Home>Articles>The Foolish Dalliance Left Wing Politicians have with ‘Democratic Socialists’

Sacramento Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela DSA member announcement. (Photo: Councilwoman Valenzuela)

The Foolish Dalliance Left Wing Politicians have with ‘Democratic Socialists’

Socialism has a demonstrated record of producing tyranny and misery

By Katy Grimes, October 13, 2023 10:39 am

With the Hamas attack on Israel Saturday, American Democratic Socialists have openly expressed support for the terrorists and a Palestinian State, while simultaneously stating that the Israelis deserved the attack.

Ignorant, obtuse university students joined forces at Harvard, and in a letter titled “Joint Statement by Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups on the Situation in Palestine,” the  31 student organizations — including the Ivy League’s affiliate of Amnesty International — condemned Israel, even as its residents are kidnapped and more than 700 have been killed by the terrorist organization. the New York Post reported four days ago (The death toll is much higher now). The Harvard students (and students at other elite universities) held Israel “entirely responsible” for Hamas’ mass slaughter — sparking outraged condemnation and calls by a congresswoman for the Ivy League school to denounce the “abhorrent and heinous” support of “evil and terrorism.”

While the student groups are flagrantly showing just how uneducated and historically illiterate they are, elected politicians aren’t far behind, and have either remained uncomfortably silent on the attacks, which by default is support for Hamas. Some politicians, who openly practice or just dabble in socialism, openly sympathize with the Palestinians and terror groups, rather than Israel, American’s close ally.

I’ve analogized California’s growing Democratic Socialists of America problem with the sanctuary city conundrum – it sounded cool at first, and local politicians got to hang out with the rabble-rousing, edgy, cool DSA members, nibbling around the edges without actually committing to practicing socialism… until now with the Hamas attack on Israel. The chickens are coming home to roost. Now the DSA, and local DSA chapters, are openly siding with Hamas and Hezbollah, while others of the local DSA members are silent. This is so similar to just how un-fun the sanctuary cities are now, filling up with illegal immigrants, despite how cool it looked and sounded to the media when officials talked about being a virtuous sanctuary city.

Why are they so boldly proclaiming their socialism now? Do constituents and voters really embrace socialism, despite its miserable outcomes and policy failures? Economist Milton Friedman explained in his introduction in 1994 to the 50th-anniversary edition of Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom:

“To understand why it is that ‘good’ men in positions of power will produce evil, while the ordinary man without power but able to engage in voluntary cooperation with his neighbors will produce good, requires analysis and thought, subordinating the emotions to the rational faculty.

Surely that is one answer to the perennial mystery of why collectivism [and socialism], with its demonstrated record of producing tyranny and misery, is so widely regarded as superior to individualism, with its demonstrated record of producing freedom and plenty. The argument for collectivism is simple if false; it is an immediate emotional argument. The argument for individualism is subtle and sophisticated; it is an indirect rational argument. And the emotional facilities are more highly developed in most men than the rational, paradoxically or especially even in those who regard themselves as intellectuals.”

In California’s local city councils and boards of supervisors, DSA members are more bold than in the State Legislature. This is a listing on Wikipedia, sourced and verified by Democratic Socialists of America laying claim to their candidates, Democratic Socialist chapters, and reported on by several California news outlets:

Konstantine Anthony[102] Burbank  California Mayor 4th since 2022
Nikki Perez[103] Burbank  California City Council At-Large since 2022
Elizabeth Alcantar[112] Cudahy  California City Council At-Large since 2018
Antonio Lopez[114] East Palo Alto  California Vice Mayor At-Large since 2020
Antonio Lopez[114] East Palo Alto  California Vice Mayor At-Large since 2020
Larry Agran[80] Irvine  California City Council At-large 1982–2014, since 2020
Nithya Raman[120] Los Angeles  California City Council 4th since 2020
Eunisses Hernandez[121] Los Angeles  California City Council 1st since 2022
Hugo Soto-Martinez[122] Los Angeles  California City Council 13th since 2022
Bertha Perez[5][124] Merced  California City Council 3rd since 2020
Nikki Fortunato Bas[137] Oakland  California City Council 2nd since 2019
Caroll Fife[138] Oakland  California City Council 3rd since 2021
Janani Ramachandran[139] Oakland  California City Council 4th since 2023
Lissette Espinoza-Garnica[144] Redwood City  California City Council 3rd since 2021
Eduardo Martinez[145] Richmond  California Mayor At-large since 2023
Melvin Willis[146] Richmond  California City Council 1st since 2021
Gayle McLaughlin[147][148] Richmond  California City Council 5th (formerly at-large) 2005–17, since 2021
Claudia Jimenez[149] Richmond  California City Council 6th since 2021
Katie Valenzuela[154] Sacramento  California City Council 4th since 2020
Monica Montgomery[16] San Diego  California City Council District 6 since 2019
Dean Preston[67][156][157] San Francisco  California Board of Supervisors 5th since 2019
Justin Cummings[158] Santa Cruz  California Board of Supervisors 3rd since 2023
James H. Coleman[144] South San Francisco  California City Council 4th since 2021

There are DSA school board members, transit board members, and a significant list of former DSA local office holders.

