percent said the federal government “should pursue policies that try to reduce the gap between the wealthy and the less well-off in America,” which tracks with earlier, similar polls. In January 2020, the Pew Research Center found that most Americans believed there was too much economic inequality in the U.S., though only 42 percent said it should be a top priority for the federal government. The same poll, however, did show high rates of support for another form of government intervention: 72 percent said its top priority should be making health care more affordable for the public.

Support for other, broadly progressive policy solutions remain high. In an April Hill-HarrisX poll, 56 percent of registered voters “said billionaires paying a wealth tax is part of the solution to wealth inequality,” a figure consistent with previous poll results. Another March Morning Consult/Politico poll found that around seven in ten voters support a public health insurance option, and 55 percent support Medicare for All. Considered together, these numbers tell a political story. As the pandemic reordered American life and the economy along with it, Americans have become more critical of the dominant economic order. That creates an opening for Democrats — if they’re savvy enough to take advantage of it.

Most Democratic electeds remain eager to differentiate themselves from their socialist colleagues, who are themselves a small faction of the party’s presence in Congress. Should public opinion hold, however, that faction is likely to grow with time. That doesn’t spell doom for the party’s overall electoral chances, either. Democrats should ask themselves which is the more damaging possibility: A failure to condemn socialism, or a failure to critique capitalism? Given the numbers, the answer is clearly the latter, at least among the demographic groups Democrats need to inspire in order to keep winning elections.

Of course, Republicans will conflate milquetoast versions of liberalism with socialism as they successfully did during the last election in Florida among Latino voters. As a result, Democrats should have learned there’s no effective way to dodge a smear campaign except to counter it with a more effective message. Perhaps they could even make inroads with non-white Republicans. Party moderates may dislike it, but socialism has a growing constituency: In Buffalo, voters just elected socialist nurse India Walton in an upset over the Democratic incumbent, Byron Brown.

Should Democrats mount a cohesive critique of capitalism, they’ll meet many Americans where they are. That’s sensible politics, the key to a winning strategy. For the last year, Americans have lost jobs, stability, and in many cases, hope. A crisis as dramatic as COVID-19 should expand the party’s definition of what’s possible. Voters are eager for something new. Someone will provide it. That person could be a socialist or social democrat, or they could be a Republican cunning enough to wrap conservative politics in a populist-sounding message. Democrats will have to conquer their hostility to the former in order to prepare for the latter. There is a vanishing constituency for the status quo.

Americans Are More Open to Socialism Than Ever

BY LUKE SAVAGE

Socialism is now a real part of the political landscape — while “capitalism” has never been more unpopular.
Democratic socialists on the march. (Photo: Alice Bacon / DSA)

“If you’re not a liberal when you’re twenty-five, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re thirty-five, you have no brain.” Winston Churchill never actually said these words. But, if they continue to live on as a popular slogan, it’s probably because they capture a common attitude about the correlation between political idealism and age. The young, or so this story goes, are invariably drawn to the novelty and transgression of progressive or even radical ideas — a disposition that usually dissipates with age. There’s a decidedly unsubtle, patronizing implication here, the idea being that conservatism is arrived at through experience and is thus synonymous with maturity.

Anecdotally, at least, there are real reasons for people to assume politicization works this way — among them the trajectory of the generation that began to come of age in the 1960s. The actual empirical evidence, however, suggests a lot more variation in the political values (and voting habits) of the young, old, and middle-aged alike. In 1980, Ronald Reagan basically drew even with Jimmy Carter when it came to voters between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine — winning the same demographic in a landslide upon reflection four years later. Margaret Thatcher actually got more support in her 1983 electoral rout from those between thirty-five and forty-four than from people over sixty-five and also won more than 40 percent of first-time voters.

The formation of political identity is ultimately a lot more complicated than what’s implied by the oft-assumed trajectory from youthful idealism to hardheaded maturity. The collective experiences of particular generations and groups of people can make them more or less radical or conservative depending on the circumstances. In this respect, the findings of a new Axios/Momentive survey are striking but in many ways unsurprising.


Conducted in mid-June among more than two thousand adults over the age of eighteen, the poll’s topline finding is that just half of Americans (49 percent) ages eighteen to thirty-four now hold a positive view of capitalism — a precipitous drop from only two years ago, when the figure was some 20 points higher. Among those eighteen to twenty-four, only 42 percent now have a positive view of capitalism, while 54 percent hold a negative view. Even Republicans in the same age bracket exhibited a similar trend: the share who currently view capitalism in a favorable light is now 66 percent (down from 81 percent in January 2019).

