There’s something almost charming about watching a politician squirm when their past catches up with them. Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, wants you to believe he’s a capitalist. Not just any capitalist, mind you, but one who has “a bad habit of reading.” How delightfully condescending.

The problem is that social media never forgets, and recently surfaced posts from the Detroit chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America tell a very different story. They called him “comrade” back in 2019. Not colleague. Not friend. Comrade. That’s not the kind of word you throw around lightly, especially when you’re talking politics.

When El-Sayed endorsed Bernie Sanders during the presidential race, the same DSA chapter couldn’t contain their excitement. “Thank you to our friend and ally Abdul El-Sayed for endorsing Bernie Sanders. Our movement is unstoppable,” they wrote. Their movement. Not the Democratic Party’s movement. Not some vague progressive coalition. Their movement, meaning the Democratic Socialists of America’s explicitly socialist agenda.

Now El-Sayed is trying to thread an impossible needle. He told the New York Times that capitalism is about supply and demand, about efficient allocation of capital. He says if you’re a real capitalist, you need government regulation to protect markets. That’s like saying if you really love freedom, you need more chains. The logic collapses under its own weight.

You know what’s fascinating? The policies he champions haven’t changed one bit. Medicare for All, which would put the federal government in charge of every American’s healthcare. Massive tax increases on top earners, because apparently success should be punished. Stringent penalties on businesses over environmental concerns, giving bureaucrats the power to strangle entire industries.

But here’s where it gets truly revealing. During his 2018 gubernatorial run, El-Sayed joined calls to literally seize General Motors plants. Seize them. That’s not regulation. That’s not even heavy-handed government intervention. That’s straight out of the socialist playbook, the kind of thing that would make Venezuela blush.

The Detroit DSA praised his “courage and vision” for supporting this seizure of private property, calling it essential to making the Green New Deal a reality. He was one of 140 co-signers on that plan, standing shoulder to shoulder with Rashida Tlaib and other far-left figures who’ve never met a government expansion they didn’t love.

What we’re witnessing is a calculated rebranding effort. El-Sayed knows that Michigan voters, even Democratic ones, aren’t ready to elect an open socialist to the Senate. So he’s putting on the capitalist costume, hoping nobody notices the hammer and sickle tattoo underneath. He’s betting that voters have short memories and that the media will help him bury his radical past.

The irony is almost painful. He mocks people by saying he has “a bad habit of reading,” as if everyone who disagrees with his twisted definition of capitalism is illiterate. But anybody who’s actually read Adam Smith or Friedrich Hayek or even basic economics textbooks knows that capitalism isn’t about government controlling markets through regulation and taxation. That’s the opposite of capitalism.

Real capitalism is about voluntary exchange, private property rights, and minimal government interference. It’s about letting people keep what they earn and make their own choices. It’s about competition driving innovation, not bureaucrats deciding which businesses live and die based on political favor.

El-Sayed wants to tax wealth, control healthcare, regulate businesses into submission, and apparently seize private property when companies make decisions he doesn’t like. Then he wants to call himself a capitalist because he believes in some regulation. That’s not capitalism with guardrails. That’s socialism with better marketing.

Michigan voters deserve better than this kind of dishonesty. They deserve candidates who’ll say what they believe and stand by it, not someone who gets called “comrade” by socialists one year and claims to be a capitalist the next. The DSA chapter didn’t officially endorse his Senate run, but their past enthusiasm speaks volumes about where El-Sayed’s true allegiances lie.

Words matter. Labels matter. When socialists recognize you as one of their own, when they call you comrade and celebrate your policy positions, you don’t get to reinvent yourself as a free market advocate just because it’s politically convenient. That’s not evolution. That’s deception.

Related: California Wants Businesses to Confess Their Slavery Sins Under Penalty of Perjury