If "socialist" becomes as mainstream and inoffensive as "liberal," that makes it far easier to talk to people about socialism. You can talk about socialism as socialism, you can point them to openly-socialist resources, it's easier to get them to reconsider what they know about actually socialist countries.
Maybe I've simply had poor experiences with this, but it's only become more difficult talking with them. Now they won't accept that they might have a wrong idea of what socialism means or what we should be advancing. I already have associates who treat socialism (the term) as inoffensive, but they still basically promote mainstream liberal centrism. They refer to American cops as socialist. They call Biden a socialist and act all proud.
The only thing that's changed is they'll refer to what they previously called socialist (Cuba, USSR, Marxism, class politics, etc) as "authoritarian" or "divisive" or whatever word they come up with on the spot. All they've done is take the spooky s-word and replace it with others.
Unless your associates are completely post-fact -- and that's increasingly common, although those people aren't persuadable anyway -- they're going to get tied to the real definition of socialism at some point. It's like debating people about what is or isn't capitalism (another term that's popularly nebulous). At some point, if the person is at least someone connected to reality, you can go to authoritative sources on the matter to establish what it really means. I won't deny that this is a whole process, but at least you're talking about socialism at that point, and they're not just shutting down the conversation out of hand.
If "socialist" becomes as mainstream and inoffensive as "liberal," that makes it far easier to talk to people about socialism. You can talk about socialism as socialism, you can point them to openly-socialist resources, it's easier to get them to reconsider what they know about actually socialist countries.
Maybe I've simply had poor experiences with this, but it's only become more difficult talking with them. Now they won't accept that they might have a wrong idea of what socialism means or what we should be advancing. I already have associates who treat socialism (the term) as inoffensive, but they still basically promote mainstream liberal centrism. They refer to American cops as socialist. They call Biden a socialist and act all proud.
The only thing that's changed is they'll refer to what they previously called socialist (Cuba, USSR, Marxism, class politics, etc) as "authoritarian" or "divisive" or whatever word they come up with on the spot. All they've done is take the spooky s-word and replace it with others.
Unless your associates are completely post-fact -- and that's increasingly common, although those people aren't persuadable anyway -- they're going to get tied to the real definition of socialism at some point. It's like debating people about what is or isn't capitalism (another term that's popularly nebulous). At some point, if the person is at least someone connected to reality, you can go to authoritative sources on the matter to establish what it really means. I won't deny that this is a whole process, but at least you're talking about socialism at that point, and they're not just shutting down the conversation out of hand.