If you already think the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are bad, have a gander at this interview. An article in the Times of Israel (click screenshot below) summarizes a New Yorker interview, also on video (below), with Megan Romer, current co-chair of the DSA. As you know, DSA members or affiliates are winning important Democratic primaries throughout America, and so, especially if you’re a Democrat, you’ll want to know their platform and their leadership. (The platform is summarized here in a post about it.)
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib are the members of the DSA in Congress, but come November there will likely be more. (I do predict that the ambitious AOC will quit the DSA and become a Democrat plain and simple.) Bernie Sanders identifies as a Democratic Socialist but is not a DSA member. Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City, is also a card-carrying member.
And remember the follies of their platform, which include abolishing the Senate, replacing the Presidency and the Supreme Court with an organization subservient to a unicameral legislature, and putting all the means of production (including large corporations) into the hands of the public, as well as eliminating bills, providing free and equal housing for all, and, of course, getting rid of Israel. But the ToI below gives a summary
The ToI article is mostly about the DSA’s damnation of Israel and support of Hamas (!):
The co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has defended rallying in support of Hamas and disputed Israel’s right to self defense during a recent interview.
Megan Romer, the United States’ national co-chair of the DSA, told The New Yorker in an interview published Friday that she “probably would have” joined an anti-Israel rally in New York City the day after the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion of Israel, had she lived in the city.
“One day after the slaughter of 1,200 people and taking of over 200 hostages, you would have come and rallied behind Hamas?” New Yorker editor David Remnick asked Romer.
“I think that October 7th was largely inevitable. If you put people in an open-air concentration camp and you deprive them of rights, of dignity, of food, of the ability to live in safety, you have to expect that they are going to not take that for that long,” she said.
If there was ever a Palestinian state, it was Gaza, and any restrictions on travel out of Gaza (also imposed by Egypt) were the results of Hamas, which governed the territory, spent its money building tunnels, and fostered terrorism. In fact, the October 7 attack on Israel did express dissatisfaction, but not with the governance of Gaza (blame those problems on Hamas), but with the existence of Israel, which Hamas has sworn to destroy. A bit more from the ToI:
At the October 8, 2023, rallies in New York City, anti-Zionist protesters chanted in support of Hamas killings, mocked and threatened Jewish counter-demonstrators, celebrated the taking of Israeli hostages, and called for the destruction of Israel.
Romer is one of two co-chairs of the national DSA, making her a central figure in the ascendant far-left movement, which has made anti-Zionist activism central to its politics.
. . . The DSA candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier, who won her congressional primary in New York City in June, attended the rally. Chevalier refused to condemn Hamas or the October 7 attack during her campaign.
Romer told The New Yorker that any defense or economic support for Israel was a “solid red line” for the DSA, and that the movement sought a “free Palestine with the capital in Jerusalem,” which she described as a “one-state solution.”
As you’ll see from the 30-minute New Yorker interview with Romer below, she is either ignorant of many things she should know, or she refuses to be specific about what the DSA thinks. But it’s clear that she’s an anti-Zionist (e.g., antisemite) and favors the erasure of Israel. More from the ToI:
Romer was unfamiliar with former US president Bill Clinton’s Camp David Summit, during which Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat walked away from a proposed Palestinian state.
Asked if she would have been “satisfied” with the terms at the Camp David Summit, Romer said, “I don’t know them off the top of my head.”
She also disputed Israel’s right to defend itself, saying, “People, humans, peoples have the right to life in safety. But if that safety means doing genocide to somebody else, then no, that’s not defensible.”
Of course she doesn’t define “genocide”, so it’s not clear what, if anything, Israel could have done after October 7 to defend itself against Hamas’s terrorist attack. She simply implies that Israel didn’t defend itself “properly” because it committed “genocide”. Philosopher Maarten Boudry has a much better take on this issue than Romer.
The New Yorker also pressed Romer about supporting both “queer-friendly” politics and the anti-LGBTQ Hamas.
“I would not call Hamas queer-friendly. I would not say that you can get a lot of social rights when you’re under siege,” she said.
