When America’s Red States Were Red
This month marks 120 years since the founding of the Socialist Party of America. The party was especially strong in rural areas like Oklahoma — success that the socialist movement could actually replicate today.
Eugene Debs in 1912. (Library of Congress)
Markwayne Mullin is an ultraconservative Republican congressperson from eastern Oklahoma. He hates socialism and isn’t afraid to tell you about it.
“Socialism is nothing but a disguised free democracy, meaning that they make you think you have a choice, but you really don’t,” he warned his constituents in 2019. The Green New Deal “has nothing to do with eliminating my cows from farting,” he insisted. “It has to do with that farm being deemed a hazard to the public health” so the federal government can claim “eminent domain and take over our farms.” And if the socialists and bureaucrats in New York and Washington, DC can use farting cows as an excuse to take over farms, what’s next?
Donald Trump skillfully tapped into fears of “socialism” to run up huge margins in places like Mullin’s congressional district, which went for Trump in 2020 by the largest margin in the state (76 to 22 percent).
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