Overall, there has been a small uptick in the percentage of Americans with a favorable view of socialism — one powered, according to Axios’s survey, primarily by black Americans and women. Here, the picture is a bit more textured and ambiguous:


While perceptions of capitalism have changed rapidly among young adults, perceptions of socialism have changed more incrementally among all age groups. Slightly fewer young adults now than in 2019 say they have a positive view of socialism (51% now vs. 55% in 2019). But that dip is offset by slight increases in the number of adults ages 35-64 and 65+ who say they have a favorable view of socialism.

Despite an overall increase, favorable perceptions of socialism remain in the minority (41 percent positive versus 52 percent negative). However, the picture again gets more complicated when broken down into specific questions. This should come as no surprise, given the stigma successfully attached to the word during the Cold War. For example, 66 percent of Americans agree that the federal government should legislate policies that aim to reduce the gap between the poor and the wealthy (once again, there’s been a startling shift among younger Republicans here: two years ago, only 40 percent favored such policies. Today, the figure is 56 percent.) This is consistent with other polls showing majority levels of support for policies like Medicare for All and various new taxes on the rich — even those not inclined toward “socialism” as a broad signifier are perfectly amenable to many of the things socialists these days advocate.

Across every age group, but especially among the young, it’s easy to see why Americans’ general views of capitalism have been deteriorating amid a renewed interest in both social democratic policies and socialism as a broad alternative. The coronavirus pandemic, much like the 2008–9 financial crisis, has underscored yet again how hierarchical, unfair, and often brutal the current political and economic consensus really is. Millions are drowning in student debt while facing bleak job prospects. Rents are soaring. As millions more face a brutal and precarious job market, billionaire wealth has spiked dramatically.

When the system around them is so obviously dysfunctional, people intuitively look for alternatives. The bottom line, according to Axios’s Felix Salmon: “Politicians looking to attack opponents to their left can no longer use the word ‘socialist’ as an all-purpose pejorative. Increasingly, it’s worn as a badge of pride.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Luke Savage is a staff writer at Jacobin.

Socialism is a trigger word on social media – but real discussion is going on amid the screaming

‘Tug-of-words’ posts debating the merits of socialism versus capitalism are all over social media platforms. pxfuel

The word “socialism” has become a trigger word in U.S. politics, with both positive and negative perceptions of it split along party lines.

But what does socialism actually mean to Americans? Although surveys can ask individuals for responses to questions, they don’t reveal what people are saying when they talk among themselves.

As a social media scholar, I study conversations “in the wild” in order to find out what people are actually saying to one another. The method I developed is called netnography and it treats online posts as discourse – a continuing dialogue between real people – rather than as quantifiable data.

As part of an ongoing study on technology and utopia, I read through more than 14,000 social media comments posted on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and YouTube in 2018 and 2019. They came from 9,155 uniquely named posters.

Written by academics, edited by journalists, backed by evidence.Get newsletter

What I found was both shocking and heartening.

Loyalty and fear

Both support for socialism and attacks on it appear to be on the rise.

Socialism can mean different things to people. Some see it as a system that institutionalizes fairness and citizen rights, bringing higher levels of social solidarity; others focus on heavy-handed government control of free markets that work more effectively when left alone. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, emphasized the right to quality health care, education, a good job with a living wage, affordable housing and a clean environment in a 2019 speech.

A 2019 Gallup Poll found that 39% of Americans have a favorable opinion of socialism – up from about 20% in 2010; 57% view it negatively.

Prominent elected “democratic socialist” officials include six Chicago City Council members, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders.

These and other advocates point to a version of socialism called the “Nordic model,” seen in countries like Denmark, which provide high-quality social services such as health care and education while fostering a strong economy.

Critics call socialism anti-American and charge that it undermines free enterprise and leads to disaster, often using the unrealistically extreme example of Venezuela.

President Trump has portrayed socialists as radical, lazy, America-hating communists. His son, Donald Trump Jr., has posted tweets ridiculing socialism.