Again. with the excuses: Hamas has to kill gay people because Gaza was “under seige”, ego they had to throw gay people off buildings. Does that make any sense? No, it’s just an excuse for the excesses of Islamist governance. Finally, she refuses to condemn Hamas, and a refusal to condemn terrorism doesn’t bode well for DSA’s governance of the U.S.
Romer also defended Hamas in 2024, saying that “no socialist should” condemn the terrorist group.
The ADL has its say.
The Anti-Defamation League said Romer’s rhetoric “puts every Jewish American at risk” due to her justification of violence against the Jewish state.
“The DSA co-chair does not and will not condemn a US-designated foreign terrorist organization responsible for the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and whose charter calls for the destruction of the state of Israel,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement.
But listen to this half-hour video, which should both appall you and frighten you. Ms. Romer is one of the two heads of the DSA. She’s questioned by David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, who does a good job trying to get her to be explicit about her beliefs and the DSA platform. The ludicrous views she espouses are masked by her genial demeanor, and is further hidden by her claims that much of the DSA’s platform will be enacted at some time in the future (e.g., getting rid of the police)
Now much of what the DSA wants is in principle admirable, like public medical care and and end to the Electoral College. The problem is how to do this. But much of the rest of their platform involves amending the Constitution, which, according to Remnick, has a chance of “about zero.” As for getting rid of Israel and supporting Hamas, well, you know my position on that, which is that it both instantiates and demonstrates anti-Semitism.
I oppose the DSA for several reasons. It wants to abolish capitalism, which, though the system has some bad effects, can be modified to ameliorate those effects (Social Security and Medicare). It wants to get rid of America’s balance of power, a crucial aspect of American government that has served us well. It wants to get rid of cops and prisons, and no government in the West had done that or wants to—the effects are predictable, as seen in the 1969 M0ntreal Police Strike.
And it wants to get rid of Israel and, for all I know, the Jews. The DSA is not yet at the stage of camps and gassing, but already Canadians are leaving their country because of antisemitism and repairing to Israel. If the DSA controlled America, we’d see a similar exodus.
Finally, as a Democrat, I think the DSA will fracture and perhaps destroy the Democratic Party, ushering in Republican governance, something I don’t want. Already prominent centrist Democrats, like Rahm Emanuel and J. D. Pritzker, my own governor, are holding their tongues about the DSA and its anti-Israel policies.
Although the DSA doesn’t represent most of the Left, they are loud, promise Pie in the Sky, and above all are performative, talking a good game but not accomplishing much. They are not really “democratic socialists” in the European sense: capitalist democracies with some socialistic aspects. Nope, they are Marxists, pure and simple, and I will not vote for one.
h/t: Bat
Megan Romer parrots the same lies and falsehoods as the European left. But it is easy to condemn Israel and glorify the Palestinians and murderous terrorists when thousands of miles separate a war zone from a quiet little town in Louisiana. That is what really brings out self-righteousness and moral arrogance.
There views are appalling! Fortunately, they are a tiny minority and look like staying that way. Some of their policies would need constitutional amendments, which ain’t gonna happen.
They’re tiny, but with just a few House seats combined with narrow margins they can wield outsized influence.
This election should be the Democrats to lose, given the unpopularity of Trump. The DSA is a gift to the GOP.
Marxists share the vocabulary but not their dictionary.
Sorry this is long, but that’s how Social Theory works ( bold added to turn up the Marxism ):
“The primary goal of capitalist production is the valorization of capital above anything else. Capitalism is driven by the insatiable desire for profit-making and constantly increases the productive capacity. In contrast, in pre-capitalist societies production was conducted for the sake of satisfying concrete needs, and correspondingly the aim of production was use-values tied to the fulfilment of finite wants.
With the domination of this logic of capital for the sake of maximal valorization and the limitless expansion of capital, historically specific second-order mediation emerges by developing the world market, technologies, transportation and credit system, and artificial appetites. Capital wholly transforms and reorganizes the entire world as Mészáros argues:
[begin quote]
Every one of the primary forms [of metabolism between humans and nature] is altered almost beyond recognition, so as to suit the self-expansionary needs of a fetishistic and alienating system of social metabolic control which must subordinate absolutely everything to the imperative of capital-accumulation. (Mészáros 1995: 140) [end quote]
Since there is no absolute limit in this process, capital is ‘totalizing’, continuously expanding and subordinating all aspects of the productive functions of both humans and nature to the imperative of capital accumulation.”
