America's Forgotten Socialist History

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I recall one time arguing with my Dad (a Trump voter) who told me, "Your politics reminds me of your grandpa. That's scary." I found out in that conversation that my Dad's Dad (born 1908) was a socialist and was active in starting the Progressive Miners of America, a left wing labor union that split from the UMWA. It made me proud to be the descendant of a man who, as I have been told, put his life on the line to make sure his fellow workers had more bargaining power.

It's actually mind-boggling how twisted the American education system is

Conservatives are horrified and shocked that so many young people are attracted to socialist ideals. Could this be because conservatives dismiss any opposition to unregulated capitalism as socialism?

My brother spent years 15-20 years ago researching the history of the labor movement and it led him to learn about Socialism among many other things and introduced me to it as well. He has passed but I know he would have loved to see this video, I certainly enjoyed it. Thank you very much.

That “children aren’t in the mines” thing won’t hold true for long with how things are going in some states.

People describing progressive ideals as "non-American" so they don't have to critically think about them in order to attempt refuting them is funny to me considering the entirety of modern America is non-American.

While doing some reading, I recently learned that my small conservative hometown in Idaho was established by a dairy cooperative. It literally exists because of socialism. Not that I'd expect any of the conservatives there to know that.

I can just picture the future where people are asking questions like "what is a billionaire?" It'll stay in my head

Sorry, I haven’t even watched the video, but the minute I saw “forgotten history”, and I was like, “Forgotten? Or erased?”

The fact that there are centuries of history worth of socialism is all just massive proof of how massive the baked in contradictions of capitalism really are.

You can destroy a movement, but you can't destroy an idea

Thank you for delivering the truth. I was born in 1952. I can remember seeing public service films about duck and cover, how much better off we were compared to every other country in the world, how much Russia duped their citizens with propaganda, etc.etc. And I believed it all. Then, when I got old enough to stay up late and listen to Dad and his brothers talk politics, my real education began. They were blue collar, union liberals who read books and thought for themselves. Like Howard Zinn they were all WWII vets who had seen the elephant...multiple times... that included liberating concentration camps, getting ships sunk from beneath them (the Hornet and merchant marine ships), and engaging in the only toe-to-toe slug-out between two battleships in the entire war (the Washington won btw). They understood capitalism ("worshipping the almighty dollar") and socialism. They all saw why we were in Viet Nam and knew the Domino Theory was bullshit. They knew that the US would side with Satan as long as he was anti-communism. Again, thank you for telling it like it is.

One thing you quickly find when you start discussing Socialism is that Capitalists cannot tolerate even the idea that another system might exist, much less be successful, and all talk of it is to be mocked and quelled. It's no wonder Socialist History has been expunged from our textbooks- the very hope for change represents a grave danger to the ruling class.

It's a shame that most people, even socialists, are unaware of the history of socialism prior to the Russian Revolution, and if they know anything its limited to Marx and Engels. They were far from the first or only socialists and every single country has a socialist history to be told.

It still amazes me how little I was taught about who the Black Panthers were growing up in the 90s. I was told they were bad extremists who only did terrible things. Learning all the good they did was something I researched on my own.

I'm French and I'm actually reading "The heart is a lonely hunter" by Carson McCullers. I was shocked to see they mentioned Karl Marx, Socialist unions and Communists, so I went on YouTube to look for something about the socialist movements in the US, which I didn't know existed. And what do I found ? That one of my favourite Youtuber just released a video about that precise subject !!!! 😍 Большое спасибо, товарищ JT ❤

My grandmother used to tell me stories of going to visit her own maternal grandparents. They were immigrants and children of immigrants from Germany, living in a community of Germans and Irishmen in Kansas. She'd tell me about how every single year the entire community would get together to harvest each other's fields one at a time. Anyone who wasn't working in the fields was helping to make food and do the other work not directly related to harvesting. Everyone did what they were best able to do without regard of who's grain all of the work was going to. Everyone got as much harvest as was possible in the quickest time possible while distributing the labor evenly across the whole community so everyone got equal responsibility and benefit. Not everyone even spoke the same language, but everyone understood grinding that sweet grain.

1:18 What's depressing is Conservatives say words like Communist, Socialist, Marxist, Woke & a Majority of them don't have a clue what any of these words mean. They just clap like trained seals. 🦭

What alot of people dont realize is that socialism exists in America today, but only for the rich. They have every kind of safety net, group-support, golden parachute and buttpad society can offer, and yet the middle.class and poor are left in a merciless dog-eat-dog system of competition to see who can make a wealthy person the wealthiest in exchange for barely enough to make ends meet... Always remember who these companies called 'essential', and never forget how much they compensate them for being so 'essential'...