DSA Assault on Prisons Is Rooted in Third World-ist Lust for Barbarism
Josh Hammer | 7:58 PM on July 24, 2026
The Democratic Socialists of America are having a moment. In fact, they're having a season. DSA candidates are winning nationwide in Democratic Party primaries, knocking off incumbents while running on some of the most deformed and deranged platforms in recent political memory. Zohran Mamdani, the charismatic young socialist in Gracie Mansion, is the new leader of the DSA pack. Terrifying as it may be, Zo may be the closest thing the entire activist left has these days to a kingmaker.
It couldn't be clearer what the DSA wants: The Democratic Socialists want to finish the job, launched by Barack Obama on the precipice of presidential victory in 2008, of "fundamentally transforming" the United States. The DSA's new policy platform, released earlier this month, says the quiet part out loud: "We are workers fighting to transform society," to "draft a new constitution, and create a democratic socialist republic."
It would be one thing if these were the words of a starry-eyed freshman pothead, first exposed to Marx and pontificating to dormmates while John Lennon's dreadful song "Imagine" plays in the background. But people like Hizzoner and the new uptown socialist "it girl," Darializa Avila Chevalier, are adults. They are serious. And that makes them not just naive but dangerous.
Zo has had a complicated relationship with the issue of public safety.
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