Over Labor Day weekend, thousands of socialists descended on Chicago for the 2026 Socialism conference, and in an act we wouldn't wish on anybody, a reporter from the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, Aidan Grogan, actually managed to go undercover inside.
What he saw was a sign that Woke 1.0 may not actually be dead; it's just waiting to come crawling back out. The conference featured speakers including Angela Davis, British Marxist writer Sophie Lewis, and streamer Hasan Piker, alongside academics from Columbia, NYU, Georgetown, and the University of Illinois, Chicago. Three years after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, attendees were required to wear N95 or K95 masks unless speakers were presenting, a policy so strictly enforced that organizers provided masks on-site for those who showed up unprepared.
Far from an intellectual conference, it was a radical hodgepodge of left-wing buzzwords, "hot, sweaty, and smelly" attendees wearing casual left-wing activist-coded t-shirts, a minefield of woke jargon, and a nonstop parade of political slogans.
I attended the Socialism 2026 conference over Labor Day weekend in Chicago. @thestustustudio and I covered everything we saw on the livestream and in-person for @CityJournal. https://t.co/4R0RkmCK9R pic.twitter.com/kZSCf2bgUd
— Aidan Grogan (@AidanGrogan) September 10, 2026
The topics were exactly what you'd expect, but according to Grogan, they all centered on the term: "abolition." The abolition of capitalism, private property, police, prisons, border security, gender, the family, and the state itself.
Speakers used words that would make anyone feel like they'd stumbled into a black-queer feminist political thought seminar, as terms like "abolition consciousness," "transfeminist abolitionism," "racial capitalism," and "settler colonialism" plagued presenters' speeches. At one point, an entire session dedicated to promoting family abolition "through a Black feminist lens" required attendees to mimic a kindergarten classroom, sitting in a large circle and using markers to participate in coloring activities.
Other speakers spoke highly of pre-industrial Indigenous societies before they had been "tainted" by the technology of the modern world, channeling Rousseau in believing them to be the purest and most satisfied form of humanity. A point I personally find amusing, given the well-known story of European explorers making contact with an Indigenous tribe they believed to be peaceful, just as Rousseau had theorized, only to have their heads mounted on pikes.
You’ve seen all the Socialism 2026 clips, but I neglected to tell you one important detail.@CityJournal had an inside man on the ground.
— Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) September 10, 2026
While I was monitoring the livestreams, @AidanGrogan was inside the conference, sitting in on panels they never broadcast.
Aidan was… pic.twitter.com/NUvhfWV6Af
Just keep in mind: these are the kind of people beating out establishment Democrats in elections, and, in some races, even giving Republicans a run for their money.
This summer alone, democratic socialists have toppled incumbent House members in New York, Colorado, and Michigan; ousted longtime Democratic stalwarts in primary after primary; and powered insurgent candidates like Zohran Mamdani in New York City, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, and Angie Nixon in Florida. The DSA's win rate in primaries hovers around 50 percent, with over 120 victories out of 282 races, and while most of those wins come in deep-blue districts, the momentum is undeniable.
Whether you call it the "Summer of Socialism" or a left-wing surge, the activists filling convention halls in Chicago with talk of abolishing police, prisons, gender, and the family can no longer be dismissed as on the fringe, they're winning nominations, shaping platforms, and positioning themselves to define the Democrat Party's future.
Republicans have, in part, recognized this, and while the socialists' conference theme was about going full crazy, the Republicans at the RNC's midterm convention hammered home a different message: that they represent common sense, the normie American.
That may be enough on the cultural front, but it's also important to distinguish our economic views, because that's what actually draws voters to the DSA, not their wilder ideas. In other words, the Republican draw is social and cultural values; the DSA's draw is the promise of a generous welfare state, whether you believe it would actually work or not. The surest path to securing Republican victory isn't just mocking the left's excesses; it's presenting our own vision of an economy, of a free market, that really stands apart from the Democrats'.
As it stands now, that's easier said than done, because the Trump administration has vilified corporate America in line with the DSA, blamed prices on corporate price gouging, blamed the housing crisis on corporate buy-ups, and offered expanding welfare programs and even $5,000 dividend checks. The result is quite a muddled message.
Victory requires a substantive difference on all fronts, and right now, both parties practically stand together on economics.
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