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I want people to get a fuller story of the political situation thats out there, and jokes and memes have always left me in a place where Im like, Oh, that made me laugh, and then, Why did that make me laugh? Let me investigate what this things about.

Posted on December 17, 2019, at 2:09 p.m. ET

Young leftists are breaking down the points behind their political ideology on TikTok to make it easier for the next generation of voters to understand and get pulled into socialism.

Leftist TikTok creators are booming on the platform, putting out content in just the last month that has collectively amassed hundreds of thousands of views and sparked conversations with other users about leftist movements. For some, creators told BuzzFeed News, TikTok is just an entry point to combat what they see as a battle between the populist left and right for the next generation of voters.

Yo yo yo! Inviting yall to the motherfuckin revolution, Gem Nwanne said in their rendition of a TikTok trend where creators parody party announcements over bars of a Chief Keef song. Location? Around the world. Time? Right the fuck now! Cost? Your privilege. We talkin BYO skillset! No cops!

In another TikTok posted a little over a week later, Nwanne hopped on another trend where they danced to a clip of I Gets Crazy, a deep-cut Nicki Minaj and Lil Wayne song, while listing out the stages of radical politicization. In the clip, Nwanne bops to the song as the different stages of radicalized political thought pop up onscreen. In the 10 second clip, all full-time workers should be able to afford food and shelter quickly progresses into take back the means of production, eat the rich & secure the safety of all people as Nwanne dances more erratically. The video has over 195,000 views and 40,000 likes.

Those audio and video give creators the freedom to twist and riff for a moment of virality, thousands of likes, or hopefully a few thousand follows from the millions of people that have logged onto the app.

Nwanne said that when they first started using TikTok, they only wanted to use it to watch memes. Their friends had told them it was a funny, lighthearted space on the internet similar to Vine, which had shut down in early 2017.

Since Nwanne started making their own TikToks in early November, theyve already grown their account to over 14,000 followers. They joined the ranks of a number of other leftist creators whove been making content about leftist ideology, dragging presidential candidates and their supporters dances, and supporting candidates like Bernie Sanders (whose hashtags, like #bernie2020, have over 30,000,000 views on the app).

I noticed that there was this whole coalition of Gen-Z thats doing political content, and theres a whole other side of TikTok thats extremely conservative, I mean literal cops. I noticed there was a lack of diversity among the people that were making this political content, said Nwanne. They werent talking about race and they werent talking about queerness. They werent talking to my people.

Nwanne, a former college Republican and a former member of Democratic Socialists of America, said their motivation for their TikTok is to break down the ideas behind socialism and leftist politics to get people interested and make them as accessible as possible for younger people who might not know that their political ideas just might be the basis of a leftist ideology.

The idea is to break these things down into the smallest bits, use accessible language, put them to music, get something to look at and smile at, and make jokes, said Nwanne. Its explaining these concepts without all of the academia. I think the thing that keeps so many people of color and working-class people away from leftist ideas is how theyre presented, and my entire goal was to make this stuff as accessible as possible.

Other TikTok creators told BuzzFeed News that theyd noticed more teens on the app posting content about anti-capitalist positions, even though they might not be specifically speaking from a position of someone whos done research about democratic socialism or leftist politics. Jokes about eating the rich and critiques of billionaires like Bill Gates have gone viral on the platform.

Just replace the government with TikTok teens, reads one tweet of a popular TikTok video. In it, a teenager visits a website that lets you spend Gates money and notices that no spending makes a significant dent in his wealth. The video wraps with the teen telling the camera, and then theres me telling myself not to buy food on my lunch break at work to save some money. The videos been retweeted 92,000 times and has been viewed 5.5 million times.

Isra Hirsi, the cofounder of the US Youth Climate Strike and the daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar, hopped on a trend where creators dance to the chorus of a Flo Milli song. While she dances under a sign that says capitalism taking ur man, the lyrics Yea bitch, I got your man, an, an! If you bad, ho, come catch him if you can, an, an loop. She then dances under signs that read insane student debt, not being able to make a living wage, and overly expensive medical bills, rent and the fear of never being financially stable as the reasons that capitalism snatched your man. Her tweet of the TikTok has been viewed over 300,000 times.

If you scroll through the #bernie2020, #socialism, or #progressive hashtags, youll find creators dancing under the question who doesnt deserve healthcare? over a photo of Sanders to Mitski repeatedly singing Nobody. Or youll see Mikhail King, a 27-year-old creator, dancing to an edited version of the cha-cha slide that keeps pushing to the left to help explain where his political leanings went as he got older.

Kings TikTok account will lead you to a series of videos that critique candidates like Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg over their health care stances, a clip using audio of Cardi B to talk about radicalizing liberals, and jokes about corporations not wanting to pay a living wage.

