The influential socialist streamer displayed the provocative hat as activists gathered in Chicago to organize, teach Marxism and declare that their movement is “winning.”
CHICAGO — A disturbing moment at the Socialism 2026 Conference captured the attention of Americans on Saturday when socialist political streamer Hasan Piker was handed a hat bearing the words “Satan’s School of Gay Communism.”
Piker accepted and displayed the hat as members of the audience applauded. Video of the incident quickly circulated online and was subsequently shown on Fox News. The brief recording does not establish that the Democratic Socialists of America manufactured the hat or formally endorsed its wording. It does, however, document the slogan being welcomed at a major socialist gathering where Piker addressed DSA supporters and declared that their movement was “winning.”
The four-day Socialism 2026 Conference, held September 4–7 in Chicago, advertises more than 100 discussions, lectures and workshops intended to help activists “sharpen analysis, hone strategy, and build community.” Its programming includes Marxist education, abortion and gender politics, opposition to immigration enforcement, prison and police abolition, anti-capitalist organizing and campaigns against American support for Israel.
The hat may have been intended as satire or political provocation; the footage alone does not demonstrate literal worship of Satan. Nevertheless, the public celebration of a slogan combining Satan, sexuality and communism presents an unmistakable challenge to Christians. What previous generations regarded as spiritually destructive is being marketed to younger Americans as fashionable, humorous and revolutionary.
More consequential than the hat is the political program being advanced.
In its newly published “Workers Deserve More!” program, the DSA asks readers to imagine a “future without capitalism.” It envisions a “classless society,” calls upon activists to “draft a new constitution” and seeks to create a “democratic socialist republic.”
The program advocates public ownership of America’s largest corporations and essential industries. It proposes abolishing the Senate and Electoral College and replacing the president and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary selected by and subordinate to Congress.
It also calls for defunding the Department of War, closing American military bases overseas, ending economic sanctions, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, legalizing migration and granting amnesty to immigrants regardless of status. Other demands include moving toward abolition of the police and prison system, unrestricted abortion and government-funded gender-transition services.
These positions stand in substantial conflict with Roman Catholic social teaching. The Church defends workers, supports just wages, demands care for the poor and recognizes government’s responsibility to advance the common good. Catholic doctrine does not endorse unrestrained capitalism or indifference toward poverty.
But Catholicism also rejects collectivism, class warfare and systems that subordinate the human person to the state. Paragraph 2425 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church explicitly rejects the totalitarian and atheistic ideologies associated with communism and socialism. The Catechism defends private property while teaching that ownership carries obligations toward others.
Pope Pius XI went further in his 1937 encyclical Divini Redemptoris, declaring atheistic communism “intrinsically wrong.” St. John Paul II later explained in Centesimus Annus that socialism’s fundamental error is its reduction of the individual person to a component of a social and economic machine.
Catholic opposition must never become hatred toward people, including those who identify as gay. Every person possesses inviolable dignity and must be treated accordingly. But respecting people does not require Catholics to remain silent about ideologies, policies or public mockery that contradict Christian faith.
The hat was a spectacle. The political program behind the spectacle is the more important story—and Catholics should understand precisely what it proposes.
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