Democratic socialists are enjoying the most political success in urban America in living memory. Candidates who belong to the Democratic Socialists of America have recently won Democratic primaries for the U.S. House of Representatives in Denver, Philadelphia and New York City — in the last case, helped by fellow member Zohran Mamdani, the city’s mayor.
Instead of exulting in this opportunity to spread their beliefs, however, these socialists are being coy. Darializa Avila Chevalier, one of the victorious New Yorkers, has deleted social media posts in which she called for, among other things, “no more police at all ever.” (She says she has “grown considerably” over the past six years.) Mamdani recently argued that democratic socialism means nothing more controversial than expanded child care and paved potholes. Hasan Piker, a pro-DSA podcaster, denies the movement is radical: “They just want health care. They want to end American militarism.”
The sales pitch has had some success. During Mamdani’s campaign, a New York Times story asserted that democratic socialists are not socialists, contrary to what the normal rules of English might suggest. The Times has also said that they are akin “to social democrats — a common ideology in Europe that emphasizes strong social safety nets and government involvement in areas like health care.”
America’s hard left has a long tradition of concealing its extremism. Earl Browder, who led the Communist Party for nearly 25 years and spied for the Soviets, claimed his creed was only “twentieth century Americanism.” In a 2019 speech attempting to define democratic socialism during his most recent presidential campaign, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) maintained that he was finishing the work of Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, whose opponents called them socialists.
Those presidents, however, didn’t adopt the label themselves. Sanders does. The senator and other self-described democratic socialists also reject Truman’s forceful opposition to left-wing tyrannies. The Sanders speech attacked only authoritarian regimes of the right. Piker is more evenhanded, but only because he praises dictatorships of many varieties, from China to Russia. The 2025 DSA platform demands an end to all sanctions on Cuba, Iran and the former government of Venezuela, all of which were supposedly being punished merely for acting “independently of the United States.” When the U.S. arrested Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the DSA hosted a live stream in which one of its top officials urged Americans to “stand in solidarity” with him.
The DSA is fixated on Israel. Ending aid to the country is its first foreign policy plank. When Hamas massacred Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, the DSA’s statement condemned the killing of civilians — but only after “expressing our solidarity with Palestine” and calling the atrocities “a direct result of Israel’s apartheid regime,” and before saying they were “not unprovoked.” It didn’t mention Hamas. Some state and local chapters of the organization took an effectively pro-Hamas line, for example defending the murders in the name of the “right to resist.”
The DSA platform’s domestic policies are far removed from the New Deal, too. Noncitizens would have “full voting rights.” All deportations would end, and there would be “immediate amnesty for all immigrants regardless of current immigration status.”
As the movement grows, it is radicalizing rather than becoming more mainstream. The post-Oct. 7 statements drove Maurice Isserman, a 41-year veteran of the group, to quit. While its existing platform calls for abolishing the Senate, the new one will reportedly also call for Congress to appoint the president and the Supreme Court. (A member of the organization’s governing authority explained that checks and balances are a tool of “the ruling class.”) It will advocate “abolishing the carceral forces of the capitalist state.” That’s the police and prisons for you yokels — although a member of the DSA’s governing board suggests she is open to “some community force under communism that can sort of hold each other accountable,” which is doubtless how any future secret police would bill itself.
Other members of the DSA are a little more open about how they intend to hold and keep power. The organization’s “communist caucus” — yes, it has one — declares, with a hint of menace: “We will seize control of the world that was built through our collective exploitation and domination. All of this we want, yet none can be had exclusively through the ballot box.”
Not every member of a political organization endorses all its tenets, and some of the DSA’s new fans are surely responding to the current “we just want health care” marketing. But don’t be fooled: This movement is committed to an agenda that goes far beyond safety nets and affordability.
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