I want people to get a fuller story of the political situation thats out there, and jokes and memes have always left me in a place where Im like, Oh, that made me laugh, and then, Why did that make me laugh? Let me investigate what this things about, King said in an interview. My goal is to make a joke where maybe someone might not get it, but theyll look up the information and say, Oh OK, sick!

He added that he hopes the content that hes put out about candidates can make other people start to question or at least take a closer look at the positions of who they support, or to think about what a leftist candidate might be able to accomplish. King added that hes creating this content to help people figure out where they might align politically and that videos like the viral Bill Gates TikTok help people explore those options.

Because of the shared experience of economic disparity in the country, more and more of these kids, at a younger age, are exposing themselves to these arguments that are populist in nature regardless of it being right or left, King explained. Teens, like the Bill Gates girl, are doing better things, without even realizing it, I think. That video is really great at getting a point across without being like, Hey, this is a lefty position. Its like, Heres some information, do with it what you will.

Destiny Willis, a 19-year-old TikTok creator, started making content about leftist politics in early December and has already amassed over 100,000 likes on her videos. She said that because she only recently became interested in democratic socialism and leftist politics, shes found the community on TikTok to be a place to discuss those ideas and hear what other people think.

Ive always taken a humorous approach to learning and to things that upset me in general. I use humor as a coping mechanism, and as Im learning about how capitalism isnt really working for a lot of people it makes me feel anxious, it makes me angry, and sort of depressed. And my natural way of working through that is through humor, Willis said. TikTok has been really helpful with that, as lame as that might sound.

In a video thats already gotten 14,000 views, Willis milly-rocks to a Playboy Carti song as text flashes across the screen: Fixing capitalism with regulations would require those in power because of capitalism to relinquish that power. Those in power have no incentive to change a system that directly benefits them. The video ends with her asking the audience SO NOW WHAT.

In the comments of that video and others, Willis discussed the ideas around socialism and leftist politics with people whod commented on her page. Other creators are also engaging with followers whove had more questions about leftist politics. Nwanne said that theyve been putting together an accessible reading list for people who might want to learn more because of their content. Theyve already received direct messages asking for reading materials and said that theyve had discussions with followers about leftist politics on the platform.

King said that theres already a diverse set of leftist creators on the platform who are drawing people into leftist politics through memes and trends, and others whove broken down the concepts further in explainer videos that have also influenced his content.

Theres not necessarily a feedback loop between all of us, but there are creators all across the platform who have different lived experiences or perspectives, King explained. Theyre hitting notes that I might not be able to hit. It becomes a beautiful chorus of perspectives. So we have this edgy guy in the corner, theres that person whos breaking down the concepts, theres another person talking about the experiences of minority groups, and then badabing! Badaboom! Weve got ourselves a leftist coalition.

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"A Beautiful Chorus" Leftists Are Using TikTok To Break Down Socialism For The Next Generation Of Voters - BuzzFeed News

Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., May 22, 2018(Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)The Case against Socialism, by Rand Paul (Broadside Books, 368 pp., $28.99)

Just three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, socialist political activism has undergone a remarkable rehabilitation. Survey data show the labels growing popularity among college students, while Karl Marx holds the title of the most frequently assigned author from the philosophical canon in American university classrooms. Far from bearing the stigma one might reasonably expect to accompany a movement that killed 100 million people in the 20th century, socialist ideology retains a position of high esteem in elite academic, journalistic, and intellectual circles.

One recurring source of the problem is the intentional cultivation of a definitional fluidity that operates at the convenience of socialisms adherents. Modern politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez euphemize the term by prefixing it with the label democratic (it strains credulity to imagine that fascism, for example, would ever be afforded similar leeway in rebranding itself). Meanwhile, failing socialist experiments such as the Maduro regime in Venezuela extolled among leftist intellectuals as a modern socialist success story only a few years ago are brushed aside with the familiar refrain that they never achieved real socialism. The practical result of these ubiquitous word games is a political climate in which socialists never quite reckon with their own track record.

In The Case against Socialism, Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) sets out to critique the resurgent fashionability of socialist philosophy and, in so doing, hold it to historical account. Written in a conversational style, the book is organized into six thematic investigations. He begins with the Venezuelan fiasco, then turns to modern progressive themes such as the alarmism over inequality presented in Thomas Pikettys work, which he correctly dubs a misdirection campaign serving as an umbrella justification for far-left policies.

Paul dissects the confused attempts to rebrand the Scandinavian welfare state as democratic socialism by pointing to the unambiguous retreat of Scandinavian countries from their fiscally unsustainable and stagnating mid-20th-century government bloat. He then surveys historical atrocities carried out under socialist governments, assesses the promises and claims of socialist activists against evidence, and concludes with a discussion of modern expressions of socialism in American politics, such as the proposed Green New Deal.

