I’ve Seen What Socialism Did To Venezuela And NYC Is Next

This week, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) won the Democratic nominations for three New York congressional seats. These deep blue seats are now poised to be held by three individuals who not only hold terrible policy positions but also actively despise the nation they seek to represent.

Take “Democratic” nominee Darializa Avila Chevalier, who looks less like a candidate than a conservative’s parody of one. A Columbia University graduate and PhD candidate, Chevalier narrowly won her race for Congress while accusing her Dominican immigrant opponent of being a racist. She was one of the founders of Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), and led the illegal occupation of the college campus.

Chevalier’s open disdain for the United States did not stop her from securing the Democratic nomination. A few years ago in a now-deleted Twitter account she said she “just wiped my hand on the American flag.” Her disdain isn’t reserved for America. She also turns it on the country her parents came from, the Dominican Republic, branding it a racist nation and calling for it to merge with Haiti into a single “black” country.

Another winner, Claire Valdez, campaigned and rallied — like Chevalier — alongside socialist streamer Hasan Piker. Piker is now under Treasury investigation for allegedly violating U.S. sanctions on the Cuban regime. He has said America deserved the 9/11 attacks, and has praised and dressed as tyrants like China’s Mao Zedong, whose policies killed an estimated 60 million people, more than any ruler in history. Valdez hasn’t merely kept odd company; she has made a “free Palestine” one of her most important issues, rather than the issues that concern people who live in her district. Like Chevalier, Valdez is a downwardly mobile overeducated liberal arts graduate who worked at Columbia University and was a “union organizer” after graduating with a Fine Arts degree in Chicago.

The final DSA congressional winner is the least publicized in part because it seems as if many other DSA members dislike him, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. Lander ticks every socialist box: abolishing ICE, taxing the rich, redistributing income, cracking down on corporations, and attacking Israel. But unlike Chevalier and Valdez, Lander is Jewish and thus influencers like Hasan Piker and even Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s wife, who backed the other two, withheld the same endorsement for Lander.

Antisemitism was so prevalent during this Democratic primary that Congressman Dan Goldman, who is Jewish and was running against Brad Lander for the nomination in New York’s 10^th congressional district, was asked not to come back to a coffee shop by the store owner on social media and refunded his payment.

The DSA didn’t just win congressional races this week; they also nominated over a dozen state legislators in New York, and their ranks are poised to grow from six to 15 state legislators.

Like many of you, I watch unfolding events with deep concern. My homeland was ruined by socialists who came to power not by coup but by ballot, carrying the same ideas I now see on the rise in America. When Venezuelans voted for Hugo Chavez, he too promised to take from the rich, he too hated America and “imperialism,” and he was also a furious antisemite who condemned Israel. His socialist policies were the same: Free housing, government grocery stores, price controls, and the seizure of private property. The result was shortages, blackouts, extreme poverty, an exodus of millions, and hyperinflation.

What separates American socialism from Venezuela’s isn’t ideology but who votes for it. America’s socialists are mostly young, white, and college-educated. When they had support, Venezuela’s socialists were older, poorer, less educated, and mostly not of European descent.

While Darializa Avila Chevalier carried New York’s 13th congressional district by winning white college-educated and young voters, Espaillat ran up double-digit margins in the poorest, most Hispanic parts of the district and carried majority-Black precincts. Valdez, who took NY-7, did best in the highest-income, youngest areas and lost Orthodox Jewish precincts badly.

There has never been a nation so rich and so free like America, where the most well-off and educated members of society vote for their own destruction.

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Daniel Di Martino is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. All views expressed are those of the author and not the Manhattan Institute.