If you follow political news at all, you’ll know that three Democratic candidates, all progressives and all endorsed by Bernie Sanders and NYC antisemite mayor Zohran Mamdani, just won their primaries. And with New York being a Democratic state, that means that, with near certainty, they’ll all be seated in Congress next year.
Let’s talk about the youngest and craziest one, a Democratic Socialist with no experience and a past that is, to put it mildly, checkered. As The Atlantic notes:
The mayor made a much bigger bet in backing Darializa Avila Chevalier, a 32-year-old democratic socialist challenging Espaillat, a five-term incumbent whom Mamdani had initially promised to endorse. Avila Chevalier has taken positions that could make her the most far-left Democrat elected to Congress in the past decade; she has said that “all deportations are wrong,” describes herself as a prison abolitionist, and attended a rally on the day after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that was widely perceived as expressing support for the attack. (Lander, who now accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, condemned the event at the time.) Avila Chevalier narrowly defeated Espaillat, who had the support of Jeffries and New York Governor Kathy Hochul, among other establishment figures.
Now left-centrist and centrist Democrats, like me, might be distressed by this, as all the winning candidates were not only “progressives” (we need a new word for that ilk), but also opponents of Israel, desiring Palestine to expand from the river to the sea, forcing Jews to don inner tubes. But perhaps Avila Chevalier’s kind of lunacy is limited to deep-blue states like New York, so Jews don’t need to start applying for citizenship in Israel. Still, the Democrats as a whole are turning against the only democratic country in the Middle East, and that’s worrisome. When they get power, like Avila Chevalier, it’s more worrisome.
One reaction is to wring your hands and wail. Another, which is a purgative, is sarcasm, and that’s the direction Jeff Maurer takes in his website post below. Read and laugh (or weep). Quotes are indented, and I quote in extenso because the guy is good and may induce literal LOL:
It’s funny and might offend some, but look at her record (this was written before she won):
How crazy is Darializa Avila Chevalier, the Zohran Mamdani-backed socialist trying to unseat incumbent Adriano Espaillat in New York’s 13th congressional district in the Democratic primary today? Well…how much time do you have? My challenge in this article is not to establish that Chevalier is crazy; my challenge is to find words to describe just how bonkers this Cirque du Soleil-level shit shows truly is.
Like virtually every socialist candidate, Avila Chevalier has a social media feed full of statements crazy enough to make their as-yet-unborn descendents [sic] feel shame. Here are some of her greatest hits:
- She called for abolishing police, prisons, and borders.
- She clarified her position on defunding the police by writing that her vision “means ending policing full stop. Period. No more police at all ever.”
- She retweeted posts saying “yes, literally abolish the border” and “all deportation is wrong”.
- She called the United States “a fucking disgrace”, referred to the US as “occupied” Native American land, and joked about wiping her dirty hands on the American flag.
- She wrote favorably about communism, wrote “seize the means of production”, called for nationalizing utilities, pharmaceutical companies, and “seiz[ing] all properties from landlords”, and wrote that “the pyromania associated with anarchism is very intriguing to me.”
- She called Joe Biden a “rapist” and a “war criminal” and said she wouldn’t vote for him, said “fuck Kamala Harris”, and criticized Bernie Sanders and AOC for being too pro-Israel.
- She retweeted a post saying “Israel doesn’t exist”.
- She wrote that Black and Arab men “[fetishize] ugly colonizer women”.
This type of stuff is why I’ve argued that we need to bring back the word “retard”. “Moron” or “ninny” doesn’t capture the intensity of what we’re dealing with here — those words are a pea shooter when we need an elephant gun. And, just as I use the words “moron” and “idiot” in a non-literal way, my use of “retard” does not refer to anyone with a cognitive impairment, but only to people who could lead normal lives but choose to have cognition similar to that of an oyster or a termite-infested log.
That being said: Chevalier’s posts are deep retard stuff. This is a type of retard that we don’t normally encounter; physicists have previously only theorized that this level of retardation might exist somewhere in the universe. Beyond the event horizon of this level of retard, the laws of space-time are ripped apart, and each new particle of retard that crosses the event horizon destroys intelligence somewhere else in the universe. Chevalier is less of a politician and more of fascinating phenomenon of the physical world — kind of like the Higgs-Boson particle or Ötzi the Iceman — and every newspaper should be running Pearl Harbor-sized headlines that read “QUANTUM RETARD ACHIEVED!!!”