During the 2020 election season, Republican Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell advised that his party could win by being a firewall against socialism. He was on point: Fear of socialism may have been a reason why the Republicans gained seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2020.
A ‘tug of words’

Although I wasn’t initially looking for posts on socialism or capitalism, I found plenty of them in my online investigation. Many were what I call a “tug of words” in which people asserted which system was better. People from opposite ends of the political spectrum made pithy observations, posted one-liners or launched strong, emotionally worded broadsides. There was often little dialogue – those who posted were shouting at each other as if using a megaphone.

A YouTube commenter uses a megaphone-like approach to preach about the perils of socialism. Screen shot by Robert Kozinets

I also found a large number of short, nonconversational, megaphone-like posts on visual social media like Instagram and Pinterest.
Some commentary on socialism on Pinterest. Screen shot by Robert Kozinets

But some people were more circumspect. While they were often reactive or one-sided, they raised questions. For example, people questioned whether business bailouts, grants, lobbying or special tax treatment showed that capitalism’s “free markets” weren’t actually all that free.

Making a historical economic argument against socialism and its slippery slope to totalitarianism. Robert Kozinets' data collection

And some considered what “socialism” actually means to people, linking that meaning to race, nationality and class.
The meaning of socialism discussed on Twitter. Screen shot by Robert Kozinets

Overcoming primitive ‘isms’

Amid all the sound and fury of people shouting from their virtual soapboxes, there were also the calmer voices of those engaging in deeper discussions. These people debated socialism, capitalism and free markets in relation to health care, child care, minimum wage and other issues that affected their lives.

One YouTube discussion explored the notion that we should stop viewing everything “through the primitive lens of the nonsensical ‘isms’ – capitalism, socialism, communism – which have no relevance in a sustainable or socially just and peaceful world.”

Other discussions united both left and right by asserting that the real problem was corruption in the system, not the system itself. Some used social media to try to overcome the ideological blinders of partisan politics. For example, they argued that raising the minimum wage or improving education might be sensible management strategies that could help the economy and working Americans at the same time.

This Reddit post explores the benefits of changes that some might label as socialist. Screen shot by Robert Kozinets.

New forum for discussions

As America’s divisions fester, my work gives me reason for hope. It shows that some Americans – still a small minority, mind you – are thoughtfully using popular social media platforms to have meaningful discussions. What I have provided here is just a small sample of the many thoughtful conversations I encountered.

My analysis of social media doesn’t deny that many people are angry and polarized over social systems. But it has revealed that a significant number of people recognize that labels like socialism, free markets and capitalism have become emotional triggers, used by some journalists and politicians to manipulate, incite and divide.

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To unify and move forward together, we may need to better understand the sites and discussion formats that facilitate this kind of thoughtful discourse. If partisans retreat to echo chamber platforms like Parler and Rumble, will these kinds of intelligent conversations between people with diverse viewpoints cease?

As Americans confront the financial challenges of a pandemic, automation, precarious employment and globalization, providing forums where we can discuss divergent ideas in an open-minded rather than an ideological way may make a critical difference to the solutions we choose. Many Americans are already using digital platforms to discuss options, rather than being frightened away by – or attacking – the tired old socialist bogeyman.

December 1, 2020 

Author

Robert Kozinets
Jayne and Hans Hufschmid Chair in Strategic Public Relations and Business Communication, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

READING LISTS

Socialism: Foundations and Key Concepts

What is the political, philosophic, and economic system known as socialism? Some starting points for further study.

Thousands march through the streets near City Hall during the 11th day of an ongoing teachers strike on October 31, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois.
Getty

By: Wilson Sherwin
November 20, 2020

JSTOR

Depending on whom you ask, socialism might be described as historically inevitable, evil incarnate, a utopian fantasy, or a scientific method. Most fundamentally, socialism is a political, philosophic, and economic system in which the means of production—that is, everything that goes into making goods for use—are collectively controlled, rather than owned by private corporations as they are under capitalism, or by aristocrats under feudalism.

In seeking to make the case for socialism—and to understand impediments to a world governed by people’s needs rather than corporate profits—thinkers in the socialist tradition have grappled with topics as varied as colonialism, gender, race, art, sex, psychology, economics, medicine, ecology, and countless other issues. As such, this Reading List makes no claim of being exhaustive; rather, it seeks to achieve two modest goals: to acquaint readers with a handful of key socialist preoccupations, and to demonstrate how the core concepts of socialist thought have been articulated at different historical moments and taken up by women and people of color.

