Episode
TLPP: Undercover at Socialism 2026 w/ Aidan Grogan
- Podcast
- Lions of Liberty Network
- Published
- Sep 22, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3179
- Processing state
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- https://traffic.megaphone.fm/ENTSL4969733459.mp3
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Summary
Aidan Grogan is a researcher at the Manhattan Institute. He went undercover at Socialism 2026 — the annual conference sponsored by Haymarket Books, held in Chicago over Labor Day weekend — and sat in on panels that weren't being livestreamed to see what they were saying behind closed doors. In some cases, they were saying considerably more radical things than what made it onto the stream.We talked about: how he got in (registered as Aidan G. with a burner email, wore Marxist pins, didn't iron his shirt, gave up on the disguise by day four); masks required at all times, COVID still surging, it felt like 2020 all over again; the family abolition session — two Yale-affiliated researchers sitting in a circle with Crayola markers on the table, advocating to dismantle the family as an oppressive capitalist institution; Sophie Lewis, Oxford graduate, family abolitionist, currently married; the audience describing the "most culturally celebrated family" as white people, private property, and heteronormativity; the fat genocide panel and the presenter who was herself relatively fit; Sophie Lewis denying any biological basis to sex; the mismatch between revolutionary rhetoric and people with too much anxiety to fire a gun; the old macho Marxists vs. today's conference-goers; Bill Ayers and the career path of a left-wing terrorist (hint: it ends in a tenured professorship); Robert Nisbet's The Quest for Community and why radical politics is a substitute religion for the socially alienated; and the DSA platform calling for abolishing the Senate, the Electoral College, and the checks and balances of the American constitutional order.Read Aidan's coverage → City Journal: cityjournal.orgFollow Aidan → Manhattan Institute: manhattan-institute.orgTIMESTAMPS:0:00 — Intro — Aid…