Chevalier says that she has “grown considerably” since those tweets. She also hilariously accused her opponent of “re-litigating social media posts from half a decade ago” — yeah, who can even remember as far back as half a decade!?!?!? Half a decade ago is the early 2020s, a mostly-forgotten, black-and-white era so antiquated that many of us had slightly different haircuts and our around-the-house jeans were still our out-on-the-town jeans. Five years ago, I was a Mormon communist who thought that the global economy was run by the Keebler Elves — just like everybody back then!!! It was the early ‘20s, baby! Chevalier wants us to believe that people change dramatically in five years, and would also like us to elect her to represent a D+32 district, which has an expected incumbency period of 70-90 years.
Go listen to the embedded video in which she recounts the “apartheid” she witnessed when visiting the West Bank and Israel. (I should add that people never explain what they mean by Israel’s apartheid, especially given that 20% of Israeli citizen are Arabs, and of course totally neglect the serious apartheid of Palestine and other Arab states. How many Jews live in Gaza–a land that used to be almost completely Jewish? What would happen to a Jew who wished to live in Gaza?)
But wait! There’s more! (And do look at her interview in New York magazine.)
It actually seems that Chevalier hasn’t changed her extreme views at all. The New York Editorial Board tried to get Chevalier to sanewash her position on prison abolition — they did the thing that Fox News does with Trump where they try to walk him towards sanity but he stubbornly refuses — but Chevalier couldn’t give a straight answer to questions as simple as “What happens to the murderer?” Chevalier has maintained that it is always wrong to deport anyone, even if they’ve committed a crime. And Chevalier failed to get the endorsement of a left-wing New York group (that endorsed Zohran Mamdani) because when they met with her, she “[refused] to condemn Hamas or anything about it.” (my emphasis!) Really…she didn’t have any criticisms of Hamas? Not even, like…the outfits? Just “five stars, no notes” across the board? Even Sgt. Pepper has a few ho-hum tracks — the fact that Chevalier couldn’t find anything to criticize about Hamas forces me to conclude that she’s either unbelievably ignorant or should be contained by some sort of Hannibal Lecter-type prison setup.
So, pick you adjective of choice — “half-wit”, “lunatic”, “certified, notarized nut job” — this person should obviously not have power. I think that anyone who votes for a candidate like Chevalier should have to wear a diaper and a frilly bonnet, and be made to skip around town holding a big lolly and singing “I went boom boom at the ballot box!” Because that is just how egregiously that person has shirked their responsibilities as an adult. I could only imaging voting for Chevalier in the unlikely event that her opponent was somehow worse, such as if she was running against Reanimated Hitler or a robot programmed to skin and eat every human it encounters.
Maurer gives Avila Chevalier his highest rating for lunacy: five Marjorie Greenes.
In another post on his site, Maurer concludes this:
But now for the bad news: These three — especially Chevalier — are a glorious gift to Republican flaks. What Michael Jordan was to Nike, Chevalier is to anyone whose job is to portray Democrats as radical, anti-America lunatics. And that is because she is a radical, anti-America lunatic; I hope normie Democrats loudly denounce her bullshit instead of trying to sanewash it [JAC: remember the sanctification of Kamala Harris?). I would also remind Democrats that considerations about party unity and maintaining a big tent don’t really apply when the core thesis of the person you’re dealing with is that you, personally, are a corrupt monster who is abetting genocide. In fact, you look like a dickless loser when Chevalier calls you a handmaiden of the Epstein class and you respond by saying “I’m more focused on opposing the failed presidency of Donald Trump.”
I also think that this makes the AOC presidential run that I’m dreading like a prostate exam during an earthquake more likely. For starters: Socialists are riding high, they’ll surely want to turn that (real or perceived) mojo into a presidential run. And it’s also probably true that Chevalier is such a freak show that AOC looks downright stateswoman-like in comparison. There is a (maybe true) story that the actress Marlene Dietrich wanted to appear in a scene with a camel because juxtaposing her with a camel would make her look beautiful. I think the same logic applies here; AOC seems sensible when compared to one of the most delusional weirdos our society has ever produced.
