Ocasio-Cortez’s video with a brand owner angered some who saw it as consumerist, while others backed her on health grounds
Ocasio-Cortez’s video with a brand CEO angered some who saw it as consumerist, while others backed her on health groundsThe burning debate on the American left this week: is sunscreen socialist?spoke out about the poor quality of sun creams in the US compared to elsewhere.
On Monday, the Rhode Island chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America torched Ocasio-Cortez, the DSA’s most famous member, over the sunscreen video. “A true tribune of the working class,” the chapter wrote sarcastically on X, formerly known as Twitter. The Democratic Socialists of America calls itself a big-tent organization: its members include leftists from Scandinavian-style social democrats to Stalin-venerating Marxist-Leninists. So while some chapters attacked Ocasio-Cortez for her consumerism, others, like Neal Turnquist, a co-chair of DSA’s Santa Fe chapter, who calls himself a democratic socialist, offered only praise.
What’s fueling the tensions is uneasiness about how that broader project is faring. Anders Lee, a self-described Marxist and DSA member in Brooklyn, has noticed an “ebb” in leftwing enthusiasm since the collapse of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. “From 2017 to 2020, it really felt like there was an opening for social democratic policies to be implemented in the United States,” and for many leftists, “that was a really exciting time.
But some DSA members argue that national media narratives, and the social media algorithms that amplify them, overlook the progress socialists continue to make – especially at local and state levels, where a growing number of leftist lawmakers take office every year. Recently, New York’s local DSA chapters helped pass the historic, the first major Green New Deal policy in any state, creating a publicly funded renewable energy program to challenge private fossil fuel giants.