Who Is Behind The Rapid Rise Of The DSA?

One of the things you learn as you watch my Real History episode, “Martin Luther King Jr. is NOT Who You Think He Is,” on YouTube is that left-wing movements don’t simply appear out of thin air.

They might seem spontaneous, but they’re actually the product of extraordinary calculation and manipulation. And that brings us to the issue I want to discuss, which is the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). 

Not too long ago, the DSA was merely a collection of completely powerless, unwell, and unhappy failures — adult children with nothing to contribute except viral videos like this one, which, admittedly, were pretty entertaining. This is from the DSA’s national convention in Georgia back in 2019:

Watch:

Meanwhile at the Democratic Socialists of America conference… pic.twitter.com/fT0GfHIFFI

— Young Americans Against Socialism (@yaasamerica) August 4, 2019

and:

It gets better, triggered anxiety comrade has another meltdown. Lmfao pic.twitter.com/lljr4tF0yV

— Shane (@therealShane44) August 4, 2019

As the speakers were whining into the microphones, some of the members of the audience were putting their hands in the air and waving. They do this in lieu of applauding — it’s called “jazz hands” — because they don’t want to trigger anyone with loud noises. This was actually one of the ground rules of the convention: They had to use jazz hands. 

Other rules included “no misuse of doors, no interacting with cops, no talking to the press,” and my personal favorite, “no aggressive scents in the quiet room.” They had to use the term “aggressive scents” instead of “disgusting scents” because none of these people had showered in months. They can’t throw everyone out. So instead, they specifically banned “heavy artificial fragrances, strong perfumes, or scented lotions.” But if you smell like a Taco Bell Mexican Pizza mixed with various bodily fluids, then you’re good. 

WATCH: Martin Luther King Jr. is NOT Who You Think He Is

In any event, this seemed like reassuring footage at the time because, watching this, you simply couldn’t imagine these people taking power in the United States. They can’t even get through a convention without melting down into hysterics. And indeed, plenty of commentators used this footage as proof that — contrary to what Donald Trump was saying — socialists weren’t really a threat. For example, a former Washington Post columnist wrote: 

Depending on the day, socialists are a terrifying force ready to overthrow the government, or a collection of snowflakes to laugh at.

Just seven years later, the DSA is now a terrifying force that’s ready to overthrow the government along with civilization in general. In less than a decade, socialists who seemed incapable of normal human interaction, much less organizing a significant political party, have won congressional primaries and congressional seats in Philadelphia, Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Denver.  They’ve been elected mayor in major cities like Seattle and New York, with another socialist about to take over as mayor of Washington, D.C. Dozens of socialists have won primaries in state legislatures this year. And at the moment, a socialist from the suburbs by the name of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the leading candidate for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2028.

What exactly happened here? It’s a question someone needs to address because nothing like this has ever happened in American politics, at least not in living memory. And before you say “the economy is terrible” — while it’s true that prices are far too high, as we’ve discussed at great length, it’s also true that the economy was doing much, much worse at other points in American history. 

We went through a depression in which unemployment hit 25%, thousands of banks failed, and stocks dropped by 90%. And despite that, socialists held very few congressional seats in the 1930s. And they were never even close to taking the presidency. In the 1932 presidential election, the socialist candidate finished with something like 2% of the vote. 

Yes, FDR took a lot of momentum out of the socialist movement with the New Deal. He cursed us with much stronger unions, created the Ponzi scheme that is Social Security, set up all kinds of new regulators, and dramatically increased government spending — all of which were terrible ideas, and all of which were concessions to socialists. 

But unlike Adam Schiff, Elizabeth Warren, and the rest of the modern Democrats, at no point did FDR endorse the end of capitalism or candidates who wanted to destroy America from within. What we’re seeing today is new. So while economic factors, like the cost of living, certainly play a role in the rise of socialism — socialists talk about these issues, pretend to care (which they don’t), and pretend to have answers (which they definitely don’t) — history would indicate that there must be much more to the story. So what exactly is going on? Why is socialism suddenly so compelling to so many people?

To answer that question, we should look (once again) at a typical gathering of socialists in the United States. Seven years ago, they were fretting about jazz hands, over-stimulation, and gendered language. What are they doing now? Let’s take a look. This is from Hasan Piker’s new roadshow. 

