Rev Left Radio - Democratic Socialist Electoral Victories and the Implications for American Politics

Episode Date: July 12, 2026

Alyson and Breht reflect on recent Democratic Socialist electoral victories, the ongoing contradiction between the progressive left and the corporate center within the Democratic Party, the principled and strategic approach to this development that Marxists should take, the implications for the near future of american politics, what it all means for the broader socialist left in this country, proletarian internationalism, the anti-imperialist red line, and much more.    Learn more and support the show at https://revleftradio.com/ Check out Unlearning Capitalism for more political educational resources  

Hello and welcome to Red Minnis. This is Allison. I am here with my co-host, Brett, and we have another episode for you today that is more of a kind of current events episode. So we were talking back and forth, and one of the things that we wanted to get into that we're hoping to discuss a little bit is the recent wins for Democratic Socialist candidates and the DSA generally in the electoral sphere. We've seen some pretty big shifts that are happening right now and internal conflict brewing within the Democratic Party. as a result of it that I think is really worth wrestling with, trying to understand what conditions are producing it, what it means for the broader movement, and how we can relate to it. So obviously, you know, on a very high level, like Zoron winning in New York, really set the stage. But since then, we've seen DSA wins in Los Angeles,

more in New York, in Colorado, and really just kind of proof that these Democratic Socialist politicians are able to challenge, at least in the primaries, well-established and funded, more centrist and, you know, frankly, Zionist Democrats. And it definitely is something that I think we need to think about and wrestle with what it means for us as socialists who, you know, at least in my case, and I think probably also in breadth, are willing to be, you know, critical of some of the Democratic Socialist perspective, but also don't want to just say, like, oh, let's paint this with a broad brush and not consider the actual

implications and what it means. There's a reason this is happening. It is related to a mass movement, and I think we want to be able to understand how all that fits together, how we ought to relate to this. And yeah, you know, I hope that we'll be able to give what ultimately can be kind of a nuanced perspective that looks at both the limitations, but also, you know, the broader meanings and implications in terms of heightening contradiction and struggle that these races represent. So, right, I'll pass it over to you maybe for some opening thoughts there. But, yeah, just kind of broadly the topic at hand. Absolutely. Yeah, I think the main point of this episode is not, to rehash the particular elections.

If you're paying attention at all, you understand that in these major cities. Mom Donnie's probably the pinnacle figure, and then Mom Dani endorses a bunch of candidates within New York, all the Democratic Socialists that he endorsed wins, in most cases, if not all, beating corporate centrists. We've seen similar happenings and similar dynamics in major cities across the country, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Denver, L.A., and beyond. I live obviously in a red state. We're not seeing a lot of that here.

Our version of that, we're not going to get Democratic Socialist candidates particularly, but we have like the Dan Osborne attempt to run against a billionaire right-wing Republican senator named Pete Ricketts here in Nebraska. He can't run as a Democrat in a red state because the only people that would vote for a Democrat is like the Omaha metro area. The rest of the state is very deep red. So he's doing this whole approach of running as a working class independent. There's lots of issues with that. He has basically right wing, or I'm sorry, left wing Bernie-esque Democratic socialist economic politics,

but it's also paired with a sort of, obviously, like, moderate, socially conservative, like social politic, and he's, you know, terrible. He's sort of like cowardly on the Palestinian line and all these other contradictions, blah, blah, blah. But all that is to say my personal experience is limited in a red state. We're not really seeing it, but we are seeing it. in major American cities, which you would expect to see a left-wing movement like this occur.

But all of that aside, the main thing I want to kind of think through today is how should we, as communists, as Marxists, as anti-imperialists, relate to this democratic socialist electoral, you know, not to be overstating it, but insurgents, if you will, that these figures are winning. This contradiction is not only occurring in our politics. politics more broadly, but it's a particular contradiction within the Democratic Party that's long been brewing and it's kind of coming to a head in an interesting way. Since Bernie really, I think we can safely say, it goes back to Nader and there's always McGovern, there's always been kind of like left-wing progressive attempts to kind of, you know,

come at the Democratic Party and take it over or win it, et cetera, and they've all kind of failed. I think now we're finally seeing the legacy of that happen in a way that you're seeing victories. you know, why are we seeing those victories? As socialists, we should care about the raw fact that we're seeing these victories because of people's material conditions. Cities are obviously the most progressive compared to rural areas or smaller red state cities. Big cities are going to be more progressive. They're going to have more diversity. Historically, that's where artists and intellectuals and radicals have always, you know, found room to breathe, as it were. and we're seeing that occur in those major cities, which is obviously not a coincidence. And it's, you know, you have the right wing freaking out in its own way.

Trump coming out talking about communism being the biggest threat and bigger than World War I and two in Pearl Harbor. But then you also see the Democratic establishment freaking out. I saw nauseating takes by figures like Sam Harris and Bill Maher, who are just full on not only in opposition to this, but very, very, dismissive of it I mean these are rich motherfuckers right I mean Bill Maher has been a millionaire for decades Sam Harris grew up his mom I think was a maiden producer executive producer on the Golden Girls his whole life has just been one fantasy ride of of no concerns at all about material struggles and you know he spent

many years in his early 20s prancing around the globe learning learning meditation precisely because he had the material you know backing to be able to do so maybe we'll play a clip of him talking about Democratic Socialists and just kind of dismissing them as overeducated detached from reality

blah blah blah it's very dismissive very condescending especially coming from a disgusting figure like Sam Harris so all that is to say is like here's an interesting thing that's happening and I went on another podcast recently Macro and Cheese to talk about which is like an MMT

but you know the host as socialist and he wanted me to come on and talk about Lenin's left wing communism. That episode is coming out soon and hasn't come out come out yet. But in that episode, we're talking about kind of this stuff, right? Because what is Lenin talking about in left wing communism? He is simultaneously talking about right deviationists and ultra-leftist deviationists. And, you know, like DSA types will often sort of in a reductionist and vulgar way take that text and use it as a weapon against anybody to their left, saying that Lenin is actually endorsing

a sort of DSA electoral approach. And of course, you know, Allison and I have done a whole episode on that text. I'll link to it in the show notes. He's not doing that. He's critiquing both, you know, right and left deviations. But I think that's an important thing because as this movement grows, rooted in people's worsening material quality of life, the communists, us, we should have, we are going to be whether we like it or not a part of this broader left movement that gives rise to the successes of democratic socialists in the electoral terrain despite our differences we are kind of in this you know part in the the term but this big tent on the real left that includes everybody from the DSA all the way to like the anti-imperialist principled communist

left and even within the DSA of course we know that there are caucuses so if we accomplish anything at all. I hope it is that Allison and I will be able to hopefully bring some clarity to how we can best maneuver as anti-imperialists and communists in this broader shift to the left of the Overton window and how we can relate to it that is neither a right deviationist liquidation of ourselves into this electoral mechanism, nor, I think, in a hyper-sectarian ultra-lateral leftism that alienates us entirely from what is, for better or worse, a growing mass movement of people that are being ushered into socialism in one way or another. And the term socialism itself is being detabuized in front of our very eyes. And of course, it's confused and limited

and naive in many instances. But it is still a genuine opportunity in American politics we have not seen for decades and decades, probably since before and during the New Deal, which also has interesting implications for today. But that's kind of me, kind of setting the table a little bit. I'll hand it over to Allison. You can take it in any direction you want, as well as talking perhaps about your own experiences in L.A. Yeah, totally. I mean, I think one of the things that I want to wrestle with a little bit first is like trying to like diagnose what are the conditions that are producing this, right? Like, where is this sweep coming? from. It's not like DSA is a brand new organization. It's not like electoral organizing is new

