Recent statements by the Democratic Socialists of America about Hamas’s attack on Israel highlight its radicalism in other areas.
Recent statements by the Democratic Socialists of America about Hamas’s attack on Israel highlight its radicalism in other areas.
T he Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has been in the news a lot lately, and rightly so. While Hamas militants were murdering Israeli civilians, the DSA was exclaiming “long live the resistance!” and promoting “solidarity” demonstrations in response to the terrorist atrocities. It was abominable, and many elected officials on both sides of the aisle condemned the group in the strongest terms. Representative Ritchie Torres (D., N.Y.) has been particularly outspoken, for which he should be commended, while Representative Shri Thanedar (D. Mich.) renounced his DSA membership, since the group “is unwilling to call out terrorism in all its forms.”
Though the attacks were a watershed moment, anti-Israel rhetoric is nothing new for the DSA. The group voted to support the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement in 2017, and two years later established an official working group to expose what it called “Zionism’s settler-colonialist and imperialist roots” and advocate “a free Palestine, from the river to the sea” — a phrase with unambiguously malevolent meaning.
More recent DSA resolutions have labeled Israel “a racist apartheid state” that is engaged in “ethnic cleansing.” Clearly, a unique and virulent hostility toward Israel has been festering within the DSA for years. The Hamas attacks simply laid it bare for the world to see.
Since the DSA’s extremism is now evident, it’s worth highlighting some other examples of the group’s ideological radicalism. Like its hatred of Israel, these views have perhaps been obscured by the group’s relatively recent ascendancy on the political stage, its association with multiple high-profile elected officials, and the favorable media coverage it has received because of those associations.
Consider just a few examples from the DSA’s political platform, adopted in 2021. It calls for the total abolition of police and prisons, the release of all people “from involuntary confinement,” and the categorical elimination of misdemeanor offenses. There is an absurd demand to “decarbonize the economy” within ten years via solar, wind, and geothermal energy. The DSA wants to abolish the U.S. Senate, give noncitizens the right to vote, and repeal all truancy laws, among a litany of other far-left ideas. This is all in addition to the total “abolition of capitalism,” which would evidently entail a level of economic nationalization, redistribution, and central planning that is unknown in the free world.
Indeed, the DSA has a conspicuous affinity for the authoritarian world. It has declared its full solidarity with Cuba’s “revolutionary and socialist struggle against United States imperialism,” and even appeared to support the communist regime’s crackdown on large-scale protests in 2021. That same year, an admiring DSA delegation met with Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, and the group’s international committee currently operates a dedicated “Venezuela Solidarity” campaign. The DSA despises NATO and has blamed the alliance’s “imperialist expansionism” for provoking Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It characterizes sanctions on North Korea as “attacks” intended merely to serve American “imperialist interests.”
All of this might be connected to the fact that there are literal communists in leadership positions at the DSA. At least five of the 16 members of the group’s newly elected national political committee represent internal DSA caucuses that explicitly adhere to a revolutionary Marxist and/or communist ideology. Two members (including the national secretary) were elected from the Marxist Unity Group faction, which espouses full-blown revolutionary communism. Its manifesto talks of “combative political agitation” to erode the “popular legitimacy of the U.S. Constitution” until the working class can seize power “by any means necessary.” After establishing a “revolutionary Popular Assembly” in which only parties that accept “the new revolutionary order” will be permitted to operate, global communism will then supposedly usher in “the true beginning of human history.”
In spite of all this, the DSA has grown more than tenfold in less than a decade, a remarkable expansion by any measure. As of its August convention this year, it had a total membership of just under 78,000 and claimed that more than 200 DSA members held elected office nationwide. At least six sitting members of Congress have been DSA members during their time in office, though that number is reportedly now down to four: Representatives Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), Cori Bush (D., Mo.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), and Greg Casar (D., Texas).
The Republican Party certainly must contend with its share of fringe figures and movements, some of them detestable. But the DSA as a radical left-wing political force has achieved a level of penetration into the Democratic Party — including among prominent elected officials — that no organization on the radical Right even comes close to matching. The recent terror attacks appear to have rightly forced a serious reassessment of the DSA’s place within the Democratic Party, but it’s important to remember that the group’s extremism encompasses more than its vile, pro-Hamas views exposed after the horrific events in Israel.