Democratic Socialism Remains an Elite Phenomenon

Are the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) surging to victory in New York City because foreigners and immigrants are smuggling this ideology into the U.S.? That seems to be the takeaway for many conservatives bemoaning that “Third World-ism”—i.e., the nominally communist brand of authoritarianism that is prevalent in some African and Latin American countries—is winning at the ballot box. Their solution, unsurprisingly, is to curb all categories of immigration, legal and illegal.

The victories of Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier in Tuesday’s Democratic House primaries are indeed lamentable. Avila Chevalier is a modern campus radical who has aligned herself with far-left activist groups that wish to “eradicate Western civilization.” She wants to abolish borders, police, private property, etc. Valdez is no less extreme.

But do they represent the triumph of Third World migration to the U.S.? Matt Walsh, who is typical of conservatives on this, thinks so. He writes: “Third world communists are the enemy. They’ve taken over our greatest American city. They’re taking over one of our two major political parties. They hate this country. They hate white people. They hate our heritage and traditions. This is the fight. Get in the game or go away.”

Reality is much more complicated. As Batya Ungar-Sargon notes, Chevalier’s base of support is not specifically immigrants or even minorities—it’s the affluent.

“Chevalier, who won a district that includes the Bronx, actually lost the Bronx part of the district by 30 points,” writes Ungar-Sargon. “She also lost predominantly Black and Hispanic areas, and she lost lower-income areas by 10 points. She won with young voters and higher income voters, and won majority college educated areas by 20 points.”

The comparison with the Bronx is instructive. The South Bronx is represented by Democrat Ritchie Torres, who is not a democratic socialist and staunchly supports Israel; he easily won re-election in a district that is disproportionately black and low income. Chevalier did slightly better with black people than her opponent did, but she got crushed when it came to the Hispanic vote.

The point is that this view of socialism as a specifically Third World ideology conquering the U.S. because of mass migration isn’t true. Affluent, native-born white and black people are just as likely, or by some measures, more likely to support left-wing politics than many categories of immigrants, particularly Hispanic immigrants. If right-wing immigration hardliners had their way and restricted citizenship to just people who can trace their lineage back to colonial times, we would be no safer from socialism. In fact, the category most likely to support socialist policies is the highly educated.

The democratic socialists like to stress that their movement is populist and working class, though their adherents are disproportionately rich and credentialed. It remains to be seen whether this kind of politics can be successful outside of select enclaves in New York City; for now, the DSA remains an elite phenomenon.

I’m joined by Amber Duke to discuss Europeans loving America during their World Cup trips, Joy Reid’s lack of patriotism, and more.

You can also catch a special Jason Russell episode of Freed Up. (Christian Britschgi will be back next week.)

I know I’ve talked about it a bunch already, but I just cannot get Backrooms out of my brain. I think I might go to the theater and see it a second time, which is something I almost never do.

In case you somehow missed this discussion, Backrooms is a debut horror film from Kane Parsons about a man who discovers a labyrinth of secret rooms and hallways that go on forever, becoming weirder and weirder the deeper he goes. Much of the movie is in a “found footage” shaky camera style (which I like), and the concept comes from a YouTube series that Parsons made as a teenager (he’s only 20 years old now). The idea is based on old internet posts about abandoned shopping malls and storage facilities—overlooked, “liminal” spaces.

What’s so brilliant about the film is that the dialogue is very sparse, leaving the viewer to fill in the gaps and impart meaning to what we’re witnessing. I read the film as a cautionary tale about AI’s shortcomings; the backrooms, and the monsters that inhabit them, are cheap imitations of reality. The Wall Street Journal‘s Jack Butler saw it as a lamentation for the lost pre-smartphone era of our youth, when it was more common for teenagers to go out and explore the world.

When I saw the film, I thought of Crystal City, a neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia, with a sprawling underground mall. I lived there in 2010, during my internship at Reason. Since I had three roommates and little privacy back in those immediate post-college days, I would often explore the mall at night—it connected to the metro, so it was open all hours—and make phone calls. At the time, there was a monster down there, too: If you took a wrong turn, you would accidentally run into an incredibly freaky life-sized Ronald McDonald statue. That McDonald’s, which was entirely underground and did not connect to the outside at all, closed in 2013.

What I’m saying is, I have been to the backrooms.