Eugene W. Schulkind, “The Activity of Popular Organizations during the Paris Commune of 1871” (1960)

What kind of society do socialists want? Many unfamiliar with the socialist tradition assume the Soviet Union or other putatively communist states represent socialist ideals come to fruition. But for many socialists throughout history, the most generative and compelling model is the seventy-two-day social experiment known as the Paris Commune. During their brief time ruling Paris, the communards eliminated the army, secularized education, equalized pay, and implemented numerous feminist initiatives, including establishing child care centers and abolishing the distinction between “legitimate” and “illegitimate” children.

Rosa Luxemburg, “Reform or Revolution” (1900)
Socialists uniformly believe that different social arrangements are needed to address social problems, but how might those transformations most effectively come to fruition? One of the major questions that has animated socialist debates throughout the centuries is whether it is possible to achieve socialism through progressive reforms, or whether reforms would only serve to strengthen capitalism. Here the revolutionary presents her thoughts.

Clara Zetkin, 1914 Preface to Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1887)
Karl Marx was famously opposed to rigidly outlining what future socialist societies should look like, claiming that this would be like writing “recipes for the kitchens of the future.” Despite his reticence, many artists, frustrated by the constraints of capitalism and captivated by the promises of socialist futures, have contributed to imagining alternative worlds. Edward Bellamy’s early science fiction novel Looking Backward presents one attempt at envisioning a socialist society of the future—free from war, poverty, advertisements, and other unpleasantries. Here, Clara Zetkin, a prominent socialist and feminist activist of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (best known for her efforts to establish International Women’s Day), introduces the novel.

Eric Foner, “Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?” (1984)
One of the country’s best living historians examines questions that have preoccupied generations: How does the political and economic exceptionalism of the United States shape its historical relationship to socialism? Why does the U.S. working class appear less inclined toward socialist class consciousness than in other “advanced” capitalist countries?

Cedric Robinson, “C.L.R. James and the Black Radical Tradition” (1983)
Telling the story of C.L.R. James, one of the most important socialist intellectuals of the twentieth century, Cedric Robinson (an intellectual giant in his own right) traces the history of socialism as it crosses continents and oceans. Centering Black radicals, not as a homogenous group but as members of a multifaceted tradition who write as seamlessly about cricket, anticolonial struggles, and class formation, Robinson takes the reader through issues at the heart of socialism.

Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement” (1979)
“Identity politics” has become a controversial and often derided topic in recent years. In this groundbreaking text, the Combahee River Collective—a group of Black feminist socialists named for the location from which Harriet Tubman launched one of her major military missions—underscores the necessity of rooting anti-capitalist projects in people’s lived experiences: “We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity.”

Sarah Leonard, “What is Socialist Feminism?” (2020)
Teen Vogue may have once evoked adolescent frivolity, but in recent years the magazine has repositioned itself as a serious contributor to the rising popularity of leftist politics among bright young people, thanks to its rigorous and accessible political analysis. Here, socialist feminist writer Sarah Leonard draws from bell hooks, Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the 1970s feminist collective Wages for Housework to outline a few key socialist feminist insights. For those interested in pursuing the topic further, Leonard encourages readers to connect with the extensive resources generated by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)’s Socialist Feminist working group.

Brett Clark and John Bellamy Foster, “Marx’s Ecology in the 21st Century” (2010)
Marx may have written in the nineteenth century, but his insights are still used by contemporary thinkers to understand many of today’s most pressing issues. Here Clark and Foster draw from central concepts in Marx’s oeuvre to understand how capitalism has led to climate catastrophe and, eventually, might inspire ecosocialism. In their words, “The power of Marx’s ecology is that it provides a rigorous approach for studying the interchange between society and nature, while taking into consideration the specific ecological conditions of an ecosystem (and the larger web of nature), as well as the particular social interactions as shaped by the capitalist mode of production.”

Michael Lowy and Penelope Duggan, “Marxism and Romanticism in the Work of Jose Carlos Mariategui” (1998)
A compelling introduction to Mariategui, the Peruvuan socialist philosopher who merged precolonial history, romanticism, and a trenchant analysis of capitalism. In contrast to the austere world many antisocialists imagine, “[s]ocialism according to Mariategui lay at the heart of an attempt at the reenchantment of the world through revolutionary action.”

