The revival of socialism in mainstream politics has been one of the bigger developments of the last five years. Bernie Sanders’s two presidential campaigns sparked a series of elections of democratic socialists at every level of US government. Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership led to a surge in left-wing membership in the UK Labour Party and ongoing wins by the party’s socialists in local governments all over the country. Now, the New Zealand Labour Party is getting in on the act, too.

This past week in New Zealand saw an apparently spontaneous series of self-outings by professed democratic socialists among the country’s Labour Party. This deluge of political confessions began with a sadly typically embarrassing exchange in Parliament, which saw an MP from the right-wing National Party, David Bennett, accuse Labour MP Kieran McAnulty of being a “communist.” Upon being forced to withdraw and apologize for the “unparliamentary” remark, one of Bennett’s fellow National Party MPs instead accused McAnulty of being “a socialist.”

“Yes, I am a socialist, and I’m proud of it,” McAnulty shot back, in a reply that quickly went viral. “Yeah — there you go. [Applause] Thank you very much. Bring it on. And I’m very proud to say to the good people of the Wairarapa that they elected a proud socialist as their MP.”