Is the United States a capitalist country, where bosses exploit workers, or is it a great empire, where colonists exploit subject peoples? American socialists and social democrats were never quite able to decide.

“There are people who are very big into diversity but whose views end up being not particularly sympathetic to working people, whether they’re white or black or Latino,” Bernie Sanders told GQ magazine in 2019. Yet he would also say that: “When you’re white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto. You don’t know what it’s like to be poor. You don’t know what it’s like to be hassled when you walk down the street.”

In 2026 Sanders is an emeritus figure, and the “imperial” idea has won out. What distinguishes the new crop of victorious DSA candidates from Sanders is the idea, not new but ascendant, that the white American worker is not really the victim of the bosses, because they too are sharing in the guilty riches of the United States, an imperial project. 

In a course she taught at the City University of New York, Darializa Avila Chevalier, the Democratic nominee for New York’s 13th congressional district, describes the United States as a “settler colonial state and – like Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel – it remains one today.” A student group she was a part of spoke of the inherent “fascism ingrained in the American consciousness,” with its colonial foundation.  

Andy Burnham is making Manchester look like a joke

Kemi crashes Burnham’s Reddit refuge

I can’t remember........

© The Spectator