What do Leon Trotsky, Emma Goldman, Ralph Nader, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Carl Sandburg, Hugo Chavez, Adolf Hitler, Harry Truman, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have in common? They’re all socialists or at least have been “accused” of being socialists, along with Karl Marx, Henri de Sainte-Simon, Vladimir Lenin, Eugene V. Debs, Vachel Lindsay, Nicholas Maduro, and many, many others. In the US the label has frequently been a handy political insult, an often taboo but (paradoxically) close to meaningless label to apply to one’s opponent. Admittedly it’s rare if not unheard of to call a right-wing leader in the US a “socialist” even if s/he seems to have way too much in common with National Socialist leader Adolf Hitler, but it would make as much sense to do that as to call FDR a socialist, and his enemies lambasted him as one frequently.