for them strategically. So I do think there's like an interesting question to try to wrestle with of like what is changing in the current conditions. And I think at the end of the day, like there are a couple things that we need to wrestle with in order to determine our response as communists, honestly, and in order to understand how democratic socialism is slotting in in response to present conditions. And so I think one of the things that I want to point out is that I do think there is a crisis in sort of the ideological foundations of American imperialism right now, which is to say that I think American imperial ambitions are increasingly unpopular with the populace in as much as even the right has moved towards a sort of anti-interventionist framing more and more. And obviously

the left has that opposition to begin with. And I think part of what we're seeing here is the reality of the fact that, you know, we've said this time and time again, when it comes to anti-imperialism, right-wing populism is not a viable option. The right-wing populists are not anti-imperialist. Their anti-interventionism is always rhetorical and is always willing to be dropped as soon as the economic interests of capital and the imperial ambitions of the state come back into play. And so I think one of the reasons we may be seeing this sweep is that there has honestly been difficulty for the populist right in the United States to continue to maintain the idea that it is in some way opposed to American intervention overseas and American aggressiveness.

Ultimately, I think that it's just true that many of the people who are part of the populist right-wing base are upset with Trump and the Maga movement around Iran. They are upset around Israel. They are upset around Palestine. They are upset about the fact that what they were sold as a right-wing anti-interventionist foreign policy simply is not that in actuality. And that for all the populism that you will hear at the end of the day, the MAGA movement acts like neocons when it comes to foreign policy,

regardless of what they say. We've seen fractures on the right there that I think are very clear. And I think one of the things that has been really eye-opening for a lot of people in the U.S. is the fact that between Biden and Trump, policy around Israel and Palestine, has not really looked any different. honestly, you can see a clear level continuity there. And I do think that after October 7th, we really did see a moral crisis in the United States, where people in the broader populace are changing their opinion on this question and are becoming more and more aware of just how fucked up an evil Israel is. And so I think there is a shift that is happening in this kind of difficulty in constructing this ideological justification. And right-wing populism has let people down who do, do not want to see the U.S. engaged in aggressive overseas action.

And I really do think if you look at some of these wins in New York, it is A-PAC Democrats who are getting unseated. And I don't think that's incidental. I really do think that a large part of this is that Democratic socialists are willing to criticize the Democratic Party on these issues, are willing to position themselves, you know, I don't think strongly enough in terms of pro-Palestinian national liberation, but at least as vocal critics of Israel, in a way that appeals. to broad parts of the population.

And the other thing that I think we need to wrestle with is that I do just think there has been a mass movement around immigration in this country that really has been more sizable and more mainstream than you might think, right? If you think about what has happened in Los Angeles, in, you know, all of the parts of the country, honestly, where we saw these massive rapid response networks happening, whether we saw people taking to the streets, that's gone beyond the traditional far-left organizing and become, again, something. with more of a mass characteristic to it.

And I think that that is creating this narrative where people are willing to criticize democratic politicians who won't adequately stand up to ICE, who won't adequately critique Trump's immigration enforcement and the policies around it, and that's leaving room for these candidates to come in. So the reason that I think diagnosing those conditions matters is because I think it helps us understand

that what is producing these electoral victories for the Democratic Socialists is a broader, shift in politics within the United States that ought to be advantageous to those of us who are to their left and would consider ourselves more on the communist side of things. They are taking victories based on a mass movement and we ought to be able to determine how to do the same thing. Obviously, communists have been involved in that mass movement. I think everyone who listens to the show probably knows what that looks like on some level or another, but how do we transform the mass movement into victories for communism specifically and towards building a communist politics,

is I think the question. The Democratic Socialists have the DSA, which is this massive organization with increasing levels of cohesion and organizational complexity, open, factional debate internal to it, where they hash these issues out, and that has positioned them very well to be able to respond to these mass changes that are occurring within the U.S. And I do think that is really a big part of where we are seeing these successes for them. And it ought to point for communists to the necessity of that level of preparation and that level of organizational proficiency and professionalism even in order for us to be able to respond as well. So I do want to just start with that diagnosis because I think it really does paint a picture of what communists need to be doing to a certain degree or another.

And there is just a straightforward benefit to the success of the DSA more broadly, which is that it is bringing in the polls of the Democratic base show over and over again, the Democratic base, particularly those that are, you know, under 50, under 60, certainly under 40, are shifting towards the progressive, populist, democratic socialist wing of the party. They're fed up with the corporate center of the party. And what that means for us is simply this. The more people that are willing and able to identify with Democratic, socialism with socialism more broadly, it opens up a funnel to what I would argue and what Allison

probably would agree with are, you know, obviously we're Marxists. So I think the most principled, logical conclusion of anybody interested in socialist politics that want to win over the long term and want to defend any gains over the long term, you have to kind of turn towards, you know, Marxism. And there will be people who you are kind of like liberal temperamentally and maybe they're not super intellectually curious and they just want lower rent and access to health care who will kind of stay within, you know, the social democratic or democratic socialist milieu. There is a faction, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 percent, who knows how high that can get, that once that is unlocked for them, and we saw this with the burning phenomena, once they're in that realm, once they're

interested in that stuff, once they're starting to identify as a socialist, they will keep going. And they will find shows like this. They will find other figures. They will find text. They'll become curious about a broader critique of capitalism itself. They'll learn words like anti-imperialism, self-determination, the periphery and the imperial core. That will start to fill out the picture, particularly the more intellectually curious and deeper thinking people that are, especially that are very young right now, that are still blossoming into their political consciousness. They will move in our direction. And we have to not have that door shut prematurely. That door has to be open, and we have to see ourselves as not, you know, teeming up with the DSA per se, but as certainly lending our support vociferously to two things.

The left-wing communist factions and caucuses within the DSA, we want them to win out. And more broadly, we do genuinely want, as far as the electoral terrain is one terrain of many to struggle on, yeah, we want to see the Democratic socialists beat the corporate centrist within the party. I would love for the Democratic Party to be even a flawed and limited social democratic or democratic socialist party over a corporate-centered, A-PAC-dominated party that we've known for our fucking entire lives. That is a win that does open up opportunities for us on the actual communist, Marxist, anti-imperialist, left. And I think we could have a, I would argue perhaps a growing center of gravity within a broad. socialist, democratic socialist or broader socialist left, politic as that continues to build. Now, this terrain is fraught with problems. There's going to be opportunism. There's going to be co-optation. There's going to be infighting in people that gravitate towards the right wing of

the DSA. There's going to be line struggles. You know, we should not shy away from that whatsoever. But we also should not, I think, alienate ourselves completely from a moment. movement that more and more people, especially young people, are getting into. We should see it and we should use it as an opportunity. And that actually, that that leads in well to this next point I want to make, which is that this is historical, this is not historically unprecedented in the United States. After the Civil War, at the end of the 19th century, we saw this economic boom, the Carnegie's, you know, the railroad systems. We saw this huge economic boom, this sort of industrial revolution that occurred within the United States after slavery was defeated.

