Aidan Grogan Went Undercover at Socialism 2026

0:00 – Intro — Aidan Grogan, Manhattan Institute and City Journal
0:43 – What is Socialism 2026? Haymarket Books, Labor Day, Chicago
1:27 – Going undercover — livestreams vs. behind closed doors
3:51 – The viral clip: pronouns, jazz hands, anxiety about clapping
4:11 – Armed revolution calls — "I have too much anxiety to use a gun"
5:35 – How he got in: Aidan G, burner email, Marxist pins, bad clothes
7:20 – Day one vs. day four — what happens when you dress normally
8:20 – Masks required the entire time — felt like 2020 all over again
10:00 – His cover story: "I'm new to socialist ideas and just exploring"
10:54 – The family abolition session — Crayola markers, Yale researchers
12:29 – What does abolishing the family actually mean?
14:17 – The audience answers: white people, private property, heteronormative
16:41 – Sophie Lewis: family abolitionist, Oxford graduate, currently married
17:49 – Do they ever actually live by the ideas they preach?
18:49 – "It takes a village" — and why they mean the government
21:09 – The data: two married biological parents produce the best outcomes for children
23:45 – Low birth rates — opportunity cost, not money cost
26:06 – At war with biology — the left's rejection of reality
27:24 – Queer theory, family abolition, and the roots of the movement
28:27 – Sophie Lewis denies any biological or natural basis to sex
31:38 – The fat genocide panel — presenter was relatively fit
33:29 – The old macho Marxists vs. today's conference-goers
34:15 – Luigi the musical, political violence, and LARPing revolutionaries
36:48 – Champagne socialism — why these people won't actually risk anything
38:48 – Robert Nisbet and radical politics as substitute religion
39:01 – People who want communes nobody would want to be on
43:05 – Bill Ayers, the Weather Underground, and the career path of a left-wing terrorist
45:18 – Should we be worried? Lone wolves vs. organized violence
46:52 – DSA platform: abolish the Senate, Electoral College, and checks and balances
47:50 – Mayor Mamdani and the low bar for praising elected officials
49:59 – American institutions are more robust than the radicals think