Key Takeaways:
- The DSA’s focus on anti-Zionism serves as a cover for the inconsistencies and lack of substance in the movement’s political platforms.
- The political movement’s anti-Zionism is part of a broader anti-Western agenda pursued by the DSA.
- The DSA’s supporter base is much weaker than presumed, but is glossed over by an indulgent media apparatus.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) — the political home of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), and a host of millennial up-and-comers — claims to be focused on “the multicultural working-class,” but make no mistake — Israel and Zionism are what motivate them most. Despite the party’s initial support for Zionism during its founding four decades ago, the DSA’s more recent ascent is a direct response to Israel’s war in Gaza and America’s role in providing arms and intelligence to Jerusalem.
Indeed, along with disbanding ICE and dismantling law-enforcement, isolating the Jewish nation — and demanding “accountability” for Israel’s enablers — remains the dominant throughline across most DSA platforms. How else to explain Mamdani’s obsession with arresting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this year, despite having zero authority to do so?
Anti-Zionism First
The media has been an eager accomplice in DSA efforts to infuse anti-Zionism throughout their political agenda – always willing to elevate DSA talking points, yet refusing to expose the party’s greatest weakness, its meager supporter base.
The motivations behind such maneuvering are both complex and unremarkable. The first is nothing but pure anti-Zionism, which easily aligns with Israel’s current status as the world’s leading omnicause. This is why, for example, DSA leaders have campaigned so heavily for Mamdani to fire NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch following the shooting by Federal immigration agents of an illegal migrant in Upper Manhattan earlier this month.
As the media has endlessly reminded, Tisch is not mot merely New York’s top-cop, she’s an outspoken Jew and Zionist, and “the movement from which Mr. Mamdani emerged,” explained The New York Times two weeks back, is “consumed” by both law enforcement and Israel.
This focus on Jewishness, Zionism and Israel also reduces scrutiny on the DSA itself – its hollow political platforms, untenable economic policies, inexperienced leadership, and the startling inconsistencies between its “black and brown”-themed social justice agenda and largely white, affluent membership.
How better to shut down talk of the DSA’s privileged comrades than to obsess over alleged Israeli apartheid and its supposed “genocide” in Gaza?
Mostly, injecting Israel advances the DSA’s agenda from the initial focus on Zionism to the larger Western ideals that socialism has always sought to dismantle. Ending ICE, defunding the police, abandoning private property-ownership — all align with anti-Zionism’s third-worldist, post-colonial, aggrievement-over-achievement outlook. And the DSA is gunning for them all, even as it fails to win big at the ballot box.
The DSA’s True Popularity
Indeed, here’s the real story behind the DSA candidate: Despite being portrayed by everyone from The New York Times and Wall Street Journal to USA Today and the BBC as “sweeping” into offices nationwide over the past year, just a tiny handful of people actually vote for them.
How tiny? Consider the party’s June “sweep” – which ushered in a trio of DSA members across New York City.
In Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, rabid anti-Israel activist Dariavila Aliza Chevalier won her Democratic challenge for New York’s 13th Congressional district by a mere 2,000 ballots – just 35,000 of the District’s 750,000 total residents voted for her.
The same scenario played out over in Brooklyn and Queens, where Claire Valdez bested her opponent by only 14,000 votes – out of 70,000 in total – to win the Democratic Primary for New York Congressional District 7. And in NY State District 12, which covers many of Queens’ most gentrifying neighborhoods, DSA candidate Aber Kawas ran unopposed, receiving just 20,000 votes to snag the Democratic nomination to represent her 320,000-strong district’s State Assembly seat.
Even DSA-darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) — a potential 2028 Democratic presidential nominee – barely registers at the ballot box. In August, AOC’s re-election bid drew just 31,000 total votes in a district also 750,000-strong.
Such numbers clearly bely the “DSA sweep” narrative. But why have media brands on both sides of the political spectrum failed to properly probe these DSA wins — and reveal their weak foundations?
Optics Over Substance
For one thing, Americans are notoriously reluctant voters – even during high-stakes campaigns like presidential races. This is why the DSA strategically targets lower-stakes “local” races; they require so few votes to triumph — or for the media to crown those “triumphs” a “sweep.”
Then there are the optics: Politicians like Mamdani, Chevalier, Valdez, Kawas and AOC are all youthful, ethnic minorities in a party that positions performative politics and “representation” above all else.
But much like the irrational focus on all-things #Palestine, DSA championing exists because the party has convinced an uncritical media they deserve nothing less. Indeed, as evidenced by headlines such as “Who’s Afraid of the Democratic Socialists” from The Economist in September 2025, the DSA has manufactured both menace and mass appeal — marketing and manipulating their way into ubiquity.
Nearly a year after Mamdani assumed office, his party now thrives by canceling inquiry and stymying curiosity — and only the most steely (and, for the moment, conservative) media organizations are daring to challenge this orthodoxy with basic facts and figures.
“Democratic socialist candidates show gains but limited reach in 2026,” read a Brookings Institute report from this past September, which finally said what the rest of the media likely knows – but is too timid to admit: “The DSA’s success this summer appears overstated, given its modest win rate and deep-blue base.”
America — if not the rest of the world — can only hope so.
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© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
