Viral clips from a socialist conference are making the left look ridiculous, which is bad for the movement's image but says little about the socialists actually winning elections.

• Panelists at the Socialism 2026 conference argued that fitness is a capitalist measure of who is disposable and that weight-loss drugs amount to a "genocide" of fat people — clips that pulled millions of views.
• The conference traces back to a defunct Trotskyist group and is now run through a left-wing publishing world funded by foundations, philanthropies, and universities rather than by workers.
• That funding structure is the point: this brand of identity-focused radicalism is compatible with capitalism, which is why rich foundations have bankrolled it since the CIA and the Ford Foundation built up an anti-communist "third camp" left after World War II.
• While that world grew, union membership collapsed and the left's actual leverage over the rich shrank.
• The contrast is Zohran Mamdani opening a first-of-its-kind Office of Worker Power in New York to help hotel, hospital, and cafe workers organize — a movement backed by voters, not donors.

Outlook: Socialist candidates keep winning at the ballot box on rent, data centers, and surveillance, so expect the conference clips to keep fueling right-wing attacks without slowing the electoral wins.