And one of the main downsides of an AOC presidential run also just got worse: Democrats will face pressure to take unpopular policy positions. It will be 2020 all over again; we’ll recreate the dynamic of that year’s primary, in which Pete Buttigeig was denounced as a neoliberal monster because he only wanted to create a public health care option (that would not have passed in a zillion parallel universes). The DSA will have a laundry list of terrible ideas, and they’ll push candidates to speak to those ideas, and some candidates will take the bait and make the Democratic brand so toxic that candidates would be better off running as part of the Anal Bleaching For Seniors Party.
Finally, there’s the rather banal belief that our country should not be governed by crazy people. I really am baffled by people who say “This is our Tea Party!” in a positive way!!! The Tea Party was bad! It’s a problem that our government contains so many delusional nincompoops! And that problem got a little worse yesterday. Time will tell just how bad this development turns out to be, but — in the immortal words of Pete Campbell — it’s not great, Bob!
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Below is the candidate explaining all her old “bad tweets”. She deleted her entire Twitter account but doesn’t really apologize for her sentiments. Instead, she fabricates “regrets” about her past language, saying “I certainly wouldn’t use a lot of language that I used back then today. If you think she’s recanted the views that she expressed in that language, I have some land in Florida I’d like to sell you. In another radio interview, conducted in Spanish, she walked out in a huff when confronted with those old social media posts (there’s a video at the site).
Maurer has a good sense of humor and is willing to tell it like it is. You should read his website, as I’ll be doing as the midterms approach. (His X feed identifies says he “wrote for John Oliver back when his show was…different.”)
Yes. She’s a nut—a ret*rd, even.
Right now, the focus is on the radicals who won their primaries in NYC. We’ll see how much influence the socialists have nationally as the primary season progresses. I’m concerned.
Yes. She’s a nut—a ret*rd, even.
Yeah, nuttier than a squirrel turd.
Unfortunately, here in Europe these kinds of nutsos aren’t even the end of the spectrum. 😞
Woke?
PS I’m not certain that “yes, literally abolish the border” is fully consistent with “the US as “occupied” Native American land”.
Coel, what are you doing???
You might appreciate this:
How about we forget about the left-right divide and just call them all regressive authoritarians?
Regressive Leftards might be a better title than “progressives” for these types of people.
It seems as if the whole Left in the West has gone completely batshit crazy.
Just last weekend there was the federal party convention of the leftwing party “die Linke” in Potsdam/Germany. Listening to some speeches can give you nightmares.
Well, watching the whole performance is like a blast from the past (and not the good kind).
I’ve noticed “die Linke” party there, Christian. I thought it was just a continuation of the GDR.
Another thing, while I’m beating up (affectionately) on our Un-Air-Conditioned NATO allies… I watch a lot of international news online, mainly as some kind of self torture device.
And I notice Deutsche Welle TV is so wildly communist I wonder if it too isn’t some kind of cold war hangover.
Danke schon, deine fruende,
David
D.A.
NYC 🗽
I’ve noticed “die Linke” party there, Christian. I thought it was just a continuation of the GDR.
Well, it more or less is. Legally it is the same party as the former SED. They just relabeled it several times. Actually the old, original members from East Germany (like Gysi or Bartsch) are the relatively sane ones. The weapon-grade crazy comes with the younger members, especially the wannabe bolshies from the western parts of the country. And the keffiyeh density at their recent convention was probably higher than at a Hamas rally.
And I notice Deutsche Welle TV is so wildly communist I wonder if it too isn’t some kind of cold war hangover.
No, actually quite the opposite. That’s just the result of the recent enshittifi… uh, I mean enwokeification of most public broadcasters in the west. Especially the German public broadcasters have jumped the woke-shark like some hyper-“progressive” Evel Knievel.
I’m originally from Eastern Europe and back in the days when the Iron Curtain was still in place, we listened to western radio stations, among them Deutsche Welle and they were anything but communist.
Reading Jeff Maurer’s stuff, I thought to myself, “self, this can’t be real; it’s J. Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’ all over again–a piece so over the top that it makes you realize just how bad things are.” But she’s not real–she can’t be real, right?
Yes, she’s real. There are links you can check.
This post does a disservice to oysters which live lives of splendid isolation adjacent to other oysters with whom they share and build habitat.
“Progressives” are much more like termites that subsume their individuality for the mutual benefit of the hive.
One of the comments on Maurer’s piece (by a poster named Problematic Professor):
I have noticed this trend myself, Peter, over 30 years of Manhattan living.