Kohei Saito
p. 21
Marx in the Anthropocene – Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism
Cambridge University Press
250 pages plus references and index
2022
And “Queers for Palestine” can be understood from this :
“In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.”
-Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels
On the last page of
The Communist Manifesto
1848
It is no surprise that these looney left DSA candidates are supported by Republicans, who think that they will be easier to defeat in general elections. I certainly hope that every last one will be defeated, but some of them may wing, especially considering that a number of Democrats will simply not vote for a Republican, no matter how moderate, and no matter how bat-guano crazy the Democratic candidate. See Maine for a worrisome example.
As this is an evolution site, it is worthwhile to discuss extinct species. For example, Democratic politicians like Scoop Jackson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. I would like to believe that, if the Democrats could find such candidates, they could win elections. And I would like to think that there are non-MAGA Republicans who would happily vote for them.
Don’t forget Sam Nunn from Georgia
I used to think that right wing nuts were clearly more dangerous and reprehensible than left wing nuts. I am no longer so sure about this. And one thing the Republicans and Democrats seem to have in common is a craven unwillingness to criticize their worst members. (Perhaps this was always so?)
I suspect DSA affiliates in politics will try to distance themselves to varying degrees from the DSA, since their platform has gotten more than a bit crazy. OAC, for example, as we have read this morning. Also El Sayed over here in Michigan. He is not a DSA member but has some associations with it nevertheless. I expect he will try to create more distance.
Any whiff of DSA in a candidate will be used effectively by their republican opponents. Already I am seeing ads from the republican Senate candidate that are painting El Sayed heavily with the DSA and with communism. This will be effective, and we can either hope for that, or despair over democrats not gaining more control bc of it.
I don’t know what the future will hold, but there are tea leaves and sheep entrails that claim this experiment in woke politics will become so toxic that even the main Democratic Party will grow a spine and fling it far far away.
Looking forward to watching the video at the gym.
Instead of hiding among the Democrats, the DSA lunatics should form their own political party and run on the merits of their platform. (Hmmm. I thought they were a political party. What happened?)
The DSA have stated that their goal is to use the Democratic Party to advance their own party and their own candidates. They’ve adopted a parasite strategy. By doing so they have access to much more money and better branding than if they ran as DSA candidates. Plus there are a ton of people who will “vote blue no matter who”, giving them a real chance to win a close election. The low information voter is not reading WEIT; they’re just going to the polls with two names, one in red and one in blue, and pulling the lever. Then there are the people who, as we’ve even seen in the comments here, who recognize the terribleness of the DSA positions but still have are going to vote D because they’re more afraid of the person with the R next to their name, even if it’s a middle of the road guy like Rogers in MI.
Indeed. They’re hiding in plain sight and—as you say—many don’t even know what they’re endorsing when they pull that blue lever.
“They’ve adopted a parasite strategy.”
This pattern is both Dialectical and Gnostic.
See the YouTube videos – IIRC :
The Gnostic Parasite
Or
The Gnostic Temptation
New Discourses with James Lindsay
… and many more.
And if they split off, then that splits the Democratic vote.
Thanks you all all who replied.
I just watched the video. She’s a very attractive and engaging spokeswoman! Sadly, she doesn’t know much—having gotten her education mostly through The New Yorker (by her own admission). But that doesn’t matter. She’s a good spokeswoman and a true believer. Those who oppose what she is saying have no choice but to deal with her. But how? Will the quaint old notion that good ideas will displace the bad still work? I have my doubts.
Thanks for putting this up, Jerry. It is important that people see what the DSA policy-makers are about. I see my woke-cult acquaintances swooning all over these people just as they did over harris. Even whiffs of frantz fanon in that interview. One of my reasons maybe only one for voting kamala was that she supported the constitution and a liberal american democracy against trump who did not support the constitution…he supported a unitary trump executive. But the dsa does not support an america of the founding fathers either, ie a liberal democracy. While i could vote for kamala holding my nose, there is absolutely no way i would pull the lever for a dsa or even dsa-adjacent candidate
I have had a hard time understanding the political alignment of radical Islam with the woke left and DSA types, until I finally realized that their common goal of destroying the Western culture and way of life is the strongest factor in each of their movements. It’s very obvious that the inclusivity, women’s rights, etc., that the left strives for so strongly would be done away with should Islam take a strong enough hold. It’s apparent to me now that the left is willing to give up these values if they can obtain the destruction of our country and our democracy, and as an added bonus, get rid of the Jews.