Red Nation, “Communism Is the Horizon” (2020)
In their recent pamphlet, the Indigenous collective Red Nation expounds upon the centrality of queer, Indigenous feminism to their understanding of socialism and their struggle toward a communist horizon.

National Socialist Movement joins growing list of sanctioned rally lawsuit defendants
Jun 30, 2021


Members of the National Socialist Movement arrive before the scheduled start of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Aug. 12, 2017. DAILY PROGRESS FILE

The National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi organization, has become the fourth defendant to be sanctioned in a high-profile Unite the Right federal lawsuit.

Filed about three months after the deadly rally on behalf of various Charlottesville-area residents, the Sines v. Kessler lawsuit targets various key organizers and participants. The suit accuses the defendants of conspiring to plan racially motivated violence at the rally in August 2017.

The lawsuit has hit several snags on its way to trial, resulting in several defendants being sanctioned and, in one case, a brief arrest for contempt of court. The National Socialist Front recently joined the growing list of sanctioned defendants after U.S. Magistrate Judge Joel C. Hoppe granted the plaintiffs’ request for sanctions.

Specifically, Hoppe will allow the jury to be instructed that they can draw “adverse inferences” from NSM’s failure to provide all requested evidence and documents. The order comes nearly a year after counsel for the plaintiffs asked the court to find that NSM disobeyed a June 23, 2020, order directing them to produce all relevant documents and information within their control.

“Defendant NSM has made clear that it will not fulfill its discovery obligations even under threat of Rule 37 sanctions, including contempt of court,” Hoppe wrote. “A permissive adverse-inference instruction also will allow NSM to defend itself at trial if it wants to and will not have an impermissible ‘spillover’ effect on any Defendant who did not disobey a discovery order.”

Hoppe’s memorandum opinion summarizes various changes in the dynamics of the NSM in the years since the lawsuit was filed, including shifts in leadership following the departure of longtime leader and defendant Jeff Schoep. Despite these changes in the group’s membership, Hoppe wrote that the leaders have been evading their discovery requirements for years.

Despite claims from NSM leader Burt Colucci that NSM complied to the full extent of its ability, Hoppe wrote that the parties produced “ample evidence that Mr. Colucci, acting as Defendant NSM’s managing agent, violated my June 23 discovery order because he did not provide complete and accurate credentials for each Social Media Account listed on NSM’s certification form, including his two ‘active’ nsm88.org email addresses.”

“On the contrary, Mr. Colucci gave the vendor incorrect passwords for both accounts — one of which he used to email plaintiffs’ counsel just two days later — despite certifying under penalty of perjury that this information was ‘true, correct, and complete to the best of his knowledge after he made a reasonable effort to search for and produce all requested information,’” Hoppe wrote. “He quickly deleted those accounts before the vendor could image them and then blamed the vendor for its inability to access the accounts that he personally controlled, when questioned under oath about his conduct.”

Despite arguments from Colucci that the incorrect credentials were not purposefully provided, Hoppe wrote that the incomplete credentials provided for most of the local chapters’ gmail.com accounts and unusable passwords for two “active” organizational email accounts are enough to show that he “failed to obey.”

Following Hoppe’s order, Integrity First for America, an organization funding the plaintiffs, applauded the decision.

“These defendants have tried every possible trick to avoid accountability — and our plaintiffs are committed to holding them accountable,” Integrity First for America Executive Director Amy Spitalnick said in a news release. “Plaintiffs have now won adverse inferences against four defendants, which will have significant impacts in court this fall.”

The plaintiffs also have won adverse inferences against defendants Robert “Azzmador” Ray, Vanguard America and Elliott Kline, also known as Eli Mosley.

According to Integrity First for America, the jury will specifically be instructed to treat as an established fact that Kline “entered into an agreement with one or more co-conspirators” to commit racially motivated violence in Charlottesville, among other facts.


These sanctions followed monetary sanctions against other defendants, as well as bench warrants for the arrest of two defendants found in contempt of court.


The Sines v. Kessler trial is currently set to begin Oct. 25 in Charlottesville’s federal courthouse.

The US power grid isn’t ready for climate change

In recent weeks, you’ve either had power problems or you’ve heard about them.

This past week’s heat wave has drawn attention the US’s power grid. 