The product is an interesting and readable, if sometimes polemical, case that the reader will find informative in the context of conversations about socialist thought. Though comprehensive in scope, the narrative occasionally strays into tangential asides that deploy the term socialist loosely as a descriptor of the political Left in general and that draw from sources of uneven quality. In a few places, Paul attempts to direct his broadside against socialism at current instances of congressional overreach, such as the investigation of tech-corporation speech policies in the Trump-era Twitterverse and the rise of the surveillance state. While this latter example was an undeniable and defining feature of the 20th-century Soviet regime and its many copycats, its present-day creep into American society owes at least as much to the domestic effects of foreign interventions embraced by the political Right, as was recently documented by economists Christopher Coyne and Abigail Hall in their 2018 study Tyranny Comes Home.

Nevertheless, Paul offers necessary and biting criticism of socialists evasion of their own destructive history, and particularly its human toll. The books most poignant stories are a series of personal testimonies from the victims of socialist regimes. Paul presents the firsthand account of Ming Wang, a friend and fellow ophthalmologist who lived through the terror of the Maoist Red Guard as it ransacked his mothers university and forced him to abandon his studies in order to avoid detention in one of the notorious reeducation camps.

We also learn the story of Chen Dake, today an accomplished Antarctic explorer, who found his scientific training disrupted for three years after the Maoists seized him from his family and sent him off to forced labor in the rice fields. In another case, Paul relates an account of a Cuban refugee who experienced forcible resettlement, rationing, and starvation under the Castro regime. His story is anonymized out of concern for members of his family still living under the Cuban state, where retaliation for frowned-upon political speech remains a daily reality.

In an age in which professors and journalists put great stock in lived narratives, such firsthand accounts of socialisms brutality are often strangely omitted from portrayals on the left. And Paul takes note of it, calling out instances from living memory. Before Hugo Chvezs Venezuela turned visibly tyrannical, its economy attracted high praise from leftist academics such as Joseph Stiglitz. Bernie Sanders is repeatedly on record extolling the illusory benefits of the Castros health-care system.

Its a tradition, Paul notes, that has long afflicted the Left. Apologizing for tyrants and tin-pot dictators is a long-running pattern among Western socialist intellectuals, dating back to the 1930s paeans to Stalin that British playwright George Bernard Shaw and economists Sidney and Beatrice Webb penned before the full extent of his genocidal acts was understood. The formula is always the same: initial praise for a socialist revolutionary as he takes power, followed by a quiet retreat once he predictably descends into repression and brings his country to ruin.

The tendency to obscure the connections between intellectual socialism and now-disfavored political manifestations of it is no accident. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, and Chvez all professed explicit philosophical adherence to Marxist doctrine, and they all employed the tools of their states to aggressively proselytize the same socialist intellectual traditions that many of todays academic practitioners on the far left continue to preach. The stigma that these figures deservedly acquired is a specious reason to exclude them from what real socialism entails.

Modern-day Marxists will bristle with some cause at Pauls section tying socialism to its national-socialist, or Nazi, iteration. At points Pauls case here is both overstated and underdeveloped. He relies heavily on the late George Watsons heterodox historical reinterpretation of Hitler as a thinker in the socialist tradition. Some of Pauls accompanying analysis elides the internal complexities of Third Reich politics, particularly the purge of the Nazi partys Strasserist left wing in 1934. He also relies on testimony of questionable veracity from Hermann Rauschning, a displaced and disillusioned Nazi politician who claimed that Hitler maintained a private intellectual affinity for Karl Marx. Rauschnings tell-all book-in-exile, Hitler Speaks (1940), was promoted by Allied governments as part of the war effort but almost certainly exaggerates his level of contact with its titular figure.

At the same time, however, Paul is on to a point that is too easily cast aside in unsophisticated depictions of Nazism as a wholly right-wing, or even capitalist, political phenomenon. Far from being a capitalist, Hitler looked down upon the merchant-driven commercialism of Britain in particular with disdain. His internal economic policy, as George Orwell put it, has a good deal in common with a Socialist state. A socialist himself, Orwell nonetheless offered this trenchant indictment in 1941:

The State, which is simply the Nazi Party, is in control of everything. It controls investment, raw materials, rates of interest, working hours, wages. The factory owner still owns his factory, but he is for practical purposes reduced to the status of a manager. Everyone is in effect a State employee, though the salaries vary very greatly.

This observation, which Paul refers to, complicates the simplistic leftright dichotomy of modern political rhetoric about the Nazi horrors. Orwell, writing from the left, anticipates the deeper theoretical framework offered in the postwar period by Friedrich Hayek, wherein state control of the economy, whether rightward or leftward in disposition, is the defining characteristic of a socialist system.