And there's obviously deep problems with that and reconstruction and all of that was, you know, all on the table. But there's this huge economic boom. And the beneficiaries of that economic boom were a increasingly small group of people, you know, huge, that would be billionaires in our time that existed at that time. And there was in reaction to not only the enormous explosion of wealth, but the massive wealth and equality that that wealth was funneled into, there was a genuine grassroots reaction to that that took many forms

from the prairie populists out here on the Great Plains and the People's Party, the first People's Party convention was in Omaha, Nebraska. I graduated from a high school called Brian High, which is William Jennings Bryan High School, because he was a figure that was a progressive populist for the economic working class at that time. And again, plenty of contradictions. went there. There's a settler colonial contradiction with there. And there's a racial

contradiction within there. But, you know, that gave rise to a slew of left-wing forces coming out of what is now looked back at as the Gilded Age. You had the Socialist Party. You had Eugene Debs, you know, fighting on the electoral terrain at that point. You had the Communist Party of the United States of America organizing, you know, workers across the country and having an explosion of membership. You had the IWW, the Wobblies, and the tens and the teens, 19 teens, doing militants and racially egalitarian, open class struggle at the level of labor organizing. And you had all these movements that are reactions to the Gilded Age. And, you know, and of course, that eventually culminates in the progressive era. It culminates in some ways economically. The

Gilded Age itself culminates in the Great Depression. Then you have FDR and the New Deal. And you saw the disappearance of a lot of those more militant forces. And that was a two-pronged approach. There was a reds, there was wave and wave of red scares. There's the de-radicalization of unions, this reactionary attack on communism and socialism and anarchism writ large. But also you saw a lot of the policies, a lot of the things that the Socialist Party, for example, were pushing, get kind of absorbed into the broader Democratic party apparatus such that you had the New Deal. Now the New Deal, again, another compromise with colonialism, another compromise with racism that, you know, we're not sugar-coding over that whatsoever,

but that was the sort of culmination of a historical set of circumstances that were kind of living again at a different level. We're kind of living that historical process in the United States that happened a hundred years ago. We're living that now in the 21st century techno-o-o-ligarchic age. We live in a second gilded age. And in the wake of a second gilded age, dialectically, what do we see? We see the rise of this left-wing populism, this left-wing movement. We see more and more people identifying as socialist. We've certainly seen the amount of people identifying as Marxists grow enormously from when I first became interested in politics, you know, maybe 20 years ago when, you know, this was just anathema. Now it's actually, you know, a small but growing force in political discourse.

Of course, communism always looms large in the reactionary mind. And so, you know, they're always sort of fantasizing about the communists being at the gates. And as I said, I think in a recent post on Instagram, I wish we were what the reactionary, imaginary thinks we are. But also with enough time and discipline and organizing effort, we could become what they fear we are. And that should be kind of an internal goal of ours. But all that is to say that there's a broad movement happening. we are a part of it that's going to give rise to a bunch of contradictions, a bunch of lines that you don't like as the Overton window gets stretched. Every millimeter of that new territory that's now included is going to have some political faction manifest itself within it.

We should not be surprised by that. We should not be angered by that. Every different possibility of political formation is going to manifest. And we have to have a principled line. We have to stay anti-imperialist to the core, internationalist. to the core. We cannot simply allow democratic socialist politics to take the form of a sort of imperialist social democracy, wherein here at home we might get some goodies for the domestic population in the imperial core, but still at the expense of our brothers and sisters throughout the global south. We cannot allow any candidate to continue to take money not just from APAC, but now

from a slew of ever-increasing shell entities that APAC is hiding behind to funnel money into democratic politics, but while also disconnecting from the APAC name proper. And I'll talk more about that. And I've been arguing for this red line that we should uphold. But, you know, that red line when we get to it talking about we're not going to allow you to build social democracy on the corpses and the immiseration of our brothers and sisters in the global south, that line is a line that we can push in a context in which there is at least some sympathy for us, right? The corporate Democrats are not going to. going to give a fuck about our red line. The reactionaries are not going to give a fuck about our red

line. Insofar as there's an insurgency of democratic socialists and we are the left flank of a broader left movement, they'll have to listen to us, especially as more people are sympathetic to our politics, the more that we push and get our line out there, the more that we are outright hostile to any candidate running that is going to continue those sanctions, going to continue any form of weapon cells to Israel or defensive capacities for Israel like AOC voted for, we can actually have an influence there. And I don't want us to alienate ourselves so much from that broader movement that we lose the capacity to throw our weight around in that way, as well as increase our weight by bringing more people, more people in. So I think we agree with the Democratic

Socialists. Yeah, we want health care. Yeah, we want more unions. Yeah, we want higher minimum wages. but where we will be vociferous and our hostility to DSA candidates will be in and around their refusal to take firm principled human fucking stands on how we relate to, you know, countries in the global South that have been demonized by imperialism and been gutted out by colonialism and neo-colonialism. We will not stand quietly by while a major figure in the Democratic Socialist movement comes out. and repeat stupid imperialist tropes about Venezuela or about the Iranian government. AOC, I don't give a fuck what you think about Iran's governments. And if you are parodying and vomiting up, you know, ideas and premises that are actually core to the imperialist attack on Iran, you will become an enemy of ours. And I think that is one way in which we can orient ourselves to the broader movement.

But Allison, what do you think about all that? And then also, you know, you can move forward in the conversation as well. Yeah, no. I mean, I think I agree with a lot of what you had to say. I think the historical parallels are interesting. For me, often, I think, and this comes more from coming from like the Maoist inflection point. I tend to view the new deal as honestly, like the counter-revolution, like social fascist response to the progressive developments, rather than maybe like a progressive integration of the demands of a budding socialist movement. in the United States or like the social fascist attempt to crush it in some way. But I think regardless of how one understands that framing, the historical parallel is quite clear. And I think that we are definitely in a time where the conditions in the United States are moving towards shockingly high levels of disparity. And that parallel seems very, very obvious to me. I think you're right to focus on the techno oligarchic angle of it. And I do think like increasingly people are going to find themselves in further economic distress as a result of AI as a result of all these other

technological forces that are at play. And so I do think the parallels are very, very clear. And the question is just how we move forward. I think for me, the thing that I like kind want to wrestle with a little bit is, you know, I think you're right. The wins that we are seeing are ultimately good for communists. I think some of these DSA candidates actually have been kind of impressed. I think it was, I don't know how you actually pronounce her last name, but Chivalier is how I'm going to pronounce it, who when she was asked, like, argue a communist, instead of denouncing communism, basically said, like, I'm not going to answer that question. Why are we fear-mongering about this?

