Is Democratic Socialism the Next Big Thing?

Just as the nomination of Donald Trump in 2016 should have been a wake-up call for traditional conservatives, the election of socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor of NYC should be a wake-up call to mainstream liberals.

Many of us in the liberty movement are baffled by the reemergence of socialism as an acceptable ideology. After all, liberal democracy won the Cold War and market economics have lifted literally billions of people out of extreme poverty. Meanwhile, communism was responsible for somewhere between 60 and 100 millions deaths in the 20th century (estimates vary depending on who is doing the counting, but no one — not even the communists — denies the numbers are in the tens of millions). When you add in the fact that millions more have risked — and continue to risk — their lives to flee communist (North Korea) and socialist (Cuba, Venezuela) regimes, it’s hard to understand its appeal.

But appeal it does. “Democratic socialism,” unfortunately, seems to be the hot “new” thing. A poll from Heartland Institute found that 51% of young Americans who are likely to vote in the next presidential election would prefer to see a democratic socialist in the Oval Office.

As anyone who’s been reading my writing knows, I consider MAGA to be a vile perversion of any true conservative ideals. Similarly, this rise in democratic socialism is equally dangerous and misguided, and a betrayal of any liberal values which are actually values (freedom of belief and expression, bodily autonomy, etc.).

Just as MAGA tries to brand itself as Americanism while in fact repudiating the ideals on which the country was founded, the true goals of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are neither democratic nor American. Although some of the party’s platform doesn’t sound that different from standard “reforms” promoted by Democrats, a number of prominent DSA members are out-and-out communists. As humorist Bill Maher recently stated, people like Ashik Siddique and Megan Romer (co-chairs of DSA) open their mouths and Marx’s Communist Manifesto falls out. In an uncovered tweet, Cea Weaver, Mamdani’s Director of the Office to Protect Tenants, called private property and homeownership a “weapon of white supremacy.” Mamdani himself said at his inauguration, “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” This is a quote that could have come directly out of mid-century Soviet Russia.

All that said, Trump’s recent attempts to brand virtually anyone who disagrees with him as “hardcore, godless communists” and to claim that “Communism is the greatest threat to our country in its history” are clearly just his latest attempt to whip up his base. He wants to create a new Red Menace, since the brown menace (immigrants) that got him elected isn’t frothing people up as it used to.

Because this is just another attempt by MAGA to demonize “the other,” the real threat posed by the ideology will likely be ignored by the very people who should take it seriously — mainstream liberals (or centrists).Though often mealy-mouthed and unprincipled, they are the closest thing we have to sane adults among our political class these days. (There are still a few sane Republicans, but most of them are so cowed by Trump as to be completely ineffectual.)

Communism must be fought, but the battleground at this point is more ideological than political. Despite recent electoral gains in a few places (like NYC, unfortunately), the country as a whole is not in imminent danger of voting itself into communism or true socialism. But statism is on the rise on both the Left and the Right.

A decade ago, many Republicans didn’t take MAGA seriously and now this regressive form of brain-dead populism has largely hollowed out the party. The same will happen to the Democrats if they don’t take the DSA seriously. They need to repudiate them, not try to accommodate them. Representative Tom Suozzi of New York has the right idea. He and a group of 13 moderate Democratic House members and candidates explicitly wrote, “We are capitalist, not socialist” in a centrist “Promise to America” pledge. Out of 435 representatives, thirteen is a frighteningly small number. If the Democratic Party wants to continue to be a mainstream political party — and to win elections — a lot more people need to wake up to the threat posed by the DSA and the far-left crazies.

We are hurtling towards a future in which neither dominant political party actually comes close to representing the ideas of the majority of Americans. Already about 45% of voters identify as Independent rather than as Republican or Democrat. Last year, Elon Musk floated the idea of starting a new political party (he called it the “America Party”). He seems to have backed off this idea (and I’m not sure he’s the one I want starting a new party in any case), but he is certainly correct that the existing two-party system is in very bad shape.

Of course, better political parties are only likely to emerge when better political and philosophical ideas are more widely accepted. In the meantime, it seems the best we can do is what we’ve been doing: trying to slow the descent into statism in order to buy time for better ideas to spread. Frankly, this effort has not been going well. And it’s going to go a lot worse unless centrist (for want of a better term) Democrats make a stand and marginalize these newly fashionable socialists, who are ultimately selling the same poisonous old ideology that resulted in the deaths of tens of millions. The kids may think socialism is cool. It’s not. And those who know it’s not need to speak up.