Democratic Socialism is a Scam, by Giancarlo Sopo.

I agree we must do more to help families like mine [who immigrated poor from Cuba], but the policies of democratic socialists would have shackled us to the duplex where I was raised. I know this to be true because that is exactly what happened to the loved ones my grandparents left behind in socialist Cuba. They died in the same place where they were born. …

In a classic bait-and-switch scam, democratic socialist politicians and their allies in the media are hoping that Americans confuse them for Nordic social democrats. While the terms are phonetically similar, those of us who have worked and spent time in Latin America understand that this is more than a misnomer. The ideology and policies of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which include an end to profits and “democratizing” the means of production, are much more like those of Havana and Caracas than Helsinki and Copenhagen.

Bear in mind that Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland grew rich and developed on barely adulterated capitalism, and only went more socialist from the 1970s. The US would be following the Nordic pattern to start with.

Having been raised in a community built by the victims of socialism, it is difficult to explain just how bizarre it is to hear American media personalities — from The View’s Joy Behar to the Washington Post’s Elizabeth Bruenig — assure us it’s “just like liberalism” and “unlike your grandfather’s concept of socialism.” Of course, they fail to mention the part about government seizing control of people’s businesses and property. Such blitheful ignorance would usually be met with laughter at my house, but it just so happens that my grandfather had such an intimate understanding of socialism that he died as a political prisoner for opposing some of the very same ideas being peddled by the socialists du jour. …

But it’s the South American version on offer in the US:

In an article published in Jacobin, the socialist magazine’s editor and DSA’s Vice-Chair laid out a case for why Scandinavian social democracy is not what they have in mind, arguing a need for “a militant labor movement…to not merely tame but overcome capitalism.” Further dispelling the “it’s just free healthcare” myth, prominent democratic socialist Megan Day was even more explicit: “here’s the truth: democratic socialists want to end capitalism. And we want to do that by pursuing a reform agenda today in an effort to revive a politics focused on class hierarchy and inequality in the United States.”

When I presented a team of Norwegian economists with a summary written by Vox of DSA’s economic ideas, eleven out of the 12 indicated the views would fall on the “far-left/fringe” end of Norway’s political spectrum. Meanwhile, in neighboring Denmark, DSA’s commitment to ending the free enterprise system is a near mirror image of the platform of the Enhedslisten, the one-time communist Red-Green Alliance party that has averaged less than 4 percent of the vote in elections since 1990.