‘Only Socialism Can Defeat COVID’ Flyers Found on University of Wisconsin-Madison Campus

by Leana Dippie and Peter Cordi

Flyers posted around University of Wisconsin-Madison promising that “Only Socialism Can Defeat COVID” were promoting a February 11 event held by the Madison, WI branch of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT).

According to the flyers, “capitalism offers no solutions” to COVID-19 and only makes things worse, as the organization criticizes solutions that involve “get[ting] back to work.”

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As Campus Reform previously reported, The IMT is an organization that supports a “socialist transformation of society.” They have branches across the U.S. and other parts of the world.

The organization actively recruits young people and promotes itself on college campuses, with the slogan, “Join the fight for socialism in our lifetime!”

Campus Reform reached out to the Madison, WI, branch of IMT to find out what exactly was discussed during the virtual event.

“We discussed how under capitalism the COVID-19 pandemic has been mismanaged and constantly narrow interest for profit has been prioritized over human lives,” IMT representative Alex Gillis explained.

“We do believe there is the science, production capability, and wealth to stop the pandemic, however, under capitalism, these resources are put for the narrow interest of the wealthiest,” he continued.

The proposed solution, Gillis explained, was to be nothing short of the “international socialization of healthcare.”

43 states issued stay-at-home lockdown orders directing civilians to stay at home except for essential activities, while seven states including Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming did not.

Thirty seven states issued statewide mask mandates, however many have since lifted their mandates, while thirteen states including South Dakota, Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wyoming, did not.

A Jan. 2022 literature review and meta-analysis by three scholars found that such policies “have had little to no public health effects,” but instead they have “imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”

UW-Madison’s Turning Point USA President, Jack Andersson, informed Campus Reform that he had seen some of the flyers posted on light poles and bulletin boards around campus.

“The idea that socialism can defeat COVID is a misguided one,” Andersson explained. “COVID doesn’t really need to be defeated, it’s just a virus we have to live with.”

Although Andersson believes that COVID is here to stay he noted that the ideology the flyers were promoting is so “poorly put together and responsible for so much death” that it “could not possibly solve” the COVID-19 virus.

Director of Media Relations at UW-Madison, Meredith McGlone, clarified that IMT is not a student organization registered at the university.

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Leana Dippie is Florida Campus Correspondent with Campus Reform. She is a student at the University of Florida double-majoring in Political Science and English. Leana is involved with numerous law-related organizations, political-related organizations, and honors societies on campus. She was an intern for the Trump campaign in 2020 and has become increasingly involved in the political world over the past year – recently being named an official Turning Point USA Ambassador.
Photo “University of Wisconsin-Madison” by University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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