This framework helps to explain the trajectory of interwar German intellectual elites such as Werner Sombart, who seamlessly went from being a leading Marxist theorist at the turn of the 20th century (and was even praised as such by Friedrich Engels) to being a leading philosopher-polemicist for national socialism in the Nazi era. The free-market economist Ludwig von Mises zeroed in on an explanation for this pattern after the war: Nazism was best understood as a rightward extension of Hegelian philosophy, just as Marxism is its better-known leftward offspring. Both derivatives were disposed to economic management and control in the service of the state and both relied on delusions of historical inevitability.

However one might assess the other results of his legislative career, Senator Paul has proven a persistent critic of socialist thought, and this book is an earnest plea to take seriously the threat it presents. It is directed toward consumers of conservative political commentary, but its warning is sincerely offered as well to those elsewhere on the spectrum. One only hopes that sensible voices outside conservative circles respond to that sincerity by subjecting todays socialist movements to the historical scrutiny that their many adherents are all too eager to evade.

This article appears as Reckoning with Socialism in the December 31, 2019, print edition of National Review.

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'The Case against Socialism' by Rand Paul Book Review - National Review

In these final days of the 2010s, things are looking rather sunny for the right. Donald Trumps white nationalist crusade and plutocratic cash grab are chugging along steadilyand theres a decent chance itll continue for another half-decade. The Democratic presidential primary is a toxic mess, recently muddied further by the entry of clueless billionaires trying to buy themselves a ticket to the White House. And if a Dem even makes it to the Oval Office, odds are their legislative ambitions will be filibustered into oblivion by a GOP-controlled Senate.

So it might seem odd to argue that one of the defining political stories of the decade has been the rise of robust left-wing politics. But indeed, it has been. And a good way to understand that is to remember what happened in a small park in Manhattan in the early 2010s.

In September 2011, hundreds of radical leftists, inspired in part by the Arab Spring, decided to set up a small encampment in New York Citys financial district with the intention of building a new hyper-democratic society from scratch. Within weeks, Occupy Wall Street encampments sprung up across the nation and inspired protests in hundreds of cities around the world. Occupy sparked a debate about the ways that capitalism undermines and sabotages democracy, and forced elites to think of economic inequity as a moral predicamentall at a time when Barack Obama had won plaudits from economists for shepherding the U.S. out of a dire recession.

But after only a few months, the promise of Occupys voice faded. The leaderless movement lacked a clear purpose and structure, making higher-level organizing difficult. And most major encampments were swept away by winter cold and a coordinated crackdown by the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, local police and even some banks. As the camps vanished, so did Occupys power as anything more than a vague objection to the status quo.

Yet today, as we enter the 2020s, many of the ideas that underpinned Occupys call for re-envisioning our political-economic system are taken far more seriously than they were at the beginning of this decade. And thats in no small part because the far left has succeeded by trying a different tack. Serious left-wing players who punch above their weight have emerged in presidential politics, Congress, social movement advocacy, the think tank world, and media offer an increasingly persuasive alternative to neoliberal and center-left thinking, while pulling off electoral upsets and building institutional power.

As the far left has moved from the streets into office buildings, so have its ambitions. The focus has shifted from disruption and changing the conversation from the outside toward an agenda to reshape the world through strategic organizing and an insider approach.

The best starting point for thinking about how left-wing politics have changed over the course of this decade is in fact through an event that took place almost exactly two decades ago when protesters shut down a ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization on November 30, 1999. The secretive WTO was a natural target for protest: it had become the most notorious symbol of corporate power run amok among quarters of the left who were skeptical of the belief that there was no alternative to an increasingly merciless model of global capitalism.

The massive protests and civil disobedience, deemed the Battle of Seattle, were organized by people from many quarters of the left, including anarchist activists, NGOs, labor unions, student groups, teachers, and countless other movements. When the disruptions caused the WTO talks to collapse entirely, it was widely hailed as a defining victory for the emerging global justice movement. At a time when socialism was considered profane and many Democrats were effectively compassionate conservatives, the Battle of Seattle represented the potential clout of the far left.

What made the event iconic was the style of protest, which was heavily influenced by anarchist philosophy and tactics. While plans to mobilize in Seattle had happened for months in advance, there was no central coordinator, the disruptions unfolded in an ad hoc manner, groups and individuals maneuvered spontaneously, and communication on the ground was handled democratically. For years afterward, left-wing activists attempted to replicate Seattles organizational modelwhich in many ways mimicked the way people talk and gather on the Internetat meetings of groups like the World Bank, NATO, and the G7.

Occupys brief and brilliant explosion of energy in 2011 was the most powerful iteration of this model of protestand also demonstrated its limits. Occupy teemed with compelling ideas, but its anarchist principles dictated that the movement remain leaderless and take shape through free-forming local assemblies and direct action. Its resistance to institutionalization and ideological clarity made it astonishingly fragileespecially since it required holding public space in the face of attacks from the state.