Hasan Piker, in case you’re not familiar, is a socialist with a very large following — not only among the general public, but among Democratic Party elites. He campaigned with Abdul El-Sayed for Senate in Michigan. He’s done friendly appearances with Rashida Tlaib, Ro Khanna, AOC, Ilhan Omar, Francesca Hong, Zohran Mamdani, and so on. He has become, by all accounts, a major figure in the Democratic Party. And here’s how he began his show. 

Watch:

Hasan sings “We Are Charlie Kirk” at the Fear& live tour pic.twitter.com/n4rGVTREyB

— yeet (@Awk20000) August 22, 2026

They’re singing along to an AI song about Charlie Kirk, mocking the fact that he was murdered on a college campus for disagreeing with them. And for good measure, they also mock the Gospel, as well as the fact that Charlie was a husband and father. 

This is another expression of rampant psychopathy and nihilism we’re now seeing from many different corners of this country — from the women who rally behind Lindsay Clancy because she murdered her children, to the outpouring of support on the Left for Luigi Mangione. 

For socialists, it’s almost as if they’ve gotten tired of being an object of mockery on the internet. They’re no longer interested in doing the jazz hands or the points of personal privilege. Instead, like the typical school shooter, they’re heavily medicated, lobotomized, and ready to murder everyone who’s more successful than they are — which is to say, anyone who has a family, a job, and a reason for existing.

Make no mistake about it, we’re not talking about a new class of socialist here. These people are just as dysgenic and just as off-putting as the socialists of old. Take a look at the crowd from Hasan Piker’s event to give you some idea of the physical specimens I’m talking about.

It’s like “Where’s Waldo,” except you’re trying to find someone with a BMI under 30. They’ve somehow gathered together the only people in America who still haven’t heard of Ozempic. Outside of a Reddit convention, it would be hard to find a more profoundly misshapen, pungent assembly than this. The most generous thing I can say about these people is that some of them look like villains from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The only point in their favor is that, as best I can tell, no one’s wearing a mask. And that’s not usually the case at these socialist meet-ups. Here’s a shot from a socialist meetup in New York, for example, when they all gathered together to cheer Mamdani:

There are definitely a few masks in the crowd there, which makes sense. We wouldn’t want another superspreader event. According to the experts, the latest fecal specimens in the water are showing that there’s a new variant on the loose. And you can never be too careful. Anything to prevent people from having to see your face — whatever it takes.

I saw a quote from the historian Lothrop Stoddard that applies to this very corpulent display of human misery. Stoddard, depending on who you ask, was allegedly a bigot — which is a word that no longer has any meaning, so who knows. Regardless, Stoddard had a profound insight into the kind of people who support socialism and why they do it.

Bolshevism, instead of being very new, is very old — that it is the last of a long series of revolts by the unadaptable, inferior, and degenerate elements against civilizations which have irked them and which they have therefore wished to destroy. 

Or if you’re looking for a more modern definition:

It’s hard not to draw comparisons, as some have done on social media, to that New York Magazine cover after Trump’s second election win, where they showed a picture from one of the parties with the title, “The Cruel Kids’ Table.” 

They cropped all the black people out of the photo and tried to present the image as nefarious because it showed a bunch of healthy human beings all gathered in one place. They truly could not comprehend how something like this was possible. How can you have a political movement that’s comprised of young people who aren’t about to keel over and die of a massive heart attack? 

This is not simply an aesthetic observation. It’s directly relevant to the question I raised earlier — which was, why are the communists so much more motivated and effective now, as compared to the 1930s?  And one answer, although you won’t find it in any political science textbook, is that the population is much fatter, more drug-addicted, and infinitely more disgusting than it was in the 1930s.  

Nearly half the country is obese today. It’s something like 40%. In the 60’s, it was around 12%. We don’t even have data from the 1930s because no one thought to track it. The number was probably close to zero. So, unlike the Depression era, we now have 100 million more people who are disgusted when they look at themselves in the mirror every morning. And although we’d like to pretend there are no political ramifications to that fact, we all know that (as Will Tanner has said) politics is indistinguishable from biology. If you want to understand how people think and how they vote, you simply cannot ignore how they look, how they eat, and how they feel. 

All politics is biological

This is why the left, the side of entropy incarnate, is the side of freakish losers

Marat, Robespierre, and Danton were all malformed freaks as well https://t.co/KfmETFmiqP pic.twitter.com/MyGazb08vX

— Will Tanner (@Will_Tanner_1) August 23, 2026

As Tanner pointed out, look at Robespierre, Danton, or Marat. Look at any mugshot featuring an Antifa goon. They’re all in very rough shape. And that’s not an accident.

