Democratic socialists are extremists Texas will not accept

Something dangerous is happening inside the national Democratic Party, and it could affect races across the country where the left hopes to re-establish some power.

We are talking about the rise of so-called democratic socialist candidates in places from New York to Colorado to Seattle.

The most famous of these is New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, but he is far from the most worrisome of those who could assume power.

By and large, the national press has done a poor job of digging deeply into democratic socialism and the increasingly radical candidates who claim that mantle. But there has been some good reporting here and there on the anti-democratic, anti-American and pro-communist shift inside the Democratic Socialists of America, an organization that has made a political home inside the Democratic Party.

A comprehensive story in The Atlantic earlier this month detailed how a power struggle inside the DSA has empowered a faction known as the Red Star caucus that is devoted to Marxist theory and its colonialist/oppressor offshoots. 

The caucus, whose members now hold powerful positions within DSA, makes no bones about its intent on its website: “Our primary goal, the goal which informs all of our organizing work, is to abolish capitalism and, ultimately, to achieve communism. We do not believe that capitalism can be reformed into socialism – it must be overthrown and replaced.”

DSA leaders go to great lengths publicly to distance their form of socialism from Marxist-Leninist ideology, but you need only scratch the surface to see the separation is thin.

Mamdani has thrown his weight behind a number of radical candidates in New York. Among those is Darializa Avila Chevalier, recently nominated in the Democratic primary to represent New York’s 13th Congressional District.

Avila Chevalier, who appears to have shaped increasingly extreme views while studying at Columbia University, has a long list of deleted tweets and retweets embracing communism, calling for the seizure of the means of production and sounding support for an anti-colonial posture that has taken root among the academic and political left. As a leader of Students for Justice in Palestine, she was part of the group that staged a campus takeover at Columbia in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terror attacks in Israel.

She has said she has grown since, but it wasn’t that long ago. 

Avila Chevalier is not alone. In Michigan, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is waging a strong campaign for Democratic Senate primary. While not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, his policies mirror its priorities. He is campaigning with podcaster and influencer Hasan Piker, who has spoken fondly of every sort of vile authoritarian regime around the globe. He praises China regularly as an ideal state. He’s been warmly received in long interviews on Chinese state television.

While DSA candidates publicly distance their socialism from communist ideology, the DSA itself hardly attempts to disguise the end game. Its website calls for a class and race-based social structure founded in collectivist control of “the key economic drivers that dominate our lives.” It demands the defunding of police and the destruction of capitalism.

Tablestakes for DSA candidates include universal, government-run healthcare known as Medicare for All and the abolishment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

DSA candidates also share at least one other common ideology — a deep antipathy toward the state of Israel that too often borders on or refuses to reject outright antisemitism.

Melat Kiros, a DSA member who won an upset primary victory in Colorado, called the Oct. 7 attack that saw Israelis slaughtered, raped and kidnapped “the inevitable consequence of apartheid.” She refused to say whether a firebomb attack on people gathered in Boulder, Colo., in support of Israel was antisemitic, though most of those attending were Jewish. 

Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, felt compelled to address the problem. After the New York primaries saw a Mamdani-backed DSA surge, Jeffries said “what’s interesting is that it certainly was the case that in some of those districts, which tended to be higher-income districts in many parts of New York City, there was an outsized focus on issues connected to the Middle East.”

That’s one way to put it. Another is that DSA candidates have made Israel, and its right to exist, central to Democratic politics. Longtime Jewish Democratic stalwarts like former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel have found themselves on defense over support for Israel as a nation.  

In Texas, we have become accustomed to the takeover of the Republican Party by the MAGA right and Christian nationalists who use deeply divisive tactics to undermine American principles of plurality and the separation of church and state while they govern from an ever-narrower ideology that excludes huge numbers of the people they should represent. 

We have watched as extreme gerrymandering and false narratives about voter fraud have led to the erosion of fair representation. We have witnessed once-classic conservatives like Gov. Greg Abbott morph into unrecognizable culture warriors. We’ve seen once-independent voices like Sen. Ted Cruz humiliate themselves as sycophants to President Donald Trump.

We’ve also seen Texas Republican Party leaders meet with an outfront neo-Nazi in Nick Fuentes, lest there be any doubt that DSA members have a lock on Israel hatred or antisemitism.

Democrats have reason to hope that a majority of Texans will find a candidate like Ken Paxton unfit for office, something we’ve written here many times based on his personal and professional corruption.

But a Democratic Party that not only opens the door to but welcomes in the sort of extremism that the DSA represents is not a party Texas will accept.

Can Texas Democrats do what Texas Republicans so fully failed to — denounce the extremism in their midst and demand that candidates represent a broad middle ground?

The way things are shaping up nationally, their ability to be elected will depend on it.