But many of Occupys ideas about political economy resurfaced in 2015 when Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders decided to run in the Democratic primary against Hillary Clinton. His campaign, which included staff and supporters who had collaborated during Occupy, was a shocking success: despite unabashedly identifying as a democratic socialist, he gave Clinton, the most dominant non-incumbent candidate in modern history, a serious run for her money during the nomination battle, besting her in 23 states. Bob Master, a founder of the New York Working Families Party, said in 2016 that the Sanders campaign was Occupy Wall Street translated into electoral politics. This is the revolt of the 99 percent.

The success of Sanders campaign proved that a quarter-century after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it seemed not only possible to talk about socialism againbut that it could be pursued within the two-party system.

Sanderss run pushed the party platform to the left on issues like minimum wage, the war on drugs, and environmental regulation. And his run inspired a host of new left-wing institutions like the Justice Democrats, a political action committee founded by former Sanders staffers whose platform includes Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. In 2018 they helped coordinate democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs stunning defeat of 10-term incumbent Rep. Joseph Crowley, who was the no. 4 Democrat in the House. Ocasio-Cortezs super-progressive squad in the House (representatives Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley) are also all Justice Democrats.

The rise of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a left-wing institution interested in both working as an outside agitator and engaging with the electoral and legislative process, may end up being one of the most consequential developments of the decade. DSA has been around since the 1980s, but only after Sanders run and Trumps victory has it become more than a completely fringe playersince November 2016, DSAs membership has gone from 5,000 to at least 50,000 members and has seen an explosion in chapters across the nation. It does lots of different things, from lobbying for more progressive housing laws to organizing protests to canvassing democratic socialist candidates; in 2018, more than a dozen DSA-backed candidates won their Democratic primaries. DSA is still small, but it shows promise in how deeply organized it is its commitment to democratic decision-making and its devotion to thinking strategically and pragmatically about how to bring to life a utopian society.

On top of all this, theres been a notable rise of the savvy left-wing press and think tanks that have helped mainstream ideas that wouldve seemed outlandish to anyone outside of radical politics until recently. While theres always been an alternative, ultra-progressive press, whats notable about these outfits is how they deliberately seek wide readership and aim to shift the parameters of popular debate. For example, socialist magazines like Jacobin and Current Affairs have garnered a bigger readership during this socialist resurgence in part because they have an interest in making Marxist thinking as accessible as possible to a mass audience through stylish design, jargon-light analysis, and direct engagement with the daily news cycle. Think tanks like Data for Progress and the Peoples Policy Project have quickly established reputations as respectable and rigorous operations for data analysis, polling, and policy papers in a space typically dominated by right-wing or center-left researchers.

Socialists still have very, very minor power in the scheme of national politics, and there are huge limitations to a socialist movement without a strong organized labor movement backing it. But as we enter 2020, the American left has some tangible answers to the perennial question of what is to be done to achieve their worldview.

This is not to say that protest movements, direct action, and civil disobedience are not valuable or that theyve become outdated in some sensefar from it: todays left would be further strengthened by more militant street mobilizations. But they arent sufficient for building a bid for power that can last.

Continued here:
In the 2010s, America Forgot It Was Terrified of Socialism - VICE

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are two prominent US politicians who describe themselves as democratic socialists. They love to tout the wonders of their ideology, but when pressured with evidence of how abhorrent the living conditions in socialist countries like Venezuela is, they point to countries like Sweden as 'real' socialist countries.

So are Scandinavian countries truly socialist? Evidence points to no. Media specialist Billy Aouste discusses the latest publication by The Heartland Institute, "Debunking the Scandinavian Socialism Myth: An Evaluation of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden." Author and Heartland editor Chris Talgo discusses the history of how the countries evolved their socialist programs from the end of World War II into a free market one near the turn of the century. Instead of wandering down the dark path these countries pulled themselves out of, the US should continue the course and not fall to the siren call of socialism.

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Podcasts - Debunking the Scandinavian Socialism Myth - The Heartland Institute

Image:Ramona Bluescu

December 22 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the overthrow of the Romanian socialist state ofNicolae Ceauescu. In a work of memoir, Nachescu recalls growing up under communism and wonders about the world Romanians hoped would follow its fall.

Arad, Romania, June 1982

At the edge of the river the sand turns into mud, seeping between my toes, cooler than the lukewarm water. Its not an unpleasant feeling, its just that who knows what creatures might be living under the greenish fluid. And its slippery. I can fall if Im not careful.

Dont go too far.

My grandmother has taken refuge under a tree.

I want to recreate that world just as I remember it. Werent we already living on the highest peaks of progress? In the Golden Age?

By now the opaque water is up to my knees. I comb it with my fingers, which look like white fish swimming close to the surface. I dont like that thought. But the water is warm, and my feet are sinking deeper into the mud now. Two older kids are playing with a ball. One of them pretends to hit the other, who catches the ball at the last moment. They might lose it in the river if theyre not careful. Last year an older boy who was in seventh grade drowned. I can see people crossing the drawbridge and the rusty pontoons that were once painted red and blue.

