Just for shits and giggles, I decided to do something completely uncharacteristic and present a defense of democratic socialism.

The obvious argument against it is simple. Socialism is bad, whether that tyranny through state power is directed by what claim to be representatives of society... a dictator, aristocrats, corporations, or democracies and other forms of mob rule. Private (self) ownership is the enemy of the collective control that socialism advances in the name of a mass of "humanity" that ignores humans.

But saying that's what "democratic" socialism is? What comes to mind is Ben Shapiro saying "In the name. Boy Scouts." Of course, Boy Scouts the organization could choose to admit girls, and instead of changing the name to Scouts, not do that. Keeping the name might be a good or bad marketing decision, but they wouldn't be forced to exclude girls simply because of what they called themselves.

National socialists and democratic socialists both sold themselves as socialist movements. But if the Nazis aren't considered "real" socialists, they're at least closer to socialists then AOC.

The argument that the Nazis aren't socialists despite their name is that they're instead fascists. But fascism is essentially a short step to socialism. They're in the same basic category on the opposite side of the spectrum from liberalism. If socialism is government control of the means of production, and fascism is essentially the merger of state and corporate power into something strong enough to control the means of production, it's nearly a distinction without much difference. Socialism can claim that what it wants to control the means of production is "social control" or "the people", but if the people could all decide individually what the means of production should be used for by inputting their preferences absent government planning, that's just the market.

Hitler had ultimate control of the means of production, but allowed corporations to work towards the ends that he himself set. If they didn't, or if they didn't do so in the way he preferred, he could nationalize corporations or entire industries, or otherwise regulate compliance with his decrees through the application of state power. Not exercising it fully, while still credibly claiming he was merely allowing them some temporary degree of autonomy, I'm not even convinced that the word socialism doesn't directly apply.

Besides, in the real world, nearly all governments suffer from regulatory capture by the most powerful interests, so it's hard to see how fascism is all that different from direct government control, when corporate control of government, especially as it relates to economic decrees, is nearly universal and inevitable.

But it's not the only aspects of Nazism that is in line with the thrust of socialism. They took the concept of eugenics in large part from the progressive movement, and progressivism is essentially the antithesis of liberalism. They were active opponents of capitalism, and much of their anti-Semitism sprang from seeing Jews as symbols of the hated and oppressive capitalist system. The placed an emphasis of the collective over the individual, unity and conformity considered virtues and uniqueness as vice, and the state as the aim to direct all.

Democratic socialists, by contrast, claim that their aim isn't communism/socialism/fascism at all, but the Scandinavian model. Scandinavia is a group of countries with what are free market capitalist systems that happen to have expansive welfare states. In many ways, it's more free market than the US. There's less laws and less regulations. It's tax structure is far less progressive than ours. They're far less militarized, while war is the health of the state. Individual expression is valued.

When democratic socialists talk about what draws them to it, some of the most common policies prioritized are universal healthcare and education... and neither healthcare nor education are necessarily part of the means of production given that they're not instruments or subjects of labor rather than human capital. Even if they were accepted, Scandinavian countries are at best mixed, especially when one considers the high levels of government control over healthcare and education in the American system as well.

There's plenty of reasons one could give to say why "democratic socialists" are wrong about one thing or another. But they're not actually socialists. They just don't know the meanings of words or are intentionally trying to accelerate the change in meanings that happen naturally as language evolves and highjack symbols for their own use.