… as in, out of what possible world does this parody arise, take a look at this description of the August meeting of the Democratic Socialists of America.
[Membership] include[s] an inchoate collection of activists, and the organization [has become] a big tent for all manner of leftist tendencies—including many that lack any commitment to [founder Michael] Harrington’s democratic tradition, some even holding that elections [are] a capitalist-state apparatus that socialists should not use to come to power... Red Star, a self-avowed “Marxist-Leninist caucus” … openly supports Hamas and emphasizes “the role of the vanguard in organizing the revolution.” Whereas the likes of [Bernie] Sanders have long lauded the New Deal, this group condemns that model as “extending concessions to the white working class to secure their loyalty to the capitalist state.” Similarly, it faults the Green New Deal that Sanders and AOC have championed for failing to articulate “a clear commitment to dismantling the settler-colonial and American imperialist projects.” Another caucus, Marxist Unity Group, calls for DSA “to free itself from the Democratic Party” and “fight to overthrow the Constitution,” in an effort to “destroy every institution that denies the people an authentic popular democracy, abolishing the Senate, the Electoral College, the Supreme Court, and the independent presidency.” …
Harrington … once complained about a “vocal, and regularly televised, fringe of confrontationists, exhibitionists, and Vietcong flag wavers who could plausibly be dismissed as freakish, or sinister, or both.” Democratic socialists who seek to run mass campaigns and attain power with elections are now encumbered by sharing an organization with “confrontationists” who hold fundamentally antidemocratic beliefs.
August 25th, 2025 at 10:44AM
The long and winding road that leads from Wigan Pier to Chicago’s “democratic socialists.”
August 25th, 2025 at 10:53AM
Yes. Those were the good old days. What a fall.
August 25th, 2025 at 8:52PM
It’s good reading, a guy who took a bullet from Francisco Franco’s men has little patience with the sandal-wearing nature-cure types that hang out with the socialists.