It’s also no accident that, at this event, the crowd booed when Hasan Piker joked that, upon further reflection, he wanted to revise his position that America was responsible for 9/11. 

Watch:

Hasan fans erupt in boos after he says “America does not deserve 9/11” pic.twitter.com/aZeTehzhHt

— yeet (@Awk20000) August 24, 2026

By this point, it’s hard to misunderstand what’s happening here. There’s a mob of filthy people who are celebrating the murder of thousands of Americans at the hands of Islamist terrorists. Oh, and also, they’re celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk and Brian Thompson, and they’d be thrilled if the same thing happened to everyone else they disagree with. 

This isn’t even a coherent political ideology. It’s just evil. They see no value in their own lives. And therefore, out of bitterness, they want to destroy everyone else. This is where, again, the repulsive aspect of this crowd plays a significant role. All human beings are guilty of projection to some extent. We feel a certain way about ourselves and emit that feeling out onto the world around us. People with high levels of self-awareness and introspection are able to catch themselves projecting and make the conscious effort to separate their own insecurities and hang-ups from the world around them. But socialists, as a rule, have little self-awareness or introspection. They also see themselves as contemptible, unsightly freaks — justifiably so — and that brings out a feeling of abhorrence, which turns into malice that is then hurled outwards to the population at large.

Hasan Piker understands exactly who his audience is. That’s why, for years, he’s been conditioning them to murder their political opponents. 

Watch:

Hasan Piker about Charlie Kirk (2018):

“I want to f*cking kill him, dude” pic.twitter.com/WVXrSi33TK

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) August 24, 2026

This is the kind of content that appeals to psychopaths like Tyler Robinson, the Reddit community, etc. Why bother debating with anyone when you can just murder them? I can’t name a single conservative commentator who talks like this, but the Left has about 50 of them. It’s always been that way, going back centuries. These people want to kill you for disagreeing with them. 

But the plump and disheveled audience at Hasan Piker’s event, as you can probably imagine, is not good at organizing or doing anything else in life. They need leaders. That’s what the DSA didn’t have in 2019. As you saw, that meeting was led by a meek Asian woman. She wasn’t channeling the derangement of the crowd towards anyone or anything. As a result, the mob of socialists turned against one another. 

Now, thanks to social media and the COVID lockdowns, when people spent millions of hours indoors watching Hasan Piker stream on Twitch all day, the socialists have leaders. And that’s a key point. As I mentioned at the outset, we just produced a lengthy, in-depth documentary about communism, in addition to MLK and the civil rights movement. And in that documentary, we cite extensively from the historian Richard Pipes, who has written several books on the topic of the Russian Revolution. And when you read these books, you learn that the epicenter of the Bolshevik takeover was not the working class. 

The people who were supposed to benefit from the revolution were not the ones who started it. Really, the revolution began in the university system. It was a product of the “intelligentsia.” Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky came from very comfortable backgrounds. So did the socialists who co-opted various student protests, and transformed them into political rallies, and ultimately riots.

What the educated, disaffected elite understood better than the conservatives and the traditionalists was how to mobilize the masses. That was the case in Imperial Russia, and it’s the case in America. But the strategy was different, by necessity. For one thing, unlike the situation in late Imperial Russia, no World War is raging at the moment. We don’t have breadlines. No one is starving (that much is very clear). 

So how can you motivate enough Americans to become communists, in order to overwhelm the system and start a revolution? Simply having a very fat population isn’t enough. The fact that communists tend to be fat and hideous does not mean that all fat and hideous people are bound to become communists. So they needed something more.

The solution was to import the third world — tens of millions of foreigners who are, and always will be, financially dependent on the government.  This is the theory Ann Coulter presents in “Adios, America!”, and it’s yet to be refuted. These foreigners are loyal voters, but for the most part, they’re not intelligent enough to figure out how to subvert America and loot the treasury on their own. The DSA, various NGOs, and socialist “elites” tell them what to do.

The elites, for their part, don’t see any contradiction here. People who have become very wealthy because of capitalism are happy to support the downfall of the entire country. And while this is obviously hypocritical and extremely dumb, you should know how these people justify their position. So here’s Grace Ryan.

She’s been nicknamed “Lulu Lenin,” which is probably the best nickname I’ve ever heard for a communist. She’s a 25-year-old heiress from Ohio, whose father turned Columbus Chocolates into something of a chocolate empire. So she’s a chocolate heiress, if you will. On Instagram, she posts photos from her family’s lake house, and she shows off the family’s Hummer. And most notably for our purposes, she just campaigned in New York for Brad Lander’s congressional campaign. Lander is a socialist; he won the primary, and he’s guaranteed a seat in Congress next year.