This is why I adore Rob Henderson with his Luxury Beliefs idea.
best,
D.A.
NYC 🗽
People like Johanna King-Slutzky, the ditz who demanded that bottled water be brought to the demonstrators occupying a Columbia University hall, calling it humanitarian aid. Tap water? Heaven forbid!
Free, free Palestine. And bring a glass of good red wine.
Free, free El Aksa. Avocado and sriracha.
Republicans may have supported her campaign for the same reason the D’s supported Dr. Oz when he ran against Fetterman.
I think we’re dealing here with a subset of progressives — maybe “Progressive-Identarians” or “Social Justice Fundamentalists” would be more precise. The problem is finding a descriptive term which isn’t an exonym, a word which those the term applies to would never use because they think it insults them. We may want to insult them, of course, but not if we’re having an actual discussion on the issues.
Darializa Avila Chevalier sounded almost reasonable in that little clip, talking about getting off social media and using kind language to build bridges, or whatever. That’s bad. I want her standing in a field in suspenders and rolled-up trousers wearing underwear on her head while shouting “My brain hurts!” Give people some warning.
I think we are being too hard on the young woman. She’s practically a child—barely 32. That’s like a person who could be nearing completion of a comparative lit PhD and whose current jobs are pouring coffee and making protest posters. Perhaps she simply needs room to grow.
In our focus on the dim-witted Neanderthal who will soon occupy the halls of Congress, let’s not forget the nearly 33,000 others who voted for her, along with the tens of thousands of Democrats who stayed home. How much longer will the sane voters hitch their wagons to the horses handed to them in such primaries? How much longer will the establishment placate these people?
Perhaps the voters of New York did some poor kids a favor. This Middle East studies grad from Columbia University, currently working on a PhD in Sociology, could be soon dictating terms in a classroom full of hapless undergrads rather than ranting in the halls of Congress about the desired destruction of America.
Thanks Doug for pointing out the cloud in the silver lining.
Please read the Roolz about frequency of commenting. Thank you.
Hi again Doug.
A month or so ago I wrote an article about this phenom because 30 years ago I was a unwilling and angry rebel against the anti-Zionist propaganda machine – I came to America to study Middle East politics. I didn’t do a PhD for this reason.
The situation has become more “third worldist” and Palestinian since then so I discussed that in the article.
All the best.
(syndicated/unpaywalled herein).
https://democracychronicles.org/why-is-the-media-and-mob-so-anti-israel/
D.A.
NYC
Perhaps “cultist”? Someone perceived as having excessive devotion to a person, cause, or movement. Perhaps one so armoured in their beliefs that they are immune to rational debate.
Keep in mind that she was educated at Columbia, and is now doing a Ph.D. at CUNY.
A Ph.D. in sociology. Now, at one time, that might actually have been considered an actual field of study, but today, in those universities, it is a system of political indoctrination. No scholarship necessary, or even wanted. Write your political manifesto as a thesis, and bippity-boppity-boo, you get to call yourself “doctor”.
Of course, mind you, it has to be the right kind of political manifesto. A little Marx, some Fanon, and maybe throw in some Said. If you really want to sound educated (and fill some space) Judith Butler is always fine. Half page sentences of meaningless gobbledegook with complete lack of meaning. (No Hayek, or anyone like him: he is as welcome as a rabbi in a pig slaughterhouse.)
So yeah, she is a dumbass. She may have started out that way, but she was certainly indoctrinated that way. And now her job is to incite people with slogans and meaningless ideas. No real solutions to problems, just slogans. (Read the interview in New York Magazine, where the interviewer tried to pin her down on real solutions for housing in NYC.)
100% YES on the decline of the social “sciences.”
I can’t imagine how mad PCC(E) would be if STEM were so corrupted and insane. Actually I can, because STEM is, and he’s mad. 🙂
But… FANON! SAID! BUTLER! … you pushing down on all my pain points Starwolf!
Ever the masochist I’ll check out the NY Mag article.
best,
D.A.
NYC 🗽
https://x.com/DavidandersonJd
You’re an excellent editor PCC(E) you summarize how crazy things have actually got here. Thank you.
Its NYC it can always get more bonkers: they try to blow up the WTC, 1992, (hehe – years later I work there), but that’s not enough… they have to fly planes into it.
Like… you’ll see somebody spit on the uptown Lexington Line (6) and you’re horrified but then you’ll transfer at 42nd and somebody will take a poo on the train you’re now on.
