Social Democrats Lack Backbone on Imperialism: Bernie Sanders & AOC Rally in Detroit for Dr. Abdul El-Sayed

The packed crowd of over 2,000 workers and youth at the Detroit Opera House this weekend was electric, filled with a palpable, deep-seated anger against corporate rule, skyrocketing inflation, and the decay of the American standard of living. On stage, the heavyweights of American social democracy—Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and local Representative Rashida Tlaib—rallied alongside United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain to push Dr. Abdul El-Sayed across the finish line in Michigan’s intensely contested Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.

From the podium, the rhetoric sounded radical. Sanders roared against the "oligarchy" and the billionaire class, while Ocasio-Cortez framed El-Sayed’s campaign as a historic battle against the deluge of right-wing dark money attempting to buy the state of Michigan. Fain called it a definitive "pick-a-side moment" for the working class.

But for socialists, anti-imperialists, and class-conscious workers, what was not said at the Detroit Opera House was far more telling than the rehearsed applause lines. Beneath the progressive branding and the fiery denunciations of corporate greed lay a conspicuous, cowardly silence on the single most critical issue facing the global working class today: the relentless escalation of U.S. militarism and the global march toward a catastrophic third world war.

The Conspicuous Silence on Imperialism

We live in a moment of unprecedented global peril. The United States is actively funding, arming, and politically shielding a genocidal campaign in Gaza, while simultaneously escalating direct military actions against Iran, expanding a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, and aggressively preparing for a catastrophic conflict with China. Yet, if you sat through the entire Detroit rally, you would barely know the U.S. empire was on a total war footing.

This is the fatal, historic flaw of social democracy. From the collapse of the Second International in 1914 to the modern "progressive" wing of the Democratic Party, social democrats have routinely proven that they completely lack a backbone when it comes to confronting imperialism. They try to compartmentalize domestic policies—promising Medicare for All, stronger labor unions, and a green transition—while entirely ignoring the reality that the domestic economy is fundamentally bound to a ruthless, multi-trillion-dollar war machine.

By refusing to utilize their massive platform to explicitly denounce the Biden-Harris administration's reckless foreign policy, figures like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez perform a vital service for the ruling class. They act as a political safety valve. Their role is to take genuine, anti-war, anti-capitalist anger from young people and workers and safely redirect it back into the electoral machinery of the Democratic Party—the oldest capitalist and imperialist party in United States history. You cannot build a just society for the working class at home while acting as the passive gatekeepers for an empire that drops bombs on the working class abroad.

The AIPAC Money Flood and Electoral Extortion

The silence on imperialist policy is particularly egregious given the sheer volume of right-wing, pro-war money flooding into the Michigan Senate race. El-Sayed’s primary opponent, Representative Haley Stevens, is a staunchly establishment-aligned Democrat who proudly describes herself as "staunchly pro-Israel." Consequently, she has become the premier vessel for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

The financial disparity in this race is staggering and serves as a textbook example of bourgeois democracy in action. Outside groups have flooded the primary with over $41 million, overwhelmingly favoring Stevens by an estimated 12-to-1 margin. AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project (UDP), has poured nearly $15 million into the race to date. Federal disclosures show that this includes $9.3 million in direct ad buys supporting Stevens and $5.7 million spent on vicious attack ads designed to sink El-Sayed. Another corporate-backed group, "A Stronger Michigan," connected to prominent multi-billion-dollar corporate tech lobbyists, has dropped another $12 million to bolster Stevens.

The Capitalist Primary: The ruling class is spending upwards of $30 million via AIPAC and corporate fronts in a single state primary to guarantee that whichever Democrat wins the seat will remain completely compliant with the demands of the military-industrial complex and Israeli apartheid.

Faced with this massive, right-wing onslaught, how do El-Sayed and his social-democratic allies respond? They lean into the language of pure electoral pragmatism. Rather than building an independent, revolutionary movement among rank-and-file workers to challenge the capitalist system itself, they beg working-class voters to line up behind the Democratic ticket to prevent a Republican victory by Mike Rogers in November. They reduce the struggle against imperialism to a mere question of defensive voting within a rigged two-party system.

The Role of the UAW Bureaucracy

The presence of UAW President Shawn Fain at the Detroit rally further highlighted the integration of the "progressive" political wing with the corporate-union bureaucracy. While Fain used his speech to lambast corporate oligarchs, his actual record tells a story of deep collusion with the capitalist state.

The UAW leadership has been working tirelessly to suppress a growing rebellion among rank-and-file auto parts workers who have repeatedly voted down "sell-out" contracts at manufacturing plants like Nexteer and Dana. While workers demand real wage increases, safer conditions, and protection from toxic environmental hazards on the factory floor, the union bureaucracy focuses on maintaining its own institutional privileges. Fain himself is currently facing a widening federal investigation into allegations of nepotism and retaliatory threats against internal union rivals.

More fundamentally, the union bureaucracy embraces a deeply nationalist, protectionist economic framework that pits American workers against their international brothers and sisters. By backing protectionist tariffs and alignment with U.S. industrial-war planning, the union leadership directly serves the geopolitical interests of American imperialism. They help wrap the war machine in a pro-labor flag, proving once again that a union leadership tied to the capitalist state cannot wage a genuine struggle for the working class.

No War Abroad, No Peace at Home

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed has pitched his campaign on public health expertise, a critique of corporate campaign funding, and a promise to fight for ordinary people. But a public health framework that ignores the destruction of healthcare infrastructure by U.S.-funded bombs in the Middle East is fundamentally hollow. A political message that attacks corporate cash but refuses to name the imperialist state driving global conflict is entirely inadequate.

The Detroit rally exposed the dead end of social democracy. Sanders, AOC, and El-Sayed offer workers a false choice: they promise reform within a system that is fundamentally addicted to war and resource extraction. History has shown us time and again that social-democratic reforms are always the first things sacrificed on the altar of wartime mobilization.

The working class cannot defeat the billionaire class at home without simultaneously confronting the imperialist state abroad. To stop the march toward World War III, to defeat the corporate oligarchy, and to reject the millions of dollars of AIPAC-fueled intimidation, the working class must break completely from the Democratic Party. We do not need a softer, more "progressive" face on the American empire. We need an independent, internationalist, and revolutionary socialist movement of the working class to dismantle the imperialist war machine from the ground up.