Pride In Subversion

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Horace Vernet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

From Wikimedia Commons: Socialism and Cholera (Horace Vernet, 1850)

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), boasting over 120,000 members and chapters across all 50 states, presents itself as a benign grassroots force operating within the Democratic Party to champion the working class. In reality, it functions as a Trojan horse for ideologies fundamentally antithetical to the constitutional republic. Far from a purely reformist tendency, the DSA embodies a dual subversive strategy: socialist-communist economic and cultural dismantling paired with Islamist-inflected identity politics that prioritizes transnational grievances over American cohesion.

Recent electoral successes—exemplified by the ascent of a velvet propagandist like Zohran Mamdani and his slate of backed radicals—signal antiliberal infiltration rather than democratic vitality. This trend, if unchecked, portends the capture of one of America’s two major parties by forces contemptuous of liberal norms, individual liberty, and national sovereignty.

The history of the DSA is complex. It was founded in 1982 through the merger of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC), established in 1973 by Michael Harrington, and the New American Movement (NAM), which dates back to 1971.

DSOC emerged from a split in the old Socialist Party of America. Harrington, a prominent democratic socialist and author of The Other America (1962), sought to create a “left wing of the possible”—a pragmatic force of social democrats, trade unionists, and progressives dedicated to working within the Democrat party. The goal was realignment: pushing the party leftwards on economic issues while upholding basic liberal democratic norms such as free speech, competitive elections, and opposition to authoritarian communism. NAM, by comparison, brought in New Left activists from the 1960s movements. The 1982 merger was presented as a healing of Old Left and New Left divides under Harrington’s leadership, with an explicit commitment to democratic socialism rather than Marxist-Leninist vanguardism.

From its very inception, the DSA’s strategy (like that of DSOC) centered on entryism—operating as a pressure group inside the Democrat party to shift it towards social democracy while cordoning off communists and militant authoritarians. This “realignment” approach defined the organization’s first three decades, during which it remained relatively small and marginal.

However, the organization’s trajectory changed dramatically after Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign and Donald Trump’s election. Membership exploded from roughly 6,000 to over 120,000, bringing in a much younger, more activist, and ideologically heterogeneous base. Meanwhile, what began as pragmatic entryism has evolved into something far more sectarian.

As Jonathan Chait has documented, the foundational bargain has largely collapsed. Nowadays, DSA functions as a force increasingly adverse to the Democrat party that it seeks to inhabit, prioritizing independent socialist power-building (a “dirty break” strategy) and embracing positions and alliances that would have been anathema to Harrington.

Internal critics have repeatedly warned of communist and authoritarian-leaning factions gaining influence at the leadership level. A notable example is the Open Letter on Transparency in DSA, circulated by organizers and prominent members in July 2019. This letter, alongside related discussions in late 2018, highlighted factionalism and concerns over undemocratic tendencies—well before later escalations.

From a conservative perspective, this evolution illustrates a familiar pattern on the left: ostensibly moderate or reformist vehicles are gradually captured by more radical elements through entryism and cadre organization. The original DSA, shaped by Harrington’s anti-totalitarian democratic socialism, sought to strengthen liberal institutions from within. The contemporary organization, by contrast, frequently exhibits contempt for those same institutions—evident in its alliances, rhetoric, and internal power dynamics—while benefiting from the Democrat party’s ballot line and infrastructure.

What emerges is an organization that retains the name “Democratic Socialists” but has substantively departed from the liberal democratic commitments of its founding. This radicalization reflects deeper tensions between social democracy’s reformist aspirations and the revolutionary impulses that have long coexisted uneasily on the American left.

Basic DSA tenets reveal the agenda plainly. Universal “free” (i.e., taxpayer-funded) healthcare, expansive welfare entitlements, punitive taxation of the wealthy, and the transfer of corporate power to “working people” conflict with balanced priorities. A variant of revolutionary adventurism, they constitute a frontal assault on property rights, market incentives, and individual responsibility—the bedrock of American prosperity. The “Green New Deal” masquerades as environmentalism while advancing centralized economic control.

Advocacy for abolishing or severely restricting police and prisons exposes an apparently utopian rejection of the state’s monopoly on legitimate violence, a position that invites chaos and disproportionately harms the very communities purportedly served. In all likelihood, therefore, abolitionism represents a deliberate catalyst for the erosion of ordered liberty that precedes revolutionary tyranny.