I want to swim a little, but my grandmother wont let me.

Dont go any farther!

Theres panic in her voice. Im now up to my hips, and instead of swimming, I just crouch in the water, letting it cool my hot shoulders and neck. I move my arms, faking swimming moves, then splash water toward nobody. I wish someone else was here, but I dont know who. Lately Ive been feeling like this, an unfocused yearning, an emptiness in my arms and chest, as if Im trying to embrace wisps of smoke.

Thats it, please come out now.

One last dip, then I stand up and walk toward the shore. Buni is pleased, I can tell.

Here, let me help you.

The bra that I have to wear this yeartwo triangles of polyester hanging from strings tied around my neck and flat chesthas shifted, and my grandmother puts it back into place. She touches my shoulders with her rough fingers, and I wince. On the back of my neck and arms, my skin feels tight. Her fingertips are rough, blackened by small cuts and nicks from a lifetime of peeling and cutting vegetables, as well as small pin pricks from all the needlework shes done.

Lets go get langoi, she says.

The line in front of the kiosk is short. Two women work inside, stretching the dough and then dropping it into the boiling oil. It must be very hot in there.

Nothing but the thinnest piece of paper separates the piping hot fried dough from my fingertips.

Let me hold it for you.

Maybe it doesnt burn her old skin as much. She blows air over the lango before giving it to me, still hot, but now I can start eating it if Im careful. In the middle, it has air bubbles caught in the golden crisp dough.

My grandmother wants to buy some for my parents so we get back in line. It is longer now, and I can feel the sun burning on my shoulders as the string tying my swimsuit bra rubs against the back of my neck.

But the line isnt moving. One of the women sticks her head out of the kiosk.

Weve run out of fuel, she says. We might get more later.

Some people seem to grumble, but most just walk away.

I should have gotten more the first time around, my grandmother says. Oh well, maybe theyll bring more fuel later.

We walk down crowded alleys paved with yellow granite toward the swimming pools, where my parents are. The rectangular bricks, arranged in a basket weave pattern, are hot, but theres thin grass growing between them thats cool enough to walk on.

My father is lying on his back reading a novel, while my mother is chatting with someone two blankets down. I dont want to talk to anybody. My mother says goodbye, then turns toward me and pulls the strings of my bra.

Ouch!

Her fingernails are short, with a pointy tip that she has recently filed. They scratch my shoulders right where it aches the most.

You just got sunburn.

Shes not impressed that it hurts.

We had some langoi and we wanted to bring some back, but they ran out of fuel.

My father puts the book down on his belly, then looks at us, shielding his eyes.

The restaurant should be open by now. Maybe we should go get lunch?

My father lifts himself heavily off the blanket, his belly hanging over his swimsuit, which has a fake belt and golden buckle.

My brother, Teo, comes back from the small kids swimming pool. My mom is trying to offer him a sandwich and grapes from her beach bag, but hes not interested.

Lets go to the big kids pool, he says. Hes really excited.

Hes not allowed in that pool unless Im with him. I can swim in the adult pool if my father is there to watch me. But Ill go with Teo. Id like to run into classmates or friends, somebody my age, like Emilia or Laura, even though I know they go to the thermal baths in Vlaicu, where they live. Not Emilia though, she told us she cant go anywhere this weekend because she has her period. I wonder what thats like, though it cant be fun if you cant go to the swimming pool. It would be very nice to run into Radu, who was in my class until fourth grade, but whom I rarely see, despite living in the same neighborhood.

I spend the next two hours diving and jumping into the crowded pool, challenging Teo and one of his friends to all sorts of competitions that involve swimming around other kids and even one parent whos frowning at us. This pool is for kids, I want to tell him, but I dont. In the end he leaves.

We had some langoi and we wanted to bring some back, but they ran out of fuel.

In the evening, the straps of my summer dress feel scratchy but I can finally take off the swimsuit bra.

Youre all red, youll get a good tan, my mother says.

Ill put some yogurt on your skin when we get home, it should make you feel better, says my grandmother.

Like always after swimming, the memory of water lingers in my body, which feels heavier and lighter at the same time, my muscles sore, my joints loose. Toes and knees and elbows feel like one fluid whole. I can fall asleep any minute, melt into a puddle by the side of the road.

The pontoon bridge sways as throngs of people cross it at the same time. I hang on to the ropes on the side, watching the bend in the river in the distance.

On the other side, people are watching sculptors working in the park on blocks of white stone. Despite being tired and hungry, we walk around the parks newly paved paths.

Is that marble? I ask my father.

Limestone. Its a summer school organized by City Hall, and the statues will stay here in the park.

My father always speaks as if there are many people listening.

