Socialism Conference Speakers Call for Destroying Democrats and Abolishing Police, Daily Wire Reports

CHICAGO — The 2026 Socialism Conference, held in Chicago last weekend, offered a window into the priorities of modern American socialists, according to a Daily Wire opinion piece by Holly Jean Soto. The article argues the event showcased a worldview far removed from the incremental policy debates that often dominate progressive politics, featuring calls for the destruction of the Democratic Party, the abolition of police, and a redefinition of fascism that the author says renders the term meaningless.

Soto writes that while socialism is typically marketed to the public through appealing promises like free healthcare, free college, and affordable housing, the conversations among activists themselves reveal a more radical agenda. The conference, she says, demonstrated that many speakers are not interested in reforming existing institutions but in replacing them.

“The Democrats Cannot Be Reasoned With”

One of the most viral moments came from Butch Ware, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who declared, “The Democrats cannot be reasoned with. They must be destroyed.” According to the Daily Wire account, Ware later discussed weapons training and fighting in the streets. Soto emphasizes that Ware was not merely advocating for higher taxes or new government programs but for a political revolution aimed at dismantling the Democratic Party as an institution.

The article notes that democratic socialists often distance themselves from communism, insisting the two are distinct. Soto acknowledges the technical difference but points to Lenin’s own description of socialism as the first stage of transition toward a communist society. In her telling, socialism is the ostensibly democratic step toward full communal ownership, a system that promises an end to exploitation but in practice requires permanent revolution because a worldview built on the oppressor-oppressed binary always finds new targets. Once that Marxist framework takes hold, she argues, it colors every interaction, turning voluntary exchange into exploitation and policy disagreements into existential conflicts.

“Health Fascism” and the Stretching of Language

Another speaker, self-identified “anarcho-communist” activist Da’Shaun Harrison, addressed what he called “Health Fascism,” arguing that the political deployment of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs is “fascistic.” Harrison contended that society treats thinness as desirable and fatness as a fixable condition, with medicine and capitalism reinforcing that standard. Soto pushes back hard on this framing, writing that such a diluted use of the word “fascism” robs it of any real meaning.

She defines fascism as an authoritarian political system where the nation is placed above the individual and government power is used to suppress individual rights. By contrast, she says, when a pharmaceutical company invents a treatment, offers it to people, and individuals decide whether to use it, that is the capitalist wonder of having options. She points to Nazi Germany as an example of actual health fascism, where the government forcibly sterilized people deemed genetically “undesirable” and no one had a choice.

Soto concedes that a pharmaceutical company is not your friend and that profit does not magically make everything good. But she insists profit also does not magically make everything oppression. The anti-capitalist, she writes, tries so hard to find exploitation that he cannot recognize something simple: the difference between coercion and choice.

The Police Abolition Debate

Georgetown professor Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò also spoke, addressing skepticism that defunding the police comes with serious risks. According to the Daily Wire report, Táíwò argued that immediate concerns about anarchy do not make the long-term goal of police abolition wrong, and he suggested abolitionists need a better answer for what happens “next week.”

Soto counters that abolishing the police does not abolish murder, domestic violence, robbery, assault, theft, or gangs. Eliminating the institution that responds to those problems, she writes, does not eliminate the problems themselves. Any serious proposal, she argues, must answer who has the authority and ability to stop someone from hurting somebody else. In her view, there is effectively no short-term or long-term strategy — only a search for better messaging to sell police abolition despite its obvious ramifications.

The author proposes a different path: reform rather than tear down the institution of policing. Protect peaceful people from those violating their rights instead of using police to control peaceful people, and hold officers accountable when they abuse their power. She contends that the choice is not between “police can do whatever they want” and “abolish the police.”

A Common Thread

Underneath each viral moment, Soto identifies a similar way of looking at society: power, conflict, exploitation, oppressor versus oppressed — the Marxist framework in various forms. Capitalists become exploiters, voluntary exchange becomes exploitation. A pharmaceutical company offering a new medical option becomes part of “body fascism.” Police misconduct becomes an argument for abolishing policing itself. And revolutionary politics remains on the table for some speakers because the existing political and economic system is not something they want to reform but something they want destroyed and replaced.

Soto concludes that ideas have consequences when they move from conference rooms and internet debates into institutions and policy. These, she writes, are not simply debates about how to make life more affordable. They are debates about core principles of freedom and, ultimately, who should have power over whom.

Holly Jean Soto is a liberty and economics communicator and a Young Voices Contributor. The original Daily Wire piece can be found here.

Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-2026-socialism-conference-reveals-the-dangers-of-the-marxist-mindset