That, to me, is awesome. And that is actually exactly what we need to see from candidates like this, who are not willing to throw those further to their left under the bus in order to sanitize their own position. If we see those kind of developments, then I do think we will benefit positively from this. But I think I also want to caution that in my mind, imperialism is not the only site of contradiction that exists with some of these candidates. And I think that it's worth wrestling with a little bit. You know, I organize in Los Angeles and the tenants union. I think it's probably like one of the largest mass organizations in this city. And that means that we have experiences with DSA elected in Los Angeles that are, you know, not straightforward.

right? There are times in the fights that we're engaged in where they do act as allies to us, and there are times when they do act as oppositional forces who are getting in the way of what we are trying to build and the demands that we are making. And the contradictions, I think, at that micro level within like city politics, for example, when you are doing mass organizing, do go beyond just like whether or not they are getting questions of imperialism incorrect. I mean, I think here in Los Angeles, which is really the only place I can speak to as an on-the-ground organizer, one of the big contradictions that we're seeing, and I've heard from comrades in New York that this is an issue there, is that democratic socialism in Los Angeles is increasingly associating itself with a pro-development perspective

or what people kind of call yimbism, yes, in my backyard. And obviously that is really at odds with what those of us who are doing mass organizing in the spirit of tenets unionism are trying to push for. Development in cities like L.A. and New York, by and large, is based on displacing people. And often, in fact, the very communities that we are coming in and defending and organizing and fights are people who are facing eviction because of the YIMB development agenda and the attempt to tear down historic housing in order to build higher density housing that will have some level of affordability safeguards that is always on a time limit and never permanent. And so there is this real contradiction there. I think you've seen that when Zoron actually started to

pick some of the people who were going to surround him in positions of power, putting some tenant people in place, but also pro-development positions and speaking to that. In Los Angeles, Nathia Ramon has been kind of this very complicated figure in DSA politics. She's been endorsed by the DSA for city council. She's been censured by them for her positions on Palestine. Those of us doing tennis unionism have had some pretty serious issues with her. around issues of development and housing. And DSALA did not endorse her in the primary for the governor, but did recommend her over Ray, who was a less pro-development candidate.

And in a lot of ways, a lot of the Democratic Socialists in the city that I know prefer Nithia because of her pro-development position. And when you're doing concrete organizing, trying to stop people from getting evicted as a result of those development processes, these contradictions become not abstract, but very great. grounded day-to-day realities for socialists who have decided to integrate into mass organizations and do the work there. And so I think, you know, the contradictions will go beyond ultimately, simply the question of imperialism. They are going to come down to brass tax and concrete politics

at the city, the state and federal level in ways that are going to create potentially oppositional scenarios there. And I think one of the things that that's going to come down to is that I think socialists need to build mass organizations so big that when they denounce that opportunism on these issues, when they push back against those contradictions, it's taken seriously, right? Where DSA candidates feel like they not only need to worry about censure from the DSA chapter in a city in which they've been elected, but also from the mass organizations and the broader movement itself being willing to push back and not having weight. I think that's what's starting to be built in places like Los Angeles and New York.

Again, the only two contexts in which I have a fair amount of knowledge of on the ground tenant organizing, but those contradictions become real as soon as you start to organize in cities where there is a democratic socialist presence. And that doesn't mean that we just say, fuck these candidates, we want nothing to do with them, we're never going to engage with them in any way. You have to have in mass organizing a complicated back and forth relationship that adjusts to the changing conditions of the contradictions. But I do think we have to acknowledge that just as often as we find ourselves in alignment with them, we do also find ourselves in contradiction with them around concrete practical realities. And I know, at least in the tenant organizing that I've done in the part of

the city that I live in, it's a conversation that we have with tenants of, yeah, there are times we are going to make demands of politicians, but we also understand that politicians ultimately are generally not on our side, that the people that we organize who can't vote often because of their immigration status, who are not a part of the electoral bloc are not who the, you know, actual, even the DSA politicians are accountable to in any concrete mechanism. And so that will create these tensions there. So I do think it is just important to wrestle a little bit with once you get into the micro-level organizing the way that these relationships become very complicated. And again, we shouldn't think too black and white and too totalizing about it. But we do have to recognize, I think, increasingly around

tenant organizing and development, that this is a growing contradiction within that movement, that you even see play out internally in DSA within their own factional debates. And so for me, and I'm probably biased because this is the type of organizing that I do, this is one of the other key contradictions that I'm just like really keeping my eye on as democratic socialism grows in popularity right now. Beautifully said, and I think that is like kind of the punchline of this conversation. One of them at least is that exactly what you said is that if we are going to be able to struggle in this way, if we're going to be able to navigate those contradictions,

that you just laid out, if we're going to be able to throw our weight around, as I said earlier, then our capacity to mobilize our organizational and mass-rooted bases is going to be essential. If we are just a tiny microsect or whatever, then even the DSA candidates can dismiss us. If we have massive tenant unions, if we have, you know, mass bases, even in some select communities, then that is going to obviously be genuine, leverage that we can, you know, use in our struggles to navigate those contradictions and to have those lines struggles and to have those fights. That if you're coming into a major blue city as a DSA candidate, you're not just talking to the right wing of the DSA. In fact, the people on the

ground doing the organizing that allows you to exist in the first place are going to have that ability to mobilize those people against you if you cross one of our red lines, as we said earlier. So once again, you know, this is not just a free lunch. There never is one. We have to increase our organizing capacity in order to have the leverage to operate within this broadening left movement and to have the leverage to impose on these candidates, not just from within the DSA, as you said, but from without, with our own mass bases of support. And you can only do that through genuine organizing and tenet. Senate union organizing in particular is, I think, a genuinely crucial and potent leverage mechanism that we can have in that case. And, you know, not even relevant to that. You're doing your own thing. That is organizing. That is, you know, Marxist politics that we are doing this in and of itself. While we're doing it, we're also built, base building. And then that base building itself becomes an advantage when we are trying to navigate these contradictions and operate within this broader, this broader, this broadening milieu in these cities. So I think that is absolutely crucial. Going back to something else you said earlier, I was trying to kind of dispassionately in a little sense articulate a historical precedent, but I don't want that attempt at like sort of a neutral explanation to at all be taken as me being pro New Deal. You know, I've spoken out against the contradictions

within that, you know, and I do see the New Deal and FDR as the success of a co-optive mechanism that, you know, sort of strategically took on some of the grassroots demands in ultimately an effort to fight against and dismantle the actual radical socialist and communist movements that gave rise to that possibility in the first place. FDR famously says, you know, his greatest accomplishment is saving capitalism. And, you know, and, you know, the imperialism that occurred in the New Deal era. I mean, the dropping of the atomic bombs happened post-New Deal, for God's sake. So, you know, this is, or, you know, during the rise of the New Deal sort of thing. And Truman and Eisenhower, those figures afterwards obviously carry on this legacy.

So by no means am I, you know, pro-New Deal, and I agree with your social fascist analysis of the, you know, what it did is it sort of de-radicalizes those movements. It co-ops aspects of those movements, acts as a release valve that can undermine those movements, and it ultimately stabilizes. capitalism, imperialism, it does not in any meaningful way confront it. So, you know, I just wanted to make that totally clear. But the last thing I'll say on this point, I'll toss it back over to you, is what you're describing with the yimbism is a really interesting dynamic. I just watched kind of a liberal, probably a liberal progressive, but not a socialist or communist, YouTube, or I forget their name or something, Aidan something. But he was kind of talking about these three major factions within the Democratic Party currently, and that is the

corporate center that we all know and hate the uh democratic socialist sort of insurgency and this third faction called a you know we could call it the abundance yimbism faction this is the ezra kline faction you know they they are kind of sick of the corporate center they have critiques of it they're probably they're to the left of it but they're not left left and we i think we've talked about abundance that we've criticized it before interestingly mom dani is kind of seen by the abundance people as threading this needle where he is kind of building a coalition between those two factions and Ezra Klein spoke positively about mom, Donnie kind of comes out in support of Mom Donnie precisely because of that yimbist

abundance style faction that he is kind of satiating with some of his policies. And this YouTuber basically said that, you know, he believes the short term formation that the Democratic Party is taking is actually a consolidation of the cooperation between the abundance and the Democratic Socialist faction as manifested through some policy moves that, you know, that Momdani in particular has already executed. So that's an interesting sight of struggle. That's an interesting contradiction. That's also the basis for an interesting coalition that is seeing itself as in opposition too in a lot of ways, although I think the abundance crowd is much less hostile. temperamentally to the corporate democratic leadership. And I think the Ezra Klein faction would have no problem working with that corporate center if they could form their own coalition. But it's just that the brand of the corporate center, the apex sellout nature of the corporate

center, just the overall democratic base itself increasingly hostile to the Jeffries, to the Schumers, to the Pelosi's, and the shitty brand of Democrats writ large being really a product of that leadership itself over the last several decades, that's going to, I think, tilt the playing field much more in the direction of this attempted coalition between the abundance liberals and the Democratic Socialist.