Mario Tama/Getty Images

By Rebecca Heilweil 

 Jul 3, 2021

RECODE

In Portland, Oregon, this week, the recorded official temperature reached 115 degrees Fahrenheit, power cables for the city’s streetcars melted, sagging overhead wires forced the light rail to shut down, and more than 6,000 people lost electricity.

But it’s far from the first time extreme weather has caused serious problems with the power grid in recent months. During the winter storm that hit Texas in February, nearly 5 million people lost power. In June, California suggested that residents charge their electric vehicles during off-peak hours to save energy. And for the first time ever, after power outages hit several neighborhoods during this week’s heat wave, New York City officials sent residents an emergency mobile alert urging them to conserve energy.

It’s abundantly clear that the power grid in the United States is not ready for the effects of climate change, including the extreme weather events that come with it. After all, climate change isn’t just increasing the demand for energy to keep people cool or warm amid heat waves and winter storms. It’s also damaging the grid itself. The country is now in a race against time to shift its energy supply toward renewable sources, like wind and solar, while also needing more and more electricity to do everything from powering more air conditioning to boosting the number of EVs on the road.

“I would probably give our power grid maybe a C minus,” Kyri Baker, an engineering professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, told Recode. “It’s like this perfect storm of extreme temperatures, more electricity consumption, and aging infrastructure.”


Having a reliable power grid can be a matter of life and death. In the most severe power outages during the winter storm in Texas this past February, 700 people are estimated to have died, according to BuzzFeed. Hundreds of people died during this past week’s heat wave in the Pacific Northwest and Canada. Meanwhile, the effects of heat waves have been disproportionately worse for historically marginalized brown, Black, and Indigenous communities. People who are elderly, very young, who have certain medication conditions, or who work outdoors are also more likely to feel the impacts of extreme heat.

Climate change means that extreme weather events are becoming more intense and common, which is worrisome not just because the power grid is aging. The grid is woefully unprepared for an imminent and disturbing future.

How the US power grid works

Last year, about 40 percent of the country’s electricity generation came from natural gas. While the grid still relies on a good amount of coal-based power, a growing share of power is coming from renewable sources, like solar and wind power, which will hopefully make the grid more sustainable. But while some of these sources are a lot worse for the environment than others, they all contribute electricity to the grid, a giant engineering system full of high- and low-voltage wires, sensors, poles, and transformers that work together to transport electricity to your home.

Electricity travels across the grid, moving from high-voltage lines that carry the electricity across long distances to low-voltage lines, a process known as “stepping down.” The low-voltage lines distribute that electricity to buildings and then individual appliances and electronics. But there are hurdles. Right now, the country is still facing problems with the congestion of transmission lines that have maxed out on the amount of electricity they can carry. In Vermont, solar and wind energy have stalled because the grid is already too constrained.

“So it’s not like you can just set up a wire from point A to point B and everything will be fine,” Sam Gomberg, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, explained. “You need to set up little steps along the way to guide that electricity in the direction that you want it to go so that it ultimately ends up at your home.”

The US power grid is actually made up of several regional grids, or interconnections, that are tied together and operate on a synchronized frequency of 60 hertz. While these systems are very large, oversight of the grid is somewhat patchwork. Generating power for the grid are more than 10,000 power plants in the country. But the grid itself, including transmission and distribution systems, is operated by a mix of state-owned and private entities, including some public-private collaborations. Then, local utility companies like Con Edison in New York City and PG&E in San Francisco ultimately deliver electricity to peoples’ homes.


“The unique thing about the power system versus any other type of infrastructure is that it’s almost instantaneous,” Baker, of UC Boulder, told Recode. “So if I turn on a light in my house, there is an instantaneous mismatch in supply and demand. And the power plants actually respond almost in real time to that increase in demand.”

At the same time, that means not being hooked up with a broader system can cause problems. Texas, for instance, has opted to operate its own electric grid, which is largely independent from other regional power systems. While this has given the state more autonomy, some have argued that Texas could have avoided such devastating outages this past winter if the state’s grid had been able to draw from other power sources. Notably, nearby Oklahoma was able to turn to other states to keep its power on during the same storm.

Why the heat makes things worse

Summer heat can interfere with the US power supply in many ways.


Hot weather can drive up energy demands, often to power air conditioners, which can overload the electric grid and cause brownouts — partial outages that reduce the overall power available. At the same time, high temperatures can make power plants less effective, limit the amount of energy power lines can carry, and make failures more likely in transformers, which help control the voltage throughout the power grid.

