The Fake Socialism
The Rhetorical Left and the Real Divide
Socialism is a fancy word. Historically the left is associated with egalitarianism, social justice, redistribution of wealth, labor rights, and state intervention in the economy. It includes Marxists, socialists, and progressive liberals who emphasize equality and collective welfare. They call is socialism.
The right emphasizes hierarchy, individual responsibility, private property, nationalism, and market freedom. It includes conservatives, classical liberals, and libertarians who value order, tradition, and limited government. But these distinctions are now academic.
The earliest leftists were the new economy rich mixed with middle-class reformers claiming to speak for the poor. They worked for all three. The builder-left of Attlee built systems. The National Health Service was one result. Fixed working hours and paid overtime were others. These people built systems. They planned and executed.
The rhetorical-left of the 1960s discovered moral language as political currency. Socialism. They were the talkers. They replaced work with words. They rose on rhetoric and stayed because talk costs nothing. They dream, not plan. They come from upper-middle-class comfort, even wealth. They enter politics or academia not to build but to rule through speech.
There is no true left or right anymore. The old right was royalty and hereditary lords. They gave way to industrialists who gave way to Big Tech. Each new elite claimed sympathy with the left because the modern left poses no real threat. Academia has no plan. Tech and finance can afford to fund the rhetoric because it never touches their profits.
The leftist daydreaming seen in academia captures this decline. Many left intellectuals live only in words. They write critiques of capitalism and power, yet never build or manage anything. They float free of budgets, jobs, or borders. From that height, utopia looks easy. But it is a mirage built on other people’s labor.
Western Leftist
Margaret Thatcher and Barack Obama show this contrast. Thatcher was a doer. She broke unions, rebuilt the economy, and lived the cost of her choices. She ended her life modestly, out of fashion, but real. Obama is the new model. He turned rhetoric into a brand. He lectures, writes, and signs Netflix deals. He profits from performance, not policy. Thatcher acted. Obama narrates action.
The difference mirrors the age. The left lives in words. The right still manages consequences. The academic left multiplies commentary. The managerial right multiplies results and enemies. The centrist copies the language of one and the technique of the other, pleasing neither.
The abundance of left writing comes from comfort. Professors and activists have time, tenure, and moral distance. Those with real power do not write; they decide. Those who write imagine power without its weight. The left dreams of justice. The right wakes up to invoices.
Why build when you can critique? Why govern when you can profess? They turned activism into career. The modern hollow-left is even worse. It abandoned real policy, so corporate elites can adopt progressive slogans without fear.
Big Tech plays this game easily. Billionaires can be “progressive” because the modern left demands nothing real. Talk socialism. It wants pronouns, not taxes. It asks for virtue, not redistribution. There is no Attlee to nationalize their industries. The left became safe for capital because it dropped material politics for cultural theater.
Academic leftists can live off capitalist endowments while condemning capitalism and calling for socialism. NGOs can speak for the poor while employing none. Politicians can promise change while changing nothing. The rhetoric keeps everyone distracted.
Maintaining the left-right divide benefits those who extract. It keeps debate inside the walls of identity and language. Material reality disappears. So the old “right vs left” split is meaningless. The real divide is extraction versus being extracted from. Everything else is performance. Ideologies are labels for who extracts and who gets drained.
Fake socialism is the dominant form now. It’s a tribal identity and career path, not a practice or sacrifice. The word itself has been captured by those who benefit from obscuring what real socialism would require: giving up their own comfort and privilege.
India Example
India has seen this too. Nehru was a closet communist. Indira allied openly with communists. Indira would celebrate birthday of grand children on an airplane in 1970’s while giving speeches about austerity. Together they dragged India’s economy to the bottom. The country went to the IMF in 1990. Today France and Germany stand on that same edge. The pattern repeats. The left gains power through dreams, governs through slogans, and leaves others to pay the bill. Today India’s left collapsed because reality caught up.
Look at India again. Modi and Yogi provide healthcare, subsidies, and strict action against defaulters. These are classic left policies. But they are branded “right-wing” because they reject elite rhetoric. They act without academic approval. The real working class sees results, not vocabulary.
Meanwhile, the global elite works at Goldman Sachs or consults for McKinsey while preaching equality. They extract wealth yet signal virtue. The rhetorical class protects this illusion. As long as people argue about “true left” and “real right,” they never see the system that bleeds them both. It is fake socialism.
The Left Religion
This rhetorical tribe of fake socialism, has all the marks of religion. They have shibboleths, coded language to prove belonging. Use one wrong word and you are cast out. They enforce heresy laws. They punish insiders who deviate more harshly than outsiders. They value ritual over results. What matters is performance, not outcomes. Profess the right creed, and you are safe.
They have a priesthood of journalists, academics, and NGO staff who guard the orthodoxy. They earn by keeping the tribe alive. They preach salvation, always just out of reach. They sustain purity contests where each tries to outdo the other’s faith. This endless escalation keeps them busy and harmless.
Like religion, this tribe gives comfort and belonging to those who fear facing reality. It keeps them from asking who truly benefits. The real extractors love them for it. The rhetoric hides the money flow.
The Challengers
Then comes the real challenger. A man who sleeps on a hard bed, avoids air-conditioning, and governs a massive state. He enforces law, builds homes, and jails defaulters. By every measure he is pro-poor. If he spoke the tribe’s language, they would call him a saint. But he does not. So they call him a monster.
They, who fly in private jets to climate summits, preach austerity from comfort. They send their children to elite schools while demanding equality for others. They grow rich selling books about justice. They hate the ascetic leader because he proves they are frauds.
Yogi Adityanath exposes them. He lives simply. He governs effectively. He rejects their rituals. He needs no permission. He shows that compassion and discipline can exist without the tribe’s approval. That is why he wins elections, as Modi does. Ordinary people see results. The elite sees threat.
Modi’s and Yogi’s families still live modestly. Their siblings run tea stalls or do manual work. No media photo-op, no staged charity. Just reality. Compare this to the Western “progressives” like Kennedys, Clintons, Obamas, Blairs. The new dynasties growing rich on talk. They live in estates, give speeches about poverty, and build careers for their children from public virtue.
The tribal class cannot understand men who wield power without extracting from it. Their instinct is denial. They call it fake, ignore it, or change the subject. Because if they admit it, their entire moral economy collapses. This is no longer about ideology. It is about exposure. The professional class that lives by performance cannot tolerate those who live by example. They talk of justice but fear anyone who practices it.
The extraction class, left or right, recognizes its own kind. They share schools, networks, and a quiet rule that power must pay. Modi and Yogi broke that rule. They lead but do not extract. That is the real revolution. And that is what terrifies the rhetorical tribe.
See also: Lucrative business of Political Party.