A young man in an undershirt, a red kerchief on his forehead, is chiseling away at a square block. Theres dust all around him, on his bare arms and his face, which is too wide, with blue eyes almost sunken under a wide forehead. When he lifts his right arm, I can see his shoulder musclethe poster in the biology lab flashes in front of my eyes, was that the deltoid? then the bone when he lowers it again. He stops to light up a cigarette; he smokes filterless Carpaithe stuff that stinksunlike my father, who smokes Kent. I want the man to keep working, so I can keep watching his shoulder.

My parents and Teo are walking away.

And what does this statue represent?

My voice comes out whiny, high pitched, pretentious. I want to sound older.

He turns around and takes a good look at me before answering, and is it just me or does his gaze linger on my chest and shoulders, where the straps of my purposeless bra have left pale lines?

Nothing, he answers in the end, in a voice that sounds sad and gentle.

I try to return his gaze, and I succeed for a moment, then I lower my eyes. My parents have walked away.

Great! I scream. This statue represents nothing!

I run toward my mother.

Ileana! my mother exclaims, louder than necessary, so that the young man can hear her disapproval.

I take my brothers hand and walk behind my parents.

At night, I dream of laying my cheek against a mans shoulder, protective, vulnerable. The next day, during the ten oclock break, blowing bubbles with the pink Balonka bubble gum Emilia shared with me, I tell her and Laura that I spoke with an Older Guy.

Arad, Romania, November 1988

We took too long to get ready, or maybe it was too cold and we didnt really want to leave home. Probably my mother insisted that we still go. She believed that once people decided to do something, they had to go through with it. My father suffered from heart disease and the doctor recommended that he lose some weight. I too felt like I needed some exercise. The previous summer I had jogged, swam, TV exercised, and dieted away twenty-five pounds, which were slowly creeping back. I was my fathers daughter. Not only did I look like him (I frowned often, hoping that people would notice the resemblance), but I shared my fathers love for desserts, midnight treats, and afternoons spent lying comfortably on the couch, reading a novel.

I imagined Florin in a foreign city, walking clean sidewalks under abundant lights, and a pang of envy and painthis would never be my future, I could never go thereshot through my whole body, bringing tears to my eyes.

We hadnt made it even half a mile on the promenade along the river before we contemplated turning back. It was already getting dark, and rumors had it that the park was dangerous at night, that there were thieves and gangs and that someone had been killed the previous year. The park was less than five minutes away from the better neighborhoods of our town, yet the lights didnt work, or kids had thrown rocks at them, or there was another blackout, as so often happened in those days. I was lucky I was with my father, who was six foot three and big. By myself I would have made a dash toward the end of the park, near the apartment buildings where people could hear me in case of need. I mostly avoided being out at night, especially by myself, especially in winter. Winter evenings were cold and dark pretty much everywhere in the late eighties, but at least you were safer if you were at home.

We passed the modernist sculptures made out of white limestonea stylized ancient heros head, a woman in a long dress, a cube balanced on its side. I recalled the earlier summer when we had watched the young artists carving them. I remembered looking forward to our dinner of roasted eggplants, tomatoes, and telemea cheese, the usual summer fare. Now the limestone gleamed in the fading winter light. The river, to our left, exuded its familiar muddy smell, now subdued by the cold.

We walked in silence. I always thought I had a lot of things to talk about with my father, but when we spent time together, which wasnt often, I rarely knew what to tell him, or worried that I might say something he wouldnt like.

This time he was the one who broke the silence.

Are you and Florin Popa good friends?

I tried to remember what my father could have known. In sixth grade I had had a crush on himbut then, in sixth grade Id had crushes on almost every guy who spoke to me. Florin was now in Munich, and according to my classmate Eli, who knew him from the polo team, hed called his parentsour neighbors from the first floorto tell them he was alright and had managed to cross from Hungary into Austria, then West Germany. He wanted to go to Paris, that was his dream. He hadnt told anybody about his plans, not even his parents (Especially not his parents! Can you imagine? Eli had said during the ten oclock break, rounding her eyes and mouth in amazement) so that when they would inevitably be interrogated by the police, they could honestly say that they didnt know anything about their sons plans. For me and Eli, Florin, whom we had watched at the swimming pool, had now become a romantic hero. In the past few days Id imagined him in a foreign city, walking clean sidewalks under abundant lights, among smartly dressed crowds, and a pang of envy and painthis would never be my future, I could never go there, never be or belong thereshot through my whole body, bringing tears to my eyes.

We didnt talk very much. You know, just saying Hi. Hes older, I said to my father.

You have to be careful. Some people spend too much time gossiping. Its never a good idea.

Did that mean that we would be interrogated too? It didnt make any sense. Florin had left by himself. I hadnt even talked to him in years.