But as you pointed out, I think very astutely, that itself is rife with contradictions. So, yeah, we'll like to see how that plays out. Yeah, it's definitely one of the contradictions that I think, like, I have my eye on the most. And again, like, this is where it's, like, really hard because I know this is a big factor in L.A. and New York City, and I don't know how much this contradiction is big in organizing around the rest of the country somewhat because I have not investigated the on-the-ground

facts of struggles in other cities besides those two so much. But in these two cities, like, it is very real. I think in Los Angeles, like the vast majority of people I know who are sort of in the TSA base, not necessarily members of DSA who are paying dues, although some of them are, but the people in the broader kind of like social base that is ready to support vociferously DSA candidates and to really stand on what DSA represents are also unfortunately some of the most bought in on some of these abundance ideas. And it's really bizarre because to me abundance kind of just seems like a sort of like insurgent neoliberalism in a very bizarre way. And you would not anticipate that faction trying to form some sort of alliance with the democratic socialist. That feels so strange.

And yet that is kind of my read of what's happening here. And it's kind of interesting. I think in Los Angeles especially, there's this dynamic that is hard to intervene in, where we do have rent control on older buildings, which means that part of the reason that L.A. can simultaneously be one of the most expensive cities in the entire country and also full of poor immigrant communities is that people have been in these buildings for 30 years. It's at rent control. They're paying way below my money.

market rate and they're able to afford to stay here. And obviously what is in the interest of those tenants is for the buildings to remain in the hands of an owner who's not trying to flip it, not trying to sell it or demolish it or turn it into some other type of housing that those tenants will then not be able to afford. Even if a apartment building where you have these tenants who are 30 years in on rent control were flipped into affordable housing, it would still cost more than what they're paying now and often displace them. And so you have this interesting contradiction where, again, not so much like DSA, LA itself, but again, the broader kind of social base that it has are like, oh, the solution to housing in Los Angeles is to tear down old buildings and build large high density. And the reality is that that I think is a very nice idea if you are a lower middle class professional like a lot of that base is.

But he's devastating for the immigrant working class communities in the city who will not be able to move into those new buildings. And so this contradiction is pretty huge. And again, I hear the same thing from our, from tenant organizers in New York. And I really suspect it is the case in other cities as well. And I think it is something where it's hard. Often as a tenant organizer in L.A., I feel like, oh, man, I am so at odds with people who would otherwise consider us allies in a lot of ways in terms of this politics. And it's going to be tricky to figure out how to thread that needle. I think it's something that we're still trying to figure out how to do. But I would suggest that trying to disrupt that. abundance and DSA alliance that might be coming into shape. Again, I think you see it most clearly around Zoron would be one of the key ideological tasks for socialists involved in this. I think trying to prevent that merger from occurring is going to be pretty crucial for us. So it is one of those contradictions. I hope that we're all paying attention to, regardless of whether or not tenant organizing

is the main form of organizing that we're doing. Yeah, yeah. And I think you got it with like kind of the core, you put, it as like an insurgent neoliberalism, which is interesting. But, you know, and I agree with that. At the core of the abundance liberals is this like, hey, liberalism, you know, this is Ezra Klein's famous line is liberalism needs to be able to build things. And over the decades, especially in blue cities, often well-intentioned, there's been, this is, you know, their argument, there's been a piling up of particular regulations from different factions of the Democratic constituent base that

have piled up, piled up, piled up, piled up, to the point that it makes something like trying to do high-speed rail in California, functionally impossible, trying to build high-rise, you know, housing for a growing population, very difficult to do. And so it would make sense that a democratic socialist who wants, who's operating in that context, in a big city context, a big blue city in a in a blue state, wanting to make things happen, you know, wanting to actually deliver on some of their promises has to in some way or another engage in that sort of politic to free up sort of the possibility to do that. But as that process unfolds, as you're pointing out, all these contradictions mount very quickly. And so there seems on the surface to be like perhaps a natural

overlap of interest between these two factions in the Democratic Party. As soon as that starts to play out, as we would expect, we see the contradictions begin to mount. And that's going to have to play itself out. And there's going to have to be struggle. around those contradictions because it does matter who wins out there right if that if that rent controlled and rent stabilized building does get deconstructed to build more housing well then yeah that that now is hurting one base to build up the possibility of living space for genuinely a distinct base a different group of people in many cases um and so that's going to have to be certainly navigated uh you said earlier the and i think this this kind of gets us back into the conversation about our red lines

and you know where a politician diverts so much from our core principles that we have to actually approach them with outright hostility. And there's two main hinge points here. There is like the red baiting, which the media and the corporate centrist and the right are already actively engaging in. We're going to get you to denounce communism.

And there's an interesting analog to the Israel thing because it's like, you know, do you condemn Hamas? Before I even listen to your opinion, does Israel have a right to exist? before I even listen to your opinion about democratic socialism, you're against communism, right? And that's a way in which the center and the right, same thing in the end, constrain and put inward pressure on that expanding Overton window. In order for you to get legitimacy from us, you're going to have to at least concede on these core notions.

And the figure that you mentioned that would, that refuse to fall into the red baiting, that is great. Keep doing that because liberals and Democratic, socialists, you have to understand. You think you are doing something for short-term game. If I cut off, if I denounce Hamas, or if I demounce communism, I will somehow be in the good graces of more powerful factions, but you do not understand those more powerful factions, hate you too. And when you concede that, when you chop off, in this case, you're more militant left, who's actually going to be an engine for your overall success. Once you chop them off, an alienate yourself from them purposefully to ingratiate yourself with these people thinking

that that will that will you know lend you some good faith with them you're playing right into their hands you've just moved to the right they foreclosed anything to the left of that and they're not going to stop there they're going to continue to push inward and then you're going to very quickly find yourself as just another opportunist in a fucking corrupt party system operating ultimately in the interest of the very, you know, entities in American politics, you told yourself and others you were fighting against when you got in. So if you're being strategically smart about this, you understand. I mean, reactionaries will call anybody a communist, right? If you're to the left of any of their figures, then you are already in their book

a communist, liberals and communists. It's all the same thing to them. So you only serve their interests by trying to heighten those divisions on the left and break down. whatever coalition might be forming and you kind of sow the seeds of your own destruction long term. And an interesting parallel to that was is the Israel question. And Abdul al-Said from Michigan recently went on, I think it was CNN. And of course, what do they do? Right? They throw out the hold on, hold on.