School Board DSA members in California:

Ingrid Gunnell[203] Glendale  California School Board Area B since 2022
Rocio Rivas[207] Los Angeles  California School Board 2nd since 2022
Jackie Goldberg[208] Los Angeles  California School Board 5th since 2019
Kenneth Mejia[209] Los Angeles  California Los Angeles City Controller At-Large since 2022
Kelsey Lino[210] Los Angeles  California LACCD Board of Trustees 7th since 2022
Jason Boxer[212][213] Manhattan Beach  California School Board At-large since 2020
Mike Hutchinson[220] Oakland  California School Board 4th since 2021

Only one California state legislator, Assemblyman Alex Lee (D-Palo Alto), is openly a member of Democratic Socialists of America.

However, nearly all of California’s most progressive politicians coalesce with labor unions, radical environmental groups, extremist sexual identity groups, even the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the World Workers Party, independent chapters of Black Lives Matter, along with chapters of the Democratic Socialists for America. These groups also expressed support for Hamas’s atrocities in the name of “resistance” and “liberation,” the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported.

The ADL reports:

  • The DSA San Francisco (CA) chapter put out a statement on October 9 condemning “Israel’s ongoing occupation and the apartheid regime” and “the U.S.’s continued funding and support of Israel’s decades-long colonization of Palestine,” but did not condemn the violence committed by Hamas. The statement read: “Violent oppression inevitably produces resistance. Socialists support the Palestinian people’s, and all people’s, right to resist and fight for their own liberation. This weekend’s events are no different. Decolonization is the only path towards peace. A better world is possible. We call on all those who share our vision of global working-class emancipation to join the fight to end the occupation and decolonize Palestine – from the river to the sea.”
  • DSA Long Beach (CA) wrote on October 10 that their chapter “fully supports and stands in solidarity with the people of Palestine in their struggle for liberation from military occupation, colonialist oppression, and the brutal apartheid system imposed by the state of Israel.” The group alleged that, “for far too long, Israel, a settler colonial regime, has dispossessed, incarcerated, tortured, and murdered Palestinians by the thousands” and added that, “there is no symmetry between the Palestinian people’s struggle and the genocide being carried out by the Zionist terror state.”
  • At an October 8 protest in Anaheim, CA, co-sponsored by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a speaker celebrated this “moment where Hamas is taking control, they’re resisting,” and at a rally in San Francisco a speaker declared, “The resistance is liberating land from ‘48 that has been occupied for 75 years. The intifada lives and Palestine lives!”

While California has yet to see any political race at the state level between Democratic Socialists and Democrats, local council races have been much more open to the socialists.

Is this the future – is that why DSA members are so open now about their politics? Or are they feeling desperate as voters recognize that their policies are dangerous and destructive? F. A. Hayek warned in the Road to Serfdom of the dangers of state control over the means of production. “For Hayek, the collectivist idea of empowering government with increasing economic control would inevitably lead not to a utopia but to the horrors of nazi Germany and fascist Italy.”

The Hamas attack this week on Israel is indicative of and much too reminiscent of the horrors of WWII. California politicians must heed this warning as voters now know this.

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5 thoughts on “The Foolish Dalliance Left Wing Politicians have with ‘Democratic Socialists’

  1. Notice that the DSA does not mention the hundred millions of dollars Palestine received from the Biden Administration. And I’m not talking about East Palestine, Ohio where Poopy Pants still has not visited.

  2. To concrete the United States as a vassal of the globalist (UK) empire, we must be broken up into smaller bits. The same is being tried against Russia (they even publish neoconservative maps of the break-up).

    These “DSA” types should be denied organizational oxygen – there must be an effort to persecute members of these groups. What other solution is there? Wait for the stolen votes to be miscounted?

  3. It is indeed a “foolish dalliance.” In many instances, DSA was alluring due to the woke indoctrination they received in school. So naive…

    1. Many seem to be in some sort of prolonged puberty. They’re extremely naive and highly impressionable. It’ll take some years and significant sobering life events to bring on maturity.

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