The personal trajectories of DSA-aligned victors underscore this subversion. Zohran Mamdani—the 112th Mayor of New York City—exemplifies the fusion of socialist economics with cultural alienation. His endorsement of a slate of “democratic socialists” propelled candidates like Darializa Avila Chevalier to victory in the primary for the U.S. House of Representatives (New York’s 13th Congressional District).

Chevalier, a black activist who converted to Islam in 2018, embodies the intersection of radical leftism and Islamist sympathies. Her past social media output—much of it from her Columbia University sociology days—reveals sympathies for communism, Russia over Ukraine (arguing that “the Cold War is over, and... we have been violating Russia”), and outright abolitionism: “The US should not have a police force. Period. No more police, ever.” She dismissed moderates within activist circles as undermining Black voices, deploying identity as a cudgel.

Chevalier’s critiques extended to interracial relationships, decrying Black and Arab men with white women as “fetishizing the ugly colonialist women.” Such rhetoric, while deleted from public view, exposes a racialist, anti-Western animus incompatible with liberal pluralism. Her victory, enabled by Mamdani’s coattails against an incumbent Democrat, illustrates how success breeds replication: other radicals now ride the wave. Claire Valdez, another Mamdani-backed winner, advocates nationalizing the aviation industry—a proposal redolent of mid-20th-century command economies. These are not fringe anomalies but harbingers of a party transformed.

The Islamist undercurrent compounds the threat. Aber Kawas, a Palestinian-American victor in New York State Legislature races under Mamdani’s aegis, exemplifies divided loyalties. In a 2017 podcast, she rejected apologies for 9/11, juxtaposing the terror attack against America’s supposed “genocide, slavery, capitalism, racism, white supremacy, and Islamophobia.” As opposed to isolated grievance, this is a narrative that inverts victim and perpetrator, framing the United States as the eternal colonizer while excusing or contextualizing jihadist violence. Mamdani’s own emphasis on his heritage and the broader DSA tolerance for pro-Hamas, pro-Hezbollah sentiments post-October 7, 2023, reveal a coalition where anti-Americanism serves as the unifying solvent.

Media personality Hasan Piker, a prominent DSA voice, praises China as “the closest” to an ideal society—despite its surveillance state, Uyghur concentration camps, and authoritarian capitalism. DSA activists, Chait observes, increasingly hate the U.S. and prefer Gaza, Cuba, Russia, and North Korea; they hate the police and the military but have no issue with Hezbollah and Hamas. Anything but principled anti-imperialism, this is selective anti-Westernism, a classic subversive tactic that weaponizes guilt and identity to delegitimize the host society.

Critics decry cautionary analyses as “neo-McCarthyism.” Yet electoral patterns belie complacency. While moderates prevail in some races (Maryland, Utah), the DSA’s targeted wins in New York and elsewhere—sweeping Mamdani-backed congressional and legislative primaries—demonstrate momentum. Future Democrats may find Ossoff, Torres, or Buttigieg relics of a bygone liberalism.

DSA entryism operates via classic Leninist tactics: boring from within, training organizers, running as Democrats while advancing anti-democratic ends. The DSA’s grassroots facade masks ideological purity tests that prioritize ideological solidarity with foreign adversaries over domestic governance. Socialist economics promise equity but deliver stagnation and dependency; the Islamist-adjacent strain imports cultural incompatibilities and grievance hierarchies that fracture social trust. Together, they undermine the rule of law, national defense, and the assimilationist ethos essential to a multi-ethnic republic.

The Democrats’ “existential fight to save democracy” proceeds while harboring an internal faction that views liberal norms as “bourgeois” impediments. As Chait warns, the time to act is at inception; delay risks total capture. Moderates remain influential—Fetterman, Kelly, Buttigieg—but the tide of primary challenges favors the radicals. Mamdani’s popularity, Chevalier’s congressional prospects, and Kawas’s ascent portend a party where Marxism-Leninism, abolitionist fantasies, and selective historical amnesia supplant pragmatism.

The American experiment rests on fragile foundations: consent of the governed, separation of powers, and cultural commitment to Enlightenment values. Subversive strategies exploiting democratic openness—entryism, identity mobilization, economic utopianism—erode these from within. The DSA’s trajectory exposes the imprudence of tolerating enemies of liberalism under the banner of pluralism.

DSA’s “long march” has long since begun.