I hated it when my father spoke to me like that, moralizing, as if I were a child. He was a great storyteller, who could make the ordinary meaningful. He could walk into a room and fill it with his voice, his energy. At house parties, he enjoyed singing with his coworkers and college friends. While my mother and grandmother gathered dirty dishes and brought out coffee and desserts over which they had labored for daysincluding waiting in line for hours for rationed sugar and buttermy father would tell his stories ending in a punch line, a comment, or a moral that I would sometimes think about for days. Yet when he talked to me, all I got was dull advice in a slow, ponderous voice.

Once he came home from a late meeting and told us about how the secretary of the county Party organization had concluded an hour-long speech: Comrade Ceauescus thinking is solid, its so solid, its like concrete. My father repeated that a few times, shaking his head.

Thats what he said: its like concrete.

And you didnt laugh? I asked.

Of course he didnt laugh, nobody ever did.

Once my father told us about how the secretary of the county Party organization had concluded a speech, Comrade Ceauescus thinking is so solid, its like concrete. Of course he didnt laugh, nobody ever did.

It was dark now. We had a choice, to continue walking on the alle by the river and go past the sports complex where Id played tennis a few summers before, or turn right, walk up the marble steps, and walk back home on the promenade. It was too cold to sit and rest on a bench, not that wed overexerted ourselves.

Are we going any farther?

Maybe we should just go home, he said.

On the other side of the promenade, the buildings were dark. Maybe he anticipated that I would complain about the blackout.

You know, your mother told me that you havent been helping lately. Whats going on with your room?

Its just my desk. I have a lot of homework, because of the math tutors.

While other kids like Eli could have posters in their rooms, I had my grandmothers needlepoint in a golden frame on the wall, and my mothers knickknacks, including a set for serving mulled plum brandy (yes, plum brandy!), on the bookshelves. And I had better grades than Eli.

You know, when I was in high school, only the kids who failed had tutors, the ones who had to repeat a class.

He just liked saying that. He had of course been very good at math when he was in high school, although he didnt need that anymore. He was now technical manager of the factory where he had once gotten his first job as an engineer, right out of college.

I guess its for the entrance exam?

There would be seven to nine applicants for each spot at the engineering school my parents insisted I choose. That wasnt bad: there were usually more than twenty applicants per opening in the medical or law school. All my classmates went to multiple tutors, and some parents could afford college professors in Timisoara.

Then he added, almost as an afterthought: You should also join the Party while youre in college.

I didnt say anything, and it was understood that I agreed. I was going to study engineering in college because my parents thought it was a good idea. I didnt like math or physics, but that didnt matter. I liked reading novels. My parents kept repeating the factual statement that literature teachers were usually sent to teach in the countryside, while engineers could get decent jobs in cities. I could still read novels as much as I wanted in my free time, just like my father did.

Jokes and stories aside, I sense that my father had somehow shared that night what he really thought about socialism and the future and our place in both.

Nor did it matter that I didnt believe in the Romanian Communist Party anymore. I had of course joined all of the Party-run organizations for school children: the Fatherland Hawks (preschool and first grade), the Pioneers (second through eighth grade), the Union of Communist Youth (in high school). Schools organized the initiation ceremonies, and everyone played along. But joining the Party was different. You had to apply, get character references, and if accepted it was an honor and a smart career move. But if the Party was so great, why did we have all the blackouts? No heat in winter? Why was food rationed? Why were all the television shows, newspapers, and radio broadcasts about Ceauescu, the genius of the Carpathians? And why did everybody lie all the time and pretend everything was normal? I could foresee an added layer of boredom and lies caked on the already existing, rather thick ones covering everything I did: that I actually wanted to be an engineer, that I cared about math, that I was my parents dutiful daughter. There was a meager joy in all this, knowing what my father wanted and that I could please him. I could make a career as an engineer and a Party member, I thought. The Party and the lies were never going to end. They would go on in perpetuity, dulling every moment of joy for the rest of my life.

Within a year, though, and before I even graduated high school, the Romanian Communist Party didnt exist anymore. Six years later, when I was about to graduate college (I ended up studying languages after all), my fathers heart finally gave up. Now, after almost three decades, on a different continent where I went to make a new life, I dont know why I remember that particular evening. It could be that, after all, I didnt spend that much time with my father during those years. Or possibly, jokes and stories aside, I sense that he had somehow shared that night what he really thought about socialism and the future and our place in both. At that moment, as the limestone statues reflected the dying light of the day, it seemed like my father, whom I trusted to make decisions for meand Romanian socialism itself, which I associated with blackouts, cold, and lieswould last forever, unchanged.

Arad, Romania, July 2016

Its a windy day, and the blue paint theyre spraying in the street blows in all directions.

Theyre wasting the paint, Sean, my husband, says.

Continued here:
Walks in the Park: On the Foreignness of the Socialist Past - Boston Review