This video asks a question that helped define American politics after 2018: is socialism coming to America, and what does Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez represent? Elected to Congress from New York at twenty-nine, Ocasio-Cortez became the youngest woman ever elected to the House of Representatives and one of the most visible members of the Democratic Socialists of America. The programme explores her rise from bartender and community organiser to national figure, and the ideas she brought with her: Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, tuition-free public college and a higher minimum wage.
The film sets her story in the wider revival of democratic socialism in the United States, from Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns to the growth of the DSA and a new generation of young activists. It considers how the word socialism, long used as a term of abuse in American politics, was reclaimed by a movement that pointed to public services, workers’ rights and the welfare states of northern Europe as its models, and how opponents responded by linking it to Venezuela, Cuba and the Soviet Union.
For readers interested in socialism’s history and present, Ocasio-Cortez matters because she made socialist ideas part of mainstream American debate again. Whether viewers agree with her or not, her career raises central questions about inequality, climate change, health care and the role of the state in a capitalist society. The video below presents the full discussion.