Readers, allow me to introduce you to one Gustavo Gordillo. Young Gus may be a familiar face to some of you already, seeing as how he is co-chairman of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and has used his newfound notoriety to partake in several recent high-profile media interviews, all of which bring to mind that meme of the shady fellow offering you a trade proposal. (YOU RECEIVE: A time card to punch at the rectal probe factory. GUSTAVO RECEIVES: A dacha.)
In fact, Gordillo’s interview on Fox News with Martha MacCallum is as good a place as any to start — and end — with Gustavo, as right off the bat he signals the depths of his commitment. Gordillo opens by discussing his personal background as the son of Peruvian refugees from the revolutionary Marxist organization Shining Path. When MacCallum queried him about the irony of his parents fleeing Marxist terrorists, Gordillo saw none at all. Peru’s troubles were, he claimed, caused by American imperialist capitalism — and that, he further claimed, is why so many people immigrate to America: to express their discontent with the system that dislocated them. Later, he caused MacCallum’s jaw to drop when he blithely declared that if city-owned grocery stores brought down prices so much with artificially subsidized pricing that they drove privately owned supermarkets out of business, “then maybe they shouldn’t have been in that business in the first place.”
Gordillo is thus, in his own way, an ideal ambassador for Democratic Socialism, insofar as he perfectly embodies the sorts of people who seek power from it. Some other biographical details about Young Gordillo that didn’t make it into the interview:
- Gustavo went to Yale to learn his Democratic Socialism — more specifically, he majored in literature and returned there after graduation to get an MFA in sculpture.
- He has never held an actual job; he claims membership in the IBEW Electricians Union Local 3 — for that essential touch of working-class cred — but as it turns out, has never worked a day in his life. (He was fired from his apprenticeship after failing to show up for work and classes.)
- That’s okay though, because he managed to squeak by: He made a passionate speech to his local DSA about how The Man had oppressed them, and they voted him a $95,000 sinecure.
- Even if had that fallen through, Gustavo wouldn’t have to worry about making rent — he lives in a $1.5 million two-story Brooklyn condo purchased for him . . . by his father.
Ladies and gentlemen: This is your modern DSA, embodied. A movement whose intellectual forefathers are Marx, Lenin, and Che has no need for explanation as to why it is populated top to bottom by Gustavo Gordillo types. These are the well-heeled radicals who have always powered left-wing discontent: disgusted by their economic privilege yet supremely dependent on it, contemptuous of anything that resembles manual (or even intellectual) labor, committed exclusively to the social and aesthetic pleasures of “activism.”
And they are in the vanguard of our changing politics. Laugh them off if you please — there is plenty to laugh at. But do not doubt their sincerity. There are few dangers greater in politics than sincere fools.