Both movements advocate extensive state direction of the economy, which undermines liberty, prosperity, and the foundations of democracy.
USA Today recently ran my op-ed titled “Democratic Socialists and MAGA Share a Dangerous Flaw.” Here is an excerpt:
Starting with Zohran Mamdani’s triumph in the New York City mayoral race in 2025, candidates who identify as democratic socialists have captured a succession of significant Democratic primaries — the latest being Florida state Representative Angie Nixon’s surprising win in the Senate nomination — and several other contests have come up just short. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has long stood as the most prominent self-described democratic socialist in national politics, and was the runner-up for the Democratic presidential nomination in both 2016 and 2020.
Democratic socialism is a harmful doctrine. If it were to be enacted, its program would inflict serious harm and threaten democracy itself. And in pursuing broad state control of the economy, today’s socialists paradoxically share much in common with the MAGA nationalists they claim to oppose.
Both advocate government management of the economy, and both paths undermine liberty, prosperity, and democracy. Socialists do not command the Democratic Party in the same way MAGA dominates the Republicans. Yet their influence is on the rise.
The democratic socialist program extends far beyond a modest boost in economic regulation or welfare spending. It envisions sweeping state domination of the economy and society, on a scale that invites comparisons to Cuba, North Korea and the former Soviet Union….
Ironically, democratic socialists have more in common with MAGA nationalists than either side may wish to admit. President Donald Trump has pursued his own version of economic central planning: ruinous tariffs, severely restrictive immigration policy, and government equity stakes in Intel, U.S. Steel and roughly 30 other companies.
Tariffs and immigration restrictions are both major forms of government control over the economy. Immigration limits, in particular, curb economic freedom more than any other current U.S. policy….
The rest of the essay considers how both socialist and nationalist approaches to economic governance confront issues of knowledge and incentives, and why both threaten liberty and democracy. It also explains why adherents of these ideologies cannot paper over their flaws by claiming they advocate democratic variants of them, rather than authoritarian ones:
Today’s socialists argue they will avoid this fate by championing “democratic” socialism, not the authoritarian form. But near-total state control of the economy has never coexisted with democracy for long. A government that controls the economy can deprive opposition parties of resources and weaponize access to essential goods to crush dissent.
That is precisely what happened in Venezuela, where a democratically elected socialist government evolved into a dictatorship.
Right-wing nationalist regimes have followed a similar path, in Germany, Italy, Spain and numerous Latin American nations.
Many of today’s socialists even admire authoritarian socialist regimes and hope to emulate them:
- The DSA praises Fidel Castro, the Cuban communist dictator who transformed the country into a totalitarian state.
- Prominent socialist “influencer” Hasan Piker praised Mao – widely regarded as the single greatest mass murderer in history – as “one of the great leaders of this world.”
- Sen. Sanders has a long history of praising communist despots.
“Postliberal” MAGA nationalists likewise often admire right-wing tyrants, such as Spain’s Francisco Franco, Portugal’s Antonio Salazar and others.
Progressives and others should consider whether they trust someone like Trump to wield the kind of sweeping control over the economy that socialists advocate. There is no guarantee such a figure – or something worse – would not ascend to power under socialism….
I end with this point:
If nothing else, we should heed the persuasive evidence of people “voting with their feet.” Nearly every socialist regime in history has produced a mass exodus toward market economies, never the other way around. Venezuela’s exodus represents the Western Hemisphere’s largest refugee crisis, and Cuba has witnessed several waves of refugees over more than six decades….
If socialism functioned as advertised, people would be fleeing market economies to live under it, not the reverse. Right-wing nationalist regimes have produced their own flows of refugees. Refugees from Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, for example, helped build American science, including the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb.
I addressed some of the issues in greater depth in earlier writings, such as “The Case Against Nationalism” (coauthored with Alex Nowrasteh), and “Perils of Democratic Socialism.” See also my recent article on the contradictions of socialist prison abolitionism.
