1NC---AT: Scandinavian/Successful Countries

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, 9-21-2020, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali-born Dutch-American activist and former politician. She is a critic of Islam and advocate for the rights and self-determination of Muslim women, opposing forced marriage, honour killing, and child marriage. (The False Appeal Of Socialism, Hoover Institution, 9-21-2020, https://www.hoover.org/research/false-appeal-socialism, 7-18-2023)//AAlmand

Social democracy as it exists in the Scandinavian countries accepts the core premises of capitalism (the existence of corporations, private property, the free price mechanism, and a stable currency) alongside a relatively high level of taxation to finance redistributive social welfare programs. Crucially, social democrats accept freedom of expression, free and fair elections, the existence of political opposition, freedom of the press, and the rule of law. Scandinavian social democracy is not, however, what today’s American neosocialists desire to impose, some claims to the contrary notwithstanding. They condemn “the system” and say that it must go. But speaking broadly, the debate on socialism has already happened, and one would think it had been long since resolved. Authoritarian socialism, in its quest for utopia, has been a human catastrophe with an immense death toll. Millions died for the cause, and millions more were killed, tortured, imprisoned, and impoverished. The names Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Stalin evoke in those who survived their prison camps and killing fields the same revulsion as a figure such as Hitler. All of this has been well documented, particularly after the Soviet Union fell and researchers got a glimpse of Communist Party archives. Authoritarian socialism is lethal because it brooks no dissent. In every implementation of authoritarian socialism, individual freedom has been irrevocably compromised for a utopian and unattainable collective idea. The sheer number of failed socialist experiments raises unavoidable questions about politics, economics, justice, and human nature. Socialist grievance narratives, their claims to be helping the downtrodden, only made people’s lives more miserable. Why was this doomed enterprise so often attempted? The neosocialism of 2020 has shifted gears from the more economically focused socialism of the twentieth century. Now it is enmeshed with the ideas of postmodernism and identity politics. This type of socialism rejects capitalism as immoral, along with notions of national borders and national sovereignty. It condemns American history, emphasizing only the darkest pages of the US experience, not the ideals to which the founding fathers aspired or which drew so many immigrants of all backgrounds over the years. “Woke” socialism is thus distinct from the socialism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, which was heavily focused on economics and the workers’ struggle. Neosocialism carries an ostensible moral appeal for young people who may know little about history or the nature of socialism, or who are disenchanted with the current state of the world. Nevertheless, although the new socialism differs from the Marxism of old, there are similarities. Once again, individual humans matter less than structural considerations in the effort to achieve a utopia—which, being unattainable, is never achieved. The Marxism of old divided all people into two categories: the oppressors (the bourgeoisie who controlled the means of production) and the oppressed (the workers or proletariat). It did not matter how nice, kind, or charitable a person was individually; if he belonged to the bourgeoisie, he was condemned on the basis of his class identity. In a communist revolution, he was the enemy, against whom all means were justified. A similar division appears in the woke politics of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. People are viewed not as individuals to be judged on their own merits but as members of either oppressive or oppressed tribes. Nothing matters but some intrinsic identity of the person, frequently an immutable characteristic such as race. These concepts have flowed outward from academic institutions and law schools to become embraced by celebrities, political figures, and protesters. I fear it will not be possible to defend capitalism, either intellectually or morally, in this climate of increasing orthodoxy that marginalizes or silences dissenting voices. As woke intolerance spreads ever further into universities, newsrooms, and even large corporations that are fearful of diverging from the new orthodoxy, capitalism as a set of ideas will be increasingly on the defensive, in spite of its moral and economic accomplishments. The adherents of neosocialism have now racialized their worldview to such an extent that all white Americans have become morally suspect, while nonwhites are presented as victims of their exploitation. I posit, to the contrary, that the new socialists are the true racists and exploiters. They misrepresent American and Western history. They exploit immigrants, ethnic minorities, women, members of the LGBTQ community, and children and poison young, impressionable minds through indoctrination, distortions of reality, and empty promises. What have they achieved? More often than not, they hurt the very people they claim to be helping. Democratic capitalism, in the framework of the rule of law and respect for individual rights, has benefited billions of human beings. It allows for gradual, incremental progress to remedy legitimate grievances as they arise. Until a better alternative can credibly be proposed, these are the institutions that we should celebrate—and defend.