That’s why, during the summer months, you might receive an alert telling you to cut back on electricity usage, like delaying vacuuming until the evening. If the problem gets bad enough, utilities might even use rolling blackouts — when a utility company temporarily shuts down electrical power for different areas in order to avoid overloading the entire system — in order to protect the grid. Of course, while officials might deem these steps necessary, rolling blackouts can be inconvenient and even risky for residents who need power to stay cool during heat waves. This past week, New York’s power company Con Edison distributed dry ice to some residents of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, who were left without air conditioning during a power outage.

The heat can cause problems for the electric grid beyond overcapacity. If the weather gets hot enough, power lines start to sag — a result of the metal inside them expanding — and risk striking a tree and starting a fire. At the same time, power plants are highly dependent on water, which they need to cool down their systems. This means that as hot and dry weather drives up demand for air conditioning, the increased need for energy is also driving up the power grid’s demand for water, which is often in short supply during periods of drought. Cooling systems need electricity, too, adding even more demand for energy.

Heat can do damage to power lines and make them less effective. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

“We’re trying to project the weather two years from now or five years from now, and climate change is making it more difficult,” Anjan Bose, an electrical engineering professor at Washington State University, told Recode. “If you can’t project the weather, you can’t project the load demand.”

Eventually, individual energy users become aware of these problems. This summer, California’s state power grid operator warned that people should prepare for temporary power outages. Last week, Portland had to shut down streetcar service. And in areas where there’s a high wildfire risk, utility companies might order rolling blackouts to lessen the risk of an overloaded grid causing additional fires.
What Biden wants to do to fix this

Fixing the power grid can’t be done in one fell swoop. Instead, the grid will need to be updated by transitioning to cleaner energy sources like wind and solar, adapting grid and energy storage infrastructure to adjust to these new types of power, and changing our approach to energy consumption in general.

The system also needs to predict and respond to changes in energy demand. One part of the solution is smart grid technologies, which use internet-connected sensors on various parts of the grid to collect a lot more detailed data about how well those parts are working. That real-time data can also help utility companies quickly resolve potential problems before they become widespread. The Biden administration supports deploying this tech, which could be key to making power grids more resilient.

In April, the White House also freed up $8 billion in order to boost the grid’s capacity to support renewable energy, and committed to making it easier for new, renewables-focused transmission lines to be approved. Joe Biden is now pushing to modernize the grid as part of his massive infrastructure plan. Through that plan, the president is hoping that the government will be able to spend at least $73 billion on improvements, including building thousands of miles of new transmission lines to expand renewable energy. This will be key to making renewables more feasible. 

As Vox’s Umair Irfan and Rebecca Leber explain:

Transmission lines can link areas that need energy with places where wind and solar power are cheap, which can be separated by thousands of miles. This would help boost the business case for wind and solar power. The proposal calls for a new grid authority to facilitate clean energy transmission, and an infrastructure financing authority to help come up with the money to pay for it.

But changes have to go beyond the federal government. Equipment needs to be updated on the regional and local level, too. Whether Biden will succeed in addressing the complex challenges of updating the grid remains to be seen. Without government action, private companies may be left with the job of fixing the grid, and there’s no guarantee they’ll put the long-term protection of the US power supply ahead of their profits.

Fire clouds spark 710,117 lightning strikes

 in western Canada in 15 hours

Amy Graff, SFGATE
July 1, 2021


The North American Lightning Detection Network detected 710,177 lightning events across British Columbia and northwestern Alberta in about 15 hours, between 3 p.m. on June 30 and 6 a.m. on July 1.Chris Vagasky/Vaisala

Storm-producing fire clouds threw out hundreds of thousands of lightning strikes over wildfire-stricken British Columbia and northwestern Alberta provinces in Canada Wednesday and Thursday, bewildering meteorologists.

Chris Vagasky, a meteorologist with the company Vaisala, which maps lightning strikes around in the world, said the North American Lightning Detection Network sensed 710,177 lightning events across British Columbia and northwestern Alberta in about 15 hours, between 3 p.m. on June 30 and 6 a.m. on July 1.


Of those, 597,314 were in-cloud pulses, meaning the strikes didn't hit the ground. "Each in-cloud lightning 'strike' can be made up of multiple in-cloud pulses," Vagasky explained.