So how does Lulu Lenin justify her support for socialism, exactly? Here’s her response on X. It reads:

Everyone’s trying to dunk on me for being a progressive from a privileged background but like have y’all never heard of noblesse oblige? I have a moral obligation to use my advantages to help those who are struggling.

What’s funny about this reply, of course, is that “noblesse oblige” was a principle that preserved the aristocracy and the structure of society at large. It also helped maintain the very direct, personal connection between the lords and the underclass. That was kind of the whole point. To keep the peasants from revolting and destroying everything, the wealthy would occasionally do something for the common good — and particularly for the people they lorded over. In medieval times, the lords would shelter and protect the peasants who worked the land. In more modern adaptations of the principle, the wealthy might fund a public library, establish a school, or a national park, or something like that. By itself, there’s nothing wrong with “noblesse oblige.” It certainly beats whatever Mark Zuckerberg is doing. 

But if you’re a chocolate heiress and you support socialism, then by any definition, you’re not supporting  “noblesse oblige” at all. First of all, you have no personal connection to any of the people you want to “help.” And more importantly, what you’re advocating as a socialist is the elimination of property rights, along with every law we have. You’re advocating for murder in the streets and the destruction of the Constitution.

So Lulu Lenin, like most liberal women, should not be involved in politics. She has absolutely no idea what she’s talking about. Without a doubt, she’ll be one of the first casualties of any revolution, although she doesn’t appear to realize it.

But it’s not just women. There are many, many more examples of rich socialists who are embarrassing themselves. Here’s one more. Meet Gustavo Gordillo, the leader of the DSA in New York. It’s a very high-profile position. Here’s one of his recent stump speeches.

Watch:

NYC-DSA co-chair Gustavo Gordillo, who calls himself “UnionGustavo,” says “the terror comes from the capitalists and their pawns.”

But Gordillo was fired from an IBEW Local 3 apprenticeship after months of no-shows and reportedly has not been a union member for months.

DSA… pic.twitter.com/0eYnLa19Xa

— Canary Mission (@canarymission) August 23, 2026

So Gustavo Gordillo is obviously not a fan of capitalism, or office buildings, or people who work in the Financial District. Never mind the fact that Gustavo Gordillo is a Yale grad in his late 30s with a very wealthy father who just purchased a $1.5 million home for him — a home that, naturally, is contributing to the destruction of a “historically black neighborhood.” This is from the New York Post, because you simply cannot make this stuff up.

The local community board in Bed-Stuy slammed the plans for an expansive renovation of the historic $1.5 million house that Gordillo’s parents bought for the NYC Democratic Socialists of America leader — but the project ended up getting the green light anyway. The community board said the upgrades on the 1901-built home were “not in alignment” with the historically black neighborhood, which has been taken over by hordes of gentrifying lefties. One commissioner with the Landmarks Preservation Commission said during a hearing he thought the house is going to look more like a “Hampton’s beach house” than a Bed-Stuy row house. … [the commissioner] said that the “window and door sizes” planned for Gordillo’s row house on Decatur Street “are too large and do not relate to the adjacent buildings.”

So here we have a guy who absolutely despises capitalism and white supremacy, and he’s living in a historic $1.5 million home that’s gentrifying some black neighborhood, without any sense of shame or self-awareness.

To be fair, like every other home in New York, it’s a dump. There are still plenty of places in America where $1.5 million will buy you six bedrooms and 10 acres. Or you can go to New York and, for that price, get a rinky-dink townhouse so small that you could only fit two socialists, or six normal people, inside of it. 

Nonetheless, this thing still costs a fortune. And instead of, say, turning it into a homeless shelter, he’s using it for himself — presumably to get high and play video games. And on that note, the guy apparently faked his backstory too. He claims to be a union electrician, even though his apprenticeship was terminated because he failed to complete the work requirements. And for good measure, he’s behind on his dues.  

There are so many wealthy failures-turned socialists like this that we could talk about them all day.

Here’s Fergie Chambers, who inherited hundreds of millions of dollars from his family, which founded Cox Enterprises. He promptly went off and established communes, funded efforts to abolish the police, and so on. 

