Read our two-part editorial series on the 2026 midterm electoral farce here and here.
Despite the superficial differences between social democrats and right populists, they offer the same false solution to the workers’ problems: class collaboration under the rule of the monopolists.
A few recent examples in the news highlight their fundamental similarities.
Misanthropes Speak at “Pro-Human” AI Conference
At a conference calling for regulation on artificial intelligence (AI) on September 15 in Washington DC, Senator Bernie Sanders and former Trump advisor and far-right podcaster Steve Bannon spoke back to back about the need to reel in the oligarchs.
The so-called “Pro-Human Assembly” was organized by the Future of Life Institute, a non-profit promoting technology regulation funded by tech monopolists like trillionaire Elon Musk.
The two millionaire demagogues spoke to the audience of imperialists and their representatives about the threat AI posed to humanity, and the need for the working class and middle class to band together behind the US government as one common people to stop this threat.
Sanders proposed partially nationalizing the top AI monopolies, while Bannon proposed using an executive order to regulate them. The push for greater concentration of power around the executive to regulate AI came from Sanders through the demagoguery of defending bourgeois democracy, and from Bannon arguing to protect “our civilization, our culture.” Both argued for the imperialist-in-chief to guide the tech oligarchs in their frenzied pursuit of dubious profits, part of the inherently “bipartisan” project of reinvigorating the economic life of US imperialism.
Both advocated for restricted access to AI to preserve US imperialism. Sanders fear-mongered about how allegedly “the Houthis [the resistance group Ansar Allah] in Yemen were able to use Claude to test fire a guided rocket,” while Bannon suggested the US government “take all Chinese nationals [in the US] and get them out of the labs and get them back to mainland China.”
Sanders promoted collusion with social-imperialist China to regulate AI, while Bannon emphasized contention. Dropsite News and other commentators have noted that Chinese social-imperialism is threatening US hegemony in AI development. Competition between American and Chinese monopolists on the world market for dominance over the telecommunications and information technology sectors has intensified in recent years, with China surpassing the US in tech manufacturing output and trailing second behind the US in overall tech industry output in terms of GDP.
“I think Senator Sanders did a very good job of summarizing the risk,” Bannon said at the end of his speech. “Obviously, he and I have a quite different opinion of the president of the United States, but we’re trying to rise above partisanship, and we have to because this is unique.”
What is above the narrow “partisanship” of the two party mafias? The class interests that they both serve.
Carlson Defends El-Sayed
Far-right media personality Tucker Carlson supported social democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign earlier in the month while attacking his Republican opponent in the Michigan Senate race.
In a conversation with fellow right-wing podcaster Saagar Enjeti on Carlson’s show, Enjeti said of El-Sayed’s campaign, “It’s America first. When he talks about Israel, he says Israel is committing a genocide, but ultimately, I want to make sure that you don’t pay more for healthcare. I don’t want your tax dollars going abroad to fund this barbaric military. He stands in front of a giant American flag. It’s almost Trumpian in terms of a lot of those tropes,” to which Carlson responds, “Well, it’s literally Trumpian.”
El-Sayed gave an appreciative response to Carlson’s defense: “What you get in Tucker Carlson is somebody who’s seen up close a lot of the corruption inside MAGA.”
Carlson proposed a ten-point platform for a potential third party last month, claiming a return to an “America first” vision that he claims Trump has abandoned. Platform points include getting foreign and corporate lobbying out of the government; rebuilding manufacturing and farming and decreasing domination of the economy by finance, real estate, surveillance, and weapons industries; and the US paying restitution for war crimes it committed and ceasing to finance countries committing genocide, specifying Israel.
El-Sayed’s platform is built on the slogans of getting money out of politics, putting money in people’s pockets, and Medicare for all.
Left and right populism traffic in the people’s anger at imperialism and disillusionment with bourgeois democracy only to pull them back into it under another brand. The different packaging is aimed at different audiences, but the goal is the same: preserve US imperialism as the sole hegemonic imperialist superpower.
Image: Composite of Bernie Sanders at Stanford University in 2026 and Steve Bannon at AmericaFest in 2025 created by The Worker. Credit: Cropped Sanders image by Anderseidesvik on Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0); cropped Bannon image by Gage Skidmore on Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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