There were 112,803 cloud-to-ground strokes detected over the same area, he said.

Vagasky called the numbers "surprising" for Canada. "In studying lightning, there is always something interesting that comes up, whether it is lightning in a hurricane or volcano, or large numbers of lightning," he said. "As a whole, Canada doesn’t generally see a lot of lightning — about 90% less than the United States. In fact, the counts from yesterday are more what you would expect to see in a big day over lightning-prone regions like Texas or Oklahoma."

The numbers coming out of the lightning siege seem too big to be true, but Vagasky said the activity is measured with precision equipment.

Data produced by North American Lightning Detection Network is monitored nonstop and validated against rocket-triggered lightning, lightning to tall towers, and other lightning references.

"The network detects more than 95% of cloud-to-ground flashes with 100-meter accuracy," said Vagasky.

The majority of the strikes in western Canada were the result of pyrocumulonimbus clouds forming over the wildfires tearing across western Canada, which has also suffered from a sweltering heat wave in the past week.

On Thursday morning the British Columbia Wildfire Service listed 47 blazes across the region. In a fire burning 95 miles northeast of Vancouver, the entire village of Lytton evacuated. The mayor of the town of 250 people told CBC News on Thursday the whole town was on fire. Large blazes also burned north of Big White as well near Sparks Lake, according to CBC.

"Absolutely mind-blowing wildfire behavior in British Columbia," Dakota Smith, a scientist in Colorado, tweeted along with satellite imagery. "Incredible & massive storm-producing pyrocumulonimbus plumes."

"I've watched a lot of wildfire-associated pyroconvective events during the satellite era, and I think this might be the singularly most extreme I've ever seen," Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, wrote on Twitter. "This is a literal firestorm, producing *thousands* of lightning strikes and almost certainly countless new fires."

These massive, mushroom-shaped clouds of hot, smoky air towering thousands of feet into the sky are caused by a natural source of heat such as a wildfire or volcano, according to NASA. Rising warm air from the fire carries water vapor, ash and smoke up into the atmosphere, forming clouds.

BC Wildfire Service shared an image of massive smoke plumes over the province: "#BCWildfire Service is responding to 2 wildfires ~18 km N of Big White. The Long Loch wildfire (K51040) and the Derrickson Lake wildfire (K51041) are in close proximity and estimated to be 300 ha combined in size. Smoke and fire behavior is making it difficult to confirm size."BC Wildfire Service

These clouds can become so intense that they create their own weather and emit lightning that can start new wildfires on the ground.

Neil Lareau, who studies wildfire-generated weather, said this appears to be the biggest pyrocumulonimbus event he has seen.

"At face value, I’m tempted to say this might be the upper end of what I’ve ever seen," said Lareau, a professor of atmospheric sciences in the department of physics at the University of Nevada at Reno. "There have been some significant pyrocumulonimbus clouds in British Columbia in 2017 as well as the Australian outbreak of 2020 and then the Creek Fire here in California."

Lareau closely followed a pyrocumulonimbus cloud that developed over the Creek Fire on Sept. 5, 2020, between Shaver Lake, Big Creek and Huntington Lake, Calif. Using data from the National Weather Service’s network of Doppler radars, Lareau created a model of the smoke plume that soared 55,000 feet in elevation.

He said the fires in western Canada have produced several clouds of this magnitude.

"Every year it’s one upping the year before, which is really horrifying," he said.

Lightning strikes surge in British Columbia

Yacob Reyes AXIOS


Wildfire burns above the Fraser River Valley near Lytton, British Columbia, Canada, on July 2. Photo: James MacDonald/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

Lightning strikes in Western Canada have surged over the past few days, triggered in part by an unprecedented heatwave that also induced wildfires, Reuters reports.

The big picture: British Columbia, which usually accounts for about 5% of Canada's yearly lightning strike total, reported its annual number in less than 48 hours.

A meteorologist, who tracks lightning, noted about 710,000 lightning events in British Columbia and Alberta Wednesday.

Driving the news: The onslaught of wildfires enduring in the area has resulted in a high moisture level in the atmosphere.

The moisture ultimately fuels its own towering thunderstorms and a surge of lightning strikes that itself has caused several forest fires, per Reuters.

The fires are expected to burn through 247,105 acres by the end of the weekend, a higher figure than in previous years.

Go deeper: Ferocious wildfires destroy British Columbia town amid historic heat