Do you, but do you think Israel has a right to exist? And, you know, you've seen Mom Dhani wrestle with this. You've seen other figures have to kind of like navigate this. How do I navigate this? and Abdul al-Said really had a I thought in that moment a really good approach he says you know I I hear people ask me that question all the time I never hear anybody ask me do Palestinians have a right to exist and you know and okay that's a good that's a good reversal you know at least you're now forefronting you're refusing to play into their game and you're for confronting Palestinian humanity and you're using the logical premises of that question against them oh you use Israel have a right to exist do Palestinians fucking have a right to exist because they're the ones being slothed slaughtered in mass. They're the ones being ethnically cleansed. They're the ones having apartheid imposed on them and being slaughtered as we speak. Even during a ceasefire, thousands of Palestinians are being murdered all the time in the background by Israel. And, you know,

continuing to push that line. For many reasons, it's the right line. You have to have learned enough not to fall into that shit. You know, the way I would answer that question, obviously, is more belligerent and abrasive than anybody hoping to win any election would feel comfortable asserting, but refusing to play into that, whether it's the red-baiting anti-communism, or it's the hold on, but do you condemn Hamas? Hold on, but at least Israel has a right to exist. Do you believe in the existence of a Jewish state? I mean, right there, I would just stay straight up. No, I don't believe in the existence of an ethno-supremicist state. You know, and then you can immediately go into, I'm actually a defender of a one-state solution. And Abdul-Said kind of gestured in this without

saying it, because she was kind of pushing the two-state solution idea or anything. He was basically saying, I think it was him, maybe Mom Dani also made similar arguments where it's like, I believe in like universal democratic and civil rights. And you could just take that a step further and say, I believe in a one state solution. I believe in a democratic, multinational, multi-ethnic,

multi-religious, free Palestine, where every single person in that territory has equal rights and has equal civil and human rights. And the thing is, Zionists do not like that. And now the ball is over in the Zionist court. Explain why Democratic rights.

Heights is bad. Explain why Jewish people in particular should have their own state on the on the land of somebody else and should be able to impose apartheid laws that favor one ethno religious group and act to the to the extreme disadvantage of other ethno religious groups. Like that's just fascism. That's just, you know, that's, I mean, that's ethno supremacism. And then make them contend with that. But the moment that you say, yes, of course, Israel is a right to exist. Yes, of course communism is bad. They got you. And a little grin, a little microscopic grin will begin to form on the corner of their lips because they got you. You have to learn from that. Yeah. No, I mean, absolutely. I think both of those are kind of like the big red lines, the communism and the Israel thing.

And I think you are right that we need to like demand a certain level of unwillingness for these politicians to give in on those issues. I think, you know, I'm going to transition slightly to the other topic that I wanted to talk about here, which is like domestic repression and how it relates into all of this. Because I do think that interestingly, this is increasingly one of the other red lines that I would like to kind of draw that I think right now Rashida Talib is passing. But, you know, to kind of frame things slightly, I think as we've talked about this, I think we're both in agreement that these wins are related to and in many ways a part of this broader mass movement around Palestine, around immigration, around frustration with

the war in Iran, all of these kind of things. And that mass movement right now is facing some pretty severe repression from the state. We're seeing, you know, there have been prosecutions that are happening in Minneapolis. There are prosecutions that are happening in the Prairieland case, obviously. There have been prosecutions of college students at several different universities in relation to what happened with the movement for Palestinian liberation and the sort of student uprisings that have occurred. And obviously Trump signed NSPM 7, which designated all of these domestic groups as terrorist organizations and points to things like anti-Americanism or opposition to American moral values as indicators of terrorist intent. There is a backlash that is happening

to that broader mass movement right now. And I think we see this very clearly, you know, with Trump, you know, in the last like 48 hours coming out and talking about communism multiple times and how communism is the biggest threat that there is. Elon Musk talking about reviving the Communist Control Act. And when they're talking about that, they're not even strictly speaking, talking about like Brett and I. They are talking about these politicians too, right? They are conceptualizing them as within this broader milieu of communism that they want to crack down on. And so the repression that occurs of the more radical elements and the people who are out there in the streets taking action directly on their own absolutely is a part of

the broader, you know, opposition from the right to these more insurgent DSA candidates. I also think as we're seeing this kind of like democratic civil war brewing and the centrist talking about how it's time to push back, these are people who are perfectly fine with the prosecution of domestic radical groups as well. They are perfectly okay with it. We saw some level of it under Biden as well. And these are Democrats who will happily align with the fascist forces of the federal government in seeing that crackdown. And so the kind of, you know, contradiction is that we do have the conditions producing this democratic socialist insurgency, producing these mass movements.

And obviously capitalism is not taking that sitting down. It is increasing repression in response to it. I do think we will see some level unity between centrist dims and the far right in the face of that repression. And so one of the big kind of like red lines that I really want to like insist on is that these candidates, these DSA elected to get into power, need to be vocally positioning themselves in opposition to that repression, right? Because that repression will get aimed at them eventually, whether they like it or not. That just is the reality of it. And their successes are based on

the mass movements that are facing that repression directly. So, you know, I said Rashida Talib actually took the time to bother to denounce the sentencing in the Prairie Land case and to stand in opposition to that. Every single one of these politicians needs to be doing that, needs to be defending protesters, defending people in the streets at all times. Frustratingly, this has been one of the points that I think Mom Doni has actually been one of the weakest on is defending anti-Zionist protesters in New York, and I think to a certain degree giving cover for the NYPD, unfortunately. And this is increasingly the other red line. There's going to continue to be these mass movements. There are going to continue to be people taking to the streets to oppose the creeping fascism.

that is happening in this country. And one of the things that I think us who are more radical have to hold these politicians to account on is vocal opposition to it in doing everything they can within the positions of power that they're finding themselves in to get in the way of that repression and to defend the mass movement and even those significantly ideologically to their left. And so that's the other kind of factor here that I do want to bring up because I think it's a part of the bigger phenomena. and I think it is one of those demands that we as communists absolutely need to be making.

That's really good. And I haven't thought about that myself, but that's exactly right. Crucially important. You know, the old poem, first they came for the communists. Like, how does that poem end? It increasingly extends its circle to crack down on more and more people. And, you know, if you allow the prairie land folks to be locked away, nobody continues to struggle them.

And no national politicians on the national stage are bringing attention to that case and you're even, you know, trying to position yourself as some sort of law and order Democrat who's like they did go too far. Like you are playing into the hands of the reactionary right and you are strengthening the tools they will use against you. And we've always, we've always argued in the Marxist position against social Democrats in general. There's many critiques of them. One of them is that, and this applies to democratic socialist 100%, you know, and the Chile, 1973 example looms large here, that there's this assumption, often unexamined, as we've talked about many times,

that in this sort of naivete, that if you can win power, political power, through genuinely legal and democratic mechanisms, that you will be able to win. And that the centrists and the corporations and the reactionaries will have to just throw up their hands and say, hey, you played by the rules, you got us. That's not how it works.

And, you know, I think Marxists can be informative here is that we take this idea of counter-revolution seriously and we understand that they will not and never have abided by any legal strictures or moral strictures in their attempt, even within an ostensible liberal democracy, to prevent the rise of these motherfucking movements. And the more successful that the Democratic Socialists get, the more insane the reactionary right and the corporate center are going to get. And they're in cahoots, of course, with the incredible, like what neoliberalism has done is empowered, these incredibly big corporate monopolies and empowered and, and inflated the egos and the sense of entitlement of this billionaire class, they will pull out all the fucking stops. Now, sometimes they're bluffing.

