Socialists Don’t Need Their Oppressor’s Permission to Be Here

On May 23rd, Florida Senator Rick Scott put out a travel advisory warning socialists:

“Florida is openly hostile toward Socialists, Communists, and those that enable them. Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by Socialists and others who work in the Biden Administration.”

-Rick Scott, Florida Senate

The letter continuously conflates “socialists” and “communists” with those who operate within the Biden Administration, implying that the President, who broke the rail unions’ strike at the behest of a party that has explicitly described itself as capitalist, could ever be socialist in any way. The press release concludes with a warning that Central and South Florida’s Cuban and Venezuelan populations know the supposed “horrors of socialism,” conveniently omitting the U.S.’ role in actively undermining these countries’ populations and their work to impoverish them.

The most telling theme throughout the press release is that Rick Scott is confused about socialists needing permission from the people who oppress their class, to exist anywhere in the U.S. To Rick Scott, it’s inconceivable that socialists are anything but  a foreign adversary or a “blue-state” phenomenon, ignoring the reality that socialist are birthed through the conditions capitalism creates. The fact is that any true socialist recognizes that if they’re to struggle and win power for the working and oppressed masses, this struggle will be in defiance of the capitalist state and the laws that it enacts. 

Socialists will remain in Florida and continue to exist as long as the class struggle exists. Despite the red-baiting between either bourgeois parties that occur so frequently, it’s impossible to hide the fact that the Republicans and the Democrats could only ever be capitalist, and that they both rely on each other to suppress what socialism-communism truly represent: the end of exploitation and the overthrow of capital.

By: Jane Reed