It is well neigh impossible to do away with the electoral college. This part of our system is an anachronism, but I’ve read there are arguable reasons to keep it. Without this part of our system, candidates could win by appealing to the big cities and populated coast, and ignore the fly-over states. I think it needs re-balancing, though.
At a left leaning site I visit, one person left a long comment describing the DSA from experience.
He said they were formed from leftovers of the sixties protest era. He described them as cultists who were completely unrealistic and unsuited to governing.
That seems to agree with the description here (I haven’t watched the video yet but I will).
And the younger ones, in their 20s and 30s and 40s, are often people who simply want their college years to continue. The idea of actually getting a long-term job (as opposed to being a part-time barista, bartender, etc) and accepting life’s responsibilities appalls/frightens them. Activism, especially activism whose goals include society taking care of them all their lives for free, is quite appealing, especially when you can participate in large outside gatherings. And those gatherings can be fun! You can hang out, and hopefully get to meet people to whom you are sexually attracted, and if Lenin and Mao smile on you from above, they may reciprocate! And they may have interesting tats, dreads/hair down to their tuchis, and/or piercings in dark and dangerous places! All you have to do is dress accordingly, and shout the appropriate slogans, which are easy to learn. If you haven’t done your homework, just parrot those around you.
Hey! Do I sound like a crotchety old guy from the sixties or what!
100% Starwolf. That’s “elite over production” writ large. Wait till AI takes a lot of their jobs it will get much worse.
I often rant in my articles about the sexual angle/motivation to large scale leftist protests. It is pretty obvious when you see them up close which we do in NYC (fortunately rarely in my neighborhood but nearby Washington Sq. Park is a locus.)
D.A.
NYC
I recall an article I read a few years ago by a woman in the UK whose ex-boyfriend was a member of Antifa, so she got to know a lot of those people while dating him. She said they were all young white guys with useless “studies” type degrees who could not get the high-status jobs they felt entitled to. Out of this frustration came various grievances against everything – the desire to “tear it all down”. It reminded me of a line by Marlon Brando in the movie The Wild One where he is asked “What are you rebelling against?” and he responds “What’ve you got?”
HA. Like the Brando quote tho I haven’t seen that movie.
Mike I think that’s spot on with the Antifa observations.
As I wrote above wait till AI makes them even more useless and angry.
Its going to be a bumpy ride, folks. We’ll see how President AOC handles it.
D.A.
NYC
One correction: “e.g.” stands for exempli gratia, meaning “for instance” while “i.e.” is short for id est, meaning “in other words” or “that is”. It’s a common mistake, but it somehow irks me greatly.
We are seeing a pattern here. The DSA (and co-travellers; a rose by any other name) nominees have all been walking back their former comments calling for abolition of police, praising the 9/11 attacks etc., and the party leaders, who are not running for general office are intensifying their anti-American rhetoric. Hmm, let’s see, for we think that someone is lying to get elected?
I used to worry about the clear antisemitism that is a clear requirement of the extreme left. But the anti-Israel sentiment is only a proxy for the anti-Americanism in their platforms (overt or not). It’s not only economic (anti-capitalism) or anti-Trump, although both of these help them swell their ranks. these are people attacking not only American institutions, but the very idea of America. Follow the money: see the sources of their finances. One really wonders about the actual numerical strength of these true believers, as opposed to their followers. If this is not purged by the Democratic Party, it will be very difficult for that party to recover in future elections.
Which ones praised 9/11? That is completely sick.
The DSA, was co-founded by Maurice Isserman. He and many other members left after the Hamas attack in October 2023. Isserman and others left the organization when the DSA refused to condemn the Hamas attack. He wrote a letter arguing that you could not possibly be a democratic socialist and not condemn the Hamas attack.