What we heard before Mom Donnie is that there's going to be a mass exodus of the tax base and all the rich people are going to flee to like Miami or something. And that has not come to pass whatsoever. A lot of that is hot air bullshit. But if he pushes too far, you know, he will be the, as I always say, the democratic facade is ready to drop at any moment in so many ways it already has. and Trump, you know, I told this to my wife the other day and she like audibly gasped. We still have two and a half to three years of Trump.

It feels like we've been in this fucking second term for 10 fucking years. We're not even halfway through. And so, and as they get more cornered, as they lose more legitimacy, as the midterms turns against them, they will continue to increase their authoritarian crackdown, their scapegoating, their enemy making. they're going to continue to demonize even tepid social Democrats as crazy communist Marxist radical leftists and you have to be

ready for that and when you play into the anti-communism you strengthen their hand when you refuse to speak up about the prairie land comrades who are facing cruel and unusual punishment you know you are strengthening the reactionary's hands if there is a if ever in this country there's a let's say 2028 for some you know crazy reason a democratic socialist

wins the presidency your mother fucking first action in office should be pardoning those people immediately. You know what I'm saying? And showing that protest is not illegal. Democracy is not illegal. These people are coming out in support of literal powerless people and concentration camps. This is an unjust ruling and we are going to war for them and setting an example that we're not backing down on these fucking fronts. And if you fail to do that, then yes, us, the communists, the anti-imperialist, the Marxists, the more radical caucuses within the D.

you will become our fucking enemy. And those are, when I say a red line, what I mean by that is if you fall on one side of that, we'll work with you, we'll talk with you, we'll engage with you, we'll treat you as human beings in a broader movement. We have our disagreements. We're not going to be shy about articulating them. But, you know, on some level, we will be in a broad coalition with you. If you're on the other side of that red line, you are an enemy of ours.

You might as well be Trump from our perspective. We're not going to fuck around with that. And then, yes, the full hostility of whatever power we can amass comes into play there. And the more power we have via organizing, the more detrimental that red line and the more serious, those candidates will have to fucking take it. And just to articulate one more time, my proletarian internationalist red line, no, if you are at all, the first thing that you have to come out and kind of say internationally, we're lifting the embargo on QV. Cuba. We are lifting all sanctions on countries around the world. We are not imposing our ideas and we're not weaponizing our economy or military against the people of the global South. We want to be an equal among equals in the world. We are lifting all sanctions. We're drawing back our military bases insofar as you have the power to do that. We're ending all embargoes. We're opening up trade with all these countries that we've that we've hitherto demonized. We refuse to play into these tropes. We're. entering a new era. And part of that is the recognition the empire is done. And these candidates have to be against empire, against imperialism. And any gains that we have domestically are not

disconnected from the gains that the global South have more broadly. And you create a world that is more stable by creating a world in which there isn't this hegemon going around, stomping on the throats of people economically and physically around the planet. And adjacent to that is I wanted to mention this. The dialectical impact of October 7th. Like this, this is still playing out. This is world historical. When those gates fell, when, when those concentration camp walls came tumbling down and the Palestine issue was put at the center of global politics, look at the reverberations to American politics itself. This whole thing we're talking about genuinely is not possible. It does not happen in the way that it has happened if October 7th doesn't occur. And

everything that happened after that doesn't occur. There is this, this fascinating dialectical relation, which is to say there's this inseparability. Naively, you could look over and say, hey, the thing happening across the world is really not our issue. It doesn't have any impact. It does. It cuts to the core of the way that the Democrats are posturing in 2026. It is part of the engine behind the rise of democratic socialist more broadly. The Palestine issue has huge mass support, but both parties, the institutional mechanisms by which that support could find some expression are, you know, donor class locked in, APEC locked in, hostile to that at the very core that creates an opportunity for the left in the United States. So when we say that Palestine is at the

front lines of like global revolution, not that the Democratic Socialists are a revolutionary force, but I'm just saying that they are confronting not just colonialism and not just imperialism, but by doing so, the capitalist world order itself, we're not lying. And the reverberations are felt in every country around the world. And so I think when Hamas and the resistance factions launched October 7th, their short-term goal is like, we will not disappear. You're not going to do these deals with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries in a way that just kind of sets us aside and ignores us, we are imposing our issue back onto the global stage. And by so doing, it had these fascinating and continuing to play out repercussions for the world. And in that sense,

it was perhaps the most revolutionary moment that we have lived through if you're roughly around our age for our entire lives. And it's fascinating to see that continue to play out. And really like, APEC is falling apart. It's having to now jump into these other you know, shell entities and funnel money into these candidates desperately. Good journalists, see it, call it out. People become aware of it. Oh, they're trying to do this over here. They're trying to be sneaky with their money over here.

That candidate off the fucking table. The moment you take a, that's another red line and it's connected to these two. The moment you take a dollar from any A-PAC adjacent organization whatsoever, you've crossed our red line. You're an enemy. Yeah, yeah. No, I think we need to draw that. And I'm glad you mentioned that about October 7th, because I do think,

think, like, in retrospect, that is going to be seen as this pivot point of the entire century, probably, honestly. Like, it is so profoundly consequential. And I think you're right. Like, even these things, like domestic city politics in some of the blue cities in the U.S. are being impacted downstream by those changes. Those connections are really there. And I think, like, you know, the maybe kind of one of the last points that I want to bring up that I do want to hit on a little bit, though, that I mentioned. So I'm in joking, but also quite genuinely in our texts before this episode is that, like, I think everyone, both the Democratic Socialists and Communists need to, like, be studying the German Revolution pretty closely right now,

because I think if you look at the German Revolution, that is the other place where I see a whole lot of parallels, right? The German Revolution occurs at this time period of Democratic Socialist Descendancy far beyond what we are seeing here, obviously, I think, comparing the DSA to the Social Democratic Party is, like, you know, apples and oranges in terms of just like the scale of the organizations. But there is the similarity. And I think in the context of what happened in Germany, like really, the line that was the point of fracture was imperialism, right? It was whether or not German socialists were going to position themselves in favor of or in opposition to German involvement in World War I. And we know that from our perspective,

the correct position, the Leninist position was revolutionary defeatism. And unfortunately, the socialists in Germany by and large aligned themselves with the defensist position and a imperialist position, which really created the conditions for a split between socialism and communism that would eventually lead to all of the complications around the German Revolution and the Spartacist uprising and all of these very complicated things. We have a whole episode on it if you want to learn the history. But I think, I hope that in hindsight, we can look back at those events a hundred years ago and learn something from them. I hope that as communists, we can learn that these contradictions are real between us and

democratic socialists and they matter and we should take them seriously and we should agitate around them and push around them. And I hope that democratic socialists can look back and see the mistakes of aligning with imperialism and aligning with counter-revolutionary forces to push back against those further to their left. Because that ultimately is what did in the socialist party within Germany. That ultimately is what caused the collapse of even the possibility of a moderate social democracy in the face of rising Nazism. And so I do just want to like really highlight this is a historical period where I think there are so many lessons that all of us can learn, regardless of which side of these kind of general factions or ideologies you fall into. And I just

hope like we can learn those lessons, not let history repeat itself and find a path through this that does not end us disastrously. And you know, as I was talking about like the increasing repression being a part of the whole contradiction that is at play here, Like, that is where Nazism came from as well. That is where fascism developed as well. That is what is that state. The stakes here are unbelievably high. The shifts that we are seeing are exciting. They, you know, point to incredible change and opportunity that we obviously cannot help but be excited about. But we either win this or we probably die because when you have that level of pivot, when you have that level of response to capitalism, when the crises start to become that acute and organizational ascendancy occurs in response to that. that, the counter-revolution comes and it is brutal and it is harsh. And so I do think we have to learn those historical lessons and make sure that this time is the time that we win, basically. I think there is room for learning from history here and understanding what is at stake and how dangerous this situation is alongside being exciting. And hopefully some of what we're

talking about here can help everyone kind of involved in the various parts of these plights understand exactly what is at stake. And I will say again, go research the German Revolution, there's a lot to learn there that might be useful. Absolutely. And I think that's also the responsibility of Marxists in this broader historical moment is to understand that history and to bring that history to the forefront, to educate people on exactly how this fucking shit plays out. We cannot be naive about it. We cannot be ignorant of the history here or we will repeat the mistakes. And as you said, the stakes are so damn high that in the German Revolution example, it ended with fucking Nazi Germany.

