My political segment on Tamara for Georgia warned about Republicans attempting to malign Democrats with the word “Socialism.” I urged that we take the narrative away.
Transcript of the segment:
Tamara Shealey: Welcome to the broadcast. How’s everybody doing this morning,
Egberto Willies: Hey things are great. I love the passion. I just heard what’s going on right there. That is so important for the movement. So important for the movement. But we have to turn the passion into action. But I tell you what’s in the national news. The name of the game right now is socialism. That is what everybody is talking about. That is a new fear tactic that’s going on. In fact, I’m here at Starbucks and I was just speaking to a woman whose son was a staunch supporter of progressive ideas and suddenly because of what’s going on in the country right now — they went ahead and started talking about socialism — and he has picked up the mantra in thinking that what these guys are talking about is bad for him even though everything that we know it is good. We’re talking about Democratic Progressive policies here. It’s good for him, So one of the things that I want to say is we’re gonna have to change, start working on the narrative going forward to ensure that people are hearing the things that they need to hear relative to what’s going to move us forward. If we take a look at the polls, the polls say the people want the things that those like us want. Somehow it’s not happening and is something that we have to work on.
David Slavin: I think Egberto is absolutely right that socialism is on the agenda right now. But it means a lot of different things. I was listening to Bernie Sanders on MSNBC last night and what he’s talking about is not necessarily socialism in the sense of government ownership of the of the means of production but of an expanded and an extended welfare state. And in order to do that, in order to implement that we really need to have a have a strategy. And the strategy is about counter, opposing money power with mass movements and mass organization. And to do that we really need to resolve the contradictions within the 90% that is the racial inequalities that exist within the vast majority of the people. There are public opinion polls, Egberto, that you’re talking about where if people are told you know we need to redistribute income to people to the lower-income folks in the in the country to make things more equal, everybody agrees you know 80% of people agree. But if you use the word welfare, which is a code word that has been used to racialize around income redistribution, then the proportion of the positive responses goes way way down obviously because white’s are thinking white is really what it comes down to. So I think that we cannot simply, and I think that Bernie Sanders has a tendency to do this, we can’t simply say everybody, all the 90% get together without understanding that there are inequalities that we need to resolve among ourselves.
Egberto Willies: I agree with all of that David. I do want to say something before my time is out. … I would love progressives out there, all the different shows that are out there right now, to make sure to not cave into the belief, or as a Robbie was saying last week, not to fear the word because of what they have us doing as Democrats right now is fearing the word, running from the word, running for what it really means. The fact that Webster dictionary says socialism means controlling all the means of productions is a fallacy. That’s communism. It’s a difference. The definition in the dictionary is incorrect. I think we have to get on top of the message as opposed to allowing them to dictate the message. And when we control the message we can then express the people what we want in my humble opinion of course.
Tamara Shealey: And I think We have to educate so many people on what it is. So many people just really don’t know, Egberto, what this is and why this is even important to them.
Egberto Willies: That is exactly right Tamara. That is exactly what we have to do and I agree with you 100% and that’s why your show is so important and that’s why all the subsequent shows that we need to put together going forward I think it’s so important. So keep up doing the great work that you guys are doing out there.
Tamara Shealey: Thank can find Egberto at PoliticsDoneRight.com. He does a broadcast every single day. He is fighting hard for what is right for all people. So Egberto we look forward to having you back on next week with a national political update.
Egberto Willies: Thank you so kindly, Tamara. Bye Robby. Bye David. Have a good one.