First, to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline, he bought some property outside Atlanta that housed more than a dozen people. The residents got thousands of dollars a month as a stipend before the whole thing fell apart and got sold off. He did something similar in Massachusetts, founding a gym that was “closed to landlords and capitalists.” Communists could live there for free. Eventually, that was shut down too. So he never asks himself why, if communism is sustainable, they can’t create their own communes without investment from an extremely wealthy Cox heir. Nor does he ask himself why all of his communes keep failing. He’s just a very troubled individual. At the same time, like some of his comrades, he also has an awful lot of money. And he’s happy to use that money to fund the revolution.

The formal leaders of the DSA, for their part, are much more strategic. They’re following a script that’s been provided to them. They’re not coming up with anything on their own. The playbook has always been very clear. From its inception in 1982 in Detroit, Michigan, the DSA had a consistent approach to seizing power once it had a large enough voter base. 

The founder of the DSA, a professor named Michael Harrington, had been running something called the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee in the 70s. This was a more mainstream Leftist group with close ties to the union. In 1982, Harrington merged his organization with the New American Movement (a feminist, anti-war group) to create the DSA. Altogether, the organization still wasn’t very big — it only had around 6,000 members. But Harrington adopted an approach that the DSA still uses to this day, called “Realignment.”

Realignment means that, instead of competing against the Democratic Party, the socialists would infect the party from within and move it to the Left over time. Harrington understood that, in America’s two-party system, a separate DSA party wouldn’t accomplish anything. In fact, it would be counterproductive and would only benefit the Republican Party by dividing the opposition. 

So the DSA did not follow the lead of the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, or any other minor party in American history. Instead, the DSA began targeting Democratic primaries — which typically have low turnout, especially when it’s not an election year — in the hopes of a surprise victory or two to gain momentum.

If we go back to that DSA meeting I mentioned at the outset — the footage from the circus in Georgia — you’ll find that this strategy of Realignment was still a major focus for the DSA. In between lecturing one another on pronouns, they strategized about the importance of remaining within the Democratic Party instead of creating a new party. 

Watch:

This is a meeting at the Democratic Socialists of America. https://t.co/EkTyE3dxXp

— Ian Miles (@ianmiles) August 4, 2019

This sounds like an obvious idea in retrospect, but it’s actually one of the keys to the success of the DSA. And it’s been written into their DNA since the 1980s, when they were founded. They were always going to infiltrate the Democrat Party, on the theory that — like the ruling party of the tsar in Imperial Russia — the establishment class at the DNC would be too slow and too timid to respond to a socialist surge. And of course, they were right. It took a few decades, but the strategy is paying off. 

To this day, no establishment Democrat has declared war on these people or tried to establish any daylight whatsoever. Quite the opposite: Leading Democrats, from Adam Schiff to Elizabeth Warren, have aligned with the DSA and their candidates.  

Meanwhile, the DSA is openly talking about murdering their political opponents. They’re celebrating 9/11. And they’re holding planning sessions where they describe their plans to rip up the United States Constitution. The journalist Natalie Winters obtained this footage of DSA Steering Committee member Cliff Connolly describing what the DSA has in store for this country. 

Watch:

EXCLUSIVE: DSA Steering Committee member Cliff Connolly says the quiet part out loud:

“Our hatred of the United States Constitution.”

He calls the Constitution “the obstacle” socialists must “get over to have a revolution.” pic.twitter.com/TMDGmsJmBd

— Natalie Winters (@nataliegwinters) August 17, 2026

In other meetings, DSA members are openly discussing their takeover of the Democrat Party, and how they’ve finally assumed control. 

Watch:

DSA members say they’re going take over our country with a violent revolution

“It’s going to be a violent process.”

Believe them when they tell you their plans. pic.twitter.com/IGVGB24YuE

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 23, 2026

They’re more comfortable talking like this in public now because they believe they have finally conquered the Democratic Party from within after decades of trying. They have funding from enough aristocrats and wannabe aristocrats. 

They’re tapping into frustration with the establishment and with life in general, which has intensified with social media, the obesity epidemic, the COVID lockdowns, and now the rise of AI, which threatens to take millions of jobs. 

And most importantly, the elites have decided, due to the rise of Donald Trump, that they’d prefer to burn the whole system down to spite him. 

If you read between the lines, that’s the real reason these political arsonists are ascendant right now. Trump survived all of their Bolshevik attempts to imprison him and even to murder him. They’ve realized they can’t take him down. They’ve also realized they can’t take down his movement. 

So now their goal — as very bitter and defeated people, as we’ve seen many times throughout history — is to take the entire country down with them.