.
All of this is good fun, we get by here, but this broad… is off the charts.
best and thank you,
D.A.
NYC 🗽
“All deportation is wrong” from the US , but of course all the Jews will have to be deported from Israel, which is a settler colonialist state (like Canada, from which Europeans will have to be deported). Apparent logical contradiction here doesn’t matter, because Aristotelian logic (i.e., P and not-P cannot both be true) is itself part of the settler-colonialist system of oppression.
My label for this sort of thing is “pop-Left”, which applies equally well to cases in the 20th and 21st centuries. Current pop-Left doctrine: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Socialist Unity Party of east Germany, Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela, etc. etc. all weren’t real Socialist. “Real” is achieved by
inserting the word “Democratic”, and running candidates in primaries of the US Democratic Party. Of course, this was also tried in east Germany, which was cheerfully labelled the “German Democratic Republic”.
Want to wager that most of the NY-13 primary voters couldn’t tell you what “USSR” stands for? An instructor at a California R2 recounted recently that when he taught a class about socialism, only one of his thirty students could identify a picture of Lenin. The informed one was an Armenian who grew up in Moscow. Charles Murray has long shared how his daughter’s friend in grad school: “upon being asked by a member of her dissertation committee why she didn’t include a Marxist perspective,” responded “I grew up in the Soviet Union. I don’t practice recreational Marxism.”
Between ignorance, indoctrination, and sticky voting habits, we are in for a hell of a ride.
“I grew up in the Soviet Union. I don’t practice recreational Marxism.”
That’s a brilliant cut.
Interesting how she uses her words to mask her true intentions. Words like kind or unity or people can still hear you or values around dignity or justice etc. All very fine words but they are a smoke screen. Who doesn’t want justice? Justice for who and how. Those details are omitted or ignored because they are problematic and distinctly unappealing when revealed. The interviewer was far too soft on her.
I am not afraid. It means more right wing government for a while, but that’s what voters want. It definitely does mean the national ascendence of these characters.
““progressives” (we need a new word for that ilk)” – J. Coyne
How about “transgressives” or “excessives”?
How about National Socialist Workers Party? I realize that this has been used before, but if the shoe fits…….
And the difference between Democratic Socialists and National Socialists, and least when it comes to Jews, is non-existent.
Something to keep in mind is that only 17% of eligible voters in Chevalier’s district actually voted in this primary. And the results were very close. In actually numbers this came out to: Chevalier: ~22,000 votes
Espaillat: ~20,000 votes
Other candidates combined: ~2,500–3,000 votes
So this overwhelmingly Democratic district will likely be electing this nonsensical, hateful person to congress with a tiny number of supporters. Democracy in action?
That’s the way it works. People who don’t vote are essentially saying “I don’t care”, so if a candidate gets the majority of the votes, that’s it.
The original left-wingers were the Jacobins, who very much claimed that anyone who disagreed with them was evil.
Left-wingers have always been more right-wing than right-wingers.
Haha, well it’s like black comedy – sometimes the horrible truth is what shocks us into laughter. If you really go into it, AOC is not far off from the “retard ninny” mentioned in the article, it’s just that here posts are slightly less inflammatory. I’m not sure how these imbeciles dare call themselves “democratic socialists” because their policies are completely different from anything in Europe (which btw – depends upon capitalism to make their system work). The Europeans tax EVERYONE highly all across the board, not just the rich, and many countries don’t have the type of progressive/tiered tax system that we have in the USA. They restrict immigration and often have income requirements and self financed healthcare requirements for those who do want to move there, and often times require that people speak the language of the country with reasonable fluency. And in addition it is a system which depends upon the rule of law and the respect for property rights. Old school democrats understood this and that’s why Obama was nicknamed “the deporter in chief.” Not only that insane nutcases such as the one in question are the reason why so many people like my female teacher friend with a master’s degree, who was a democrat for decades, voted for Trump.
Speaking about apartheid states, did you know that in Lebanon, the presidency is reserved for a Christian and can never be held by a Muslim?
Did you know that Palestinian Muslim descendants, who are third- or fourth-generation residents, still have no path to citizenship in Lebanon since 1948, while Christian refugees from Palestine were granted citizenship? (our taxes pay to maintain the apartheid of Palestinian Muslim descendants in Lebanon, BTW, via UNRWA).