like you know this is this is real stakes this is millions of people dead this is a world war and and so i mean like that that that that lesson from history has to be learned or we will end up right back there in one way or another my final my final two points in a couple years ago aOC's people reached out and wanted to kind of come on my show to talk about venezuela or something and i i turned i turned that down because i felt that she at that time was kind of attempting to come into a principled left-wing space and kind of launder some of her confused internationalist politics in a way that was supposed to like bolster her credibility among her left flank. I thought on one hand that was interesting. She was even trying, but I was not going to necessarily be a

party of that. In retrospect, perhaps I should have allowed it and then just been like a, you know, a very abrasive journalist in that interview and really held her to account. I wasn't in a position at that time to really put the effort into that. And so I just kind of turned down. But she remains a figure that I am perhaps most skeptical of within that milieu. I think she's shown herself again and again to be charitably ignorant on geopolitics and on history in a way that has real consequences. She seems particularly susceptible to manipulation by the corporate center. She's kind of positioned herself with one foot in the establishment and one foot in this progressive populist democratic socialist wing in a way that I find grotesquely opportunist and

and very much careerist oriented. On the other hand, when reactionaries go against her, give her death threats and stuff like that, certainly that's disgusting. And, you know, there's a part of me as a human that, you know, wants to, wants to defend her and all of that. But the AOC strain within this broader D.S.A. movement has to, I think, in particular, be called out and we have to remain hostile to it because she has done things like playing to tropes about China and Venezuela and Iran. And she has done things like greenlit, defensive Iron Dome funding in her argument. Well, it's just about protecting innocent Israelis. And it's like, okay, you know, that's, that's like saying a school shooter, we need to fund his bulletproof vest.

You know, it's like that's, you cannot, you cannot be that naive. And you cannot be that susceptible to manipulation from the corporate center or the, the perpetuation of your own career. I still hold out redemptive possibilities that she can learn the error of her way she's been in there quite a long time though it doesn't seem like she's really learning that stuff and when she comes out and speaks about geopolitics um it's incredibly confused incredibly muddled and it is clearly not coming from a place of like deep values and principles it's coming it feels like you just crammed for a test and you're kind of spitballing you know trying to get through it um yeah and she dude she has the capacity and the organizational connections to educate

herself on these issues and become a more potent politician in the process but you know that's the side of the DSA milieu that I remain skeptical of and there are other figures that are much better in those ways you have to know what you stand for you have

to be principled you have to have a spine and you have to be willing to make yourself a fucking enemy of the democratic establishment you know with unapologetically I am hostile to everything you fucker stand for that's actually not only how you win. That's how you get more people on your side, and that's how you prevent so many of the

pitfalls and errors that AOC in particular has stepped into. The very last thing I'll say as we wrap this conversation up, in lieu of this conversation, and kind of simplifying things a little bit, there are two types, if you're kind of on Allison and I side with this, there's two types of organizing that need to occur. There's organizing within the DSA as part of these communist, Marxist, anti-imperialist caucuses within it. So you can line-shunds. struggle within this ascendant organization. You can be a presence within this organization that internal meetings and stuff, the right wing of the DSA has to contend with. And by bolstering the communist and anti-imperialist presence within DSA itself, you are doing a lot of, I think, good

work in bolstering our center of gravity and strengthening our leverage within the organization. And the other type of organization is organizing outside the DSA. Continue in your tenant unions, right? Continue in the sort of principled communist Marxist organizing we've talked about on the show for so long. And in that way, you're building up a basis of mass support within communities that any candidate saying that they're a democratic socialist of any type has to contend with within a city if they want to move forward and get electoral wins. And in these two ways, I think you can actually put into practice what we're saying and continue to build our power and both have to happen. You have to have the inside and the outside organizing.

And so I think one thing that, you know, people on the left tend to do that I think is not helpful is because this is electoralism, because it is the DSA, you're taking a blanket, hostile approach to any and all manifestations, alienating yourself from this broader movement that's occurring. And while you kind of retain some psychological sense of purity, I think you're actually you're kind of violating what Lennon talked about in left-wing communism. You have to think strategically. You have to operate within the concrete context in which you actually exist and you have to make moves that actually advance the ball for our cause and not just moves that retain a sort of ideological purity that is completely disconnected from any sort of political power

at all. And engaging with political power is always going to be messy. It's why we have to stay principled. We have to stay accountable to our organizations. We have to build up mass bases of support. And that is going to continue to put us, no matter what happens in American politics, more broadly or international politics, that will continue to be our best shot at putting us in an advantageous position to actually leverage political power and hopefully eventually capture political power and wield it in the name of our deepest politics, which are called radical, which are called extremist, but they're fucking human. You know, Trump and the corporate center, Those are extremists.

People that defend and fund genocides. Those are extremists. People that murder the biosphere for short-term quarterly profits. Those are the extremists. Those are the insane people. And I think what we represent is actually a moral core and a real vision for what humanity could be. And we can't lose side of that. And we all have a responsibility to contribute in the best ways we possibly can to the strengthening of that movement in pursuit, unapologetically, of political power.

and that remains to be the case. So, Alison, any last words, and you can take us out from there? Totally. No, I mean, I think that all makes sense. I think, you know, I had talked about this with some comrades. There's no world in which I would ever join or organize in the DSA, I think, for like a whole host of reasons. But I always say, like, I'm rooting for the mug homies in there, you know? I hope that you all pull off your shit and abolish the U.S. Constitution someday. And if you kind of do your whole thing, I'll be pretty hyped about that.

So, you know, for me, the place to be, I think, is in the mass organizing, and I think that is really where I see myself and prefer to be. But I do hope those left-wing factions continue to push things, do continue to raise the contradictions and the temperature internally. And I think they will. I mean, I think there's been good success there. And, yeah, there's interesting work being done. The DSA is increasingly a site of open factional debate, which is producing interesting written documents and publications that I also think is very interesting. So I hope to see all that continue. But for me, it's the mass work, I think, ultimately.

But hopefully this is helpful. I mean, I think, you know, these wins are really in the headlines. These discussions are really being discussed in like mainstream media. And so, you know, I think the goal is just to make sure that we have some communist perspective on it and are able to orient towards this rather than just kind of ignoring it and not thinking about it because it's to our right in the terms of broader left-wing politics. So, yeah, I just hope this has been useful for that.

As always, we really appreciate everyone tuning in. And yeah, we'll get some more episodes out soon. Going to hopefully be doing some textual stuff soon as well. But it's been, yeah, a really interesting conversation. And we hope that it's beneficial for you all. Love and solidarity.