McKillen speaks with De Standaard for article about socialism in United States
Elizabeth McKillen, Adelaide and Alan Bird Professor of History at the University of Maine, was interviewed by the Belgian newspaper De Standaard for an article on the growing popularity of socialism in the United States. McKillen emphasized that contemporary Republicans are misguided to portray socialism as a foreign ideology at odds with American democratic traditions, since the United States has a long tradition of democratic socialism dating back to at least the late 19th century. Socialism proved particularly popular in the United States, McKillen argued, from 1900–1920, when more than 1,200 Socialists were elected to local, state and national offices. Although Republicans often cite the examples of the former Soviet Union and and Venezuela in an effort to discredit contemporary U.S. Democratic Socialists such as Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, their agendas more closely resemble those of social democratic parties in Western Europe and build on the democratic traditions of earlier generations of American Socialists, according to McKillen.