With the publication of the stunningly radical platform of the Democratic Socialists of America - abolishing the U.S. Presidency, Senate, and Supreme Court plus Open Borders – the mainstream media could not avoid reporting on these startling facts.
But given their own overwhelmingly left-wing bias they offered little analysis of how a heretofore fringe party had suddenly emerged as a revolutionary force that could remake or even destroy the Democratic Party.
The magnitude of this media dilemma grew exponentially as the DSA continued to rack up surprise victories in Democratic primaries across the nation including high profile U.S. Senate races in Michigan and Florida which could up-end Democrats hopes of winning control of that body in the November midterm elections.
While covering the singularly combative contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, I wrote a column for Human Events entitled “The Europeanization of the Democratic Party.”
As this close-run race moved across the country both candidates had to be uncharacteristically explicit about their beliefs and goals for the Democratic Party as they competed for the support of the Nominating (Left) Wing of the Party. Vague generalities or profession of moderation would be of no use in this increasingly bitter struggle to define the Party's path forward.
What emerged was that both candidates with little distinction strongly advocated a future vision for American democracy that was a virtual carbon copy of the Socialist governance that prevailed in almost every European democracy.
Between 1914 and 1945 Europe underwent a catastrophically destructive Civil War unprecedented in history. Among the world-altering consequences of that event was that the entire political spectrum of the continent experienced a giant Leftward lurch from imperial, monarchs, and broadly conservative to almost universally socialist and communist.
In the period after 1945 even nominally conservative governments (e.g. De Gaulle’s France, Thatcher’s Britain) were in terms of governance, essentially welfare and entitlement states, commonly featuring nationalized Industries and health care systems. Every single one was far to the Left of the expanded government “New Deal” state introduced by President Franklin Roosevelt in the United States and incrementally expanded ever since.
The philosophical foundations of Socialism and Communism are the seminal works of Karl Marx (1818 - 1883), whom even his sternest critics would acknowledge as history's most influential political thinker as measured in terms of real-world consequences. Every Socialist / Communist leader from Russia's Lenin a century ago to China’s Xi today has celebrated these origins, albeit with highly variable intensity depending on local circumstance.
The foundations of American democracy are very different from Europe and until quite recently have been almost universally revered. However, the Russian Revolution of 1917 sounded a tocsin that became a siren song for many American intellectuals--perhaps best symbolized by Lincoln Steffens (1866 -1936), who visited Soviet Russia in 1919, and returned famously to announce “I have seen the future, and it works."
Ever since that time theoreticians and practitioners of Socialism / Communism have managed quite artfully to overlook or rationalize the immense atrocities of monsters like Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong by confidently asserting that the crimes of capitalism are vastly worse.
In their sincere but dangerously misguided idealism they utterly transform the narrative of American history from an imperfect but unparalleled saga of expanding human freedom and opportunity, into an endless panorama of wickedness well illustrated by the New York Times’ propagandistic 1619 Project, in which the evil of slavery becomes the central reality of the American experience rather than a single dark chapter which Abraham Lincoln and 300,000 Union soldiers gave their lives to end.
The potency of this malign interpretation of America has suddenly emerged not as an obscure doctrine but as an operative truth in the words and deeds of DSA icons like Zoran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed, who along with many others have turned the politics of the Democratic Party upside down.
So, what is it that makes failing European social democracies so attractive as role models for the DSA? Three elements currently destabilizing European governments could if introduced in the USA pave the path to real power for the DSA:
(1) Multi-Party Democracy. Absent an elected presidency, or senate, giving all power to an expanded Congress opens the door to parliamentary paralysis in which it sometimes takes months after an election to negotiate the formation of an inevitably fractious government by coalition
(2) Appointed Executive. Given the collective dysfunction of the only offices elected by the people, all power inevitably devolves upon the Executive which means government by decree by anonymous bureaucrats carefully chosen by DSA party insiders.
(3) Open Borders. Every European government – like the Biden Administration – has pledged to control illegal immigration while to date failing to do so. Those who complain – purveyors of “hate speech” – are denounced as bigots, racists, white supremacists, and fascists. In Europe the predictable flood of illegals – routinely granted full benefits –has the effect of a financial battering ram on already fragile economies.
Ironically the creators of these dire scenarios – like DSA members – are disproportionately affluent, educated white elites.
The unanswered burning question is whether the United States will be the last best hope to stem this nefarious tide or merely the last to be engulfed.
William Moloney studied history and politics at Oxford and the University of London and received his doctorate from Harvard University. His columns have appeared in the Wall St. Journal, USA Today, The Hill, The Washington Post, Washington Times. Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Denver Post and Human Events