Meet America’s New Un-Americans… the DSA

 by Paul Kengor

n all-time favorite whipping boy of the American Left is the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Most readers wouldn’t recognize the group by its proper acronym — HCUAA — but they certainly know the Left’s reordered, twisted acronym: the dread “HUAC.” That translates to the “House Un-American Committee.” Improperly rendered, yes, but the label has stuck. You can succeed at such propaganda when your ideology pervades the media, Hollywood, academia, the culture — what we at The American Spectator have long called the Kultursmog. 

Note the cynical repackaging of the committee and its mission: The Left, and especially far-left communist organs such as the Daily Worker, attempted to recast this important committee of the U.S. House of Representatives as un-American itself. That was a rather audacious move by the comrades, given who they were, and what the committee was not. The fact is that HCUAA had been run by Democrats and Republicans alike throughout its existence — by solid, bipartisan congressmen. The Democrat chairs of the House Committee on Un-American Activities ran from Rep. Martin Dies (D-TX) in the 1930s, to Rep. Francis Walter (D-PA), to Rep. Richard Ichord (D-MO) in the 1970s.

No, dear progressive snowflake, “HUAC” wasn’t run by villainous Republican Joe McCarthy. Senator McCarthy was, uh, in the Senate — where, incidentally, he was often joined by stalwart anti-communist Democrats like John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, Pat McCarran of Nevada, James Eastland of Mississippi, and Thomas Dodd of Connecticut, the latter two being anti-communist pillars on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and chair and vice chair of the outstanding Subcommittee on Internal Security. Those guys exposed countless self-proclaimed “progressives” as in fact closet communists. For this, they have never been forgiven by the Left and forever vilified by liberal historians.

Nonetheless, the task of “HUAC” was a noble one. It was charged with investigating extremist elements within the United States, whether they be fascists, communists, American sympathizers of Nazis (the German-American Bund), or American Bolsheviks. The committee members were tasked with defending America, and they thus wanted to know whether certain fifth-column elements were working to subvert the system from within. The American Left, of course, had no problem when the reviled “HUAC” was investigating closet Nazis, but as soon as the committee set its sights on Soviet supporters, well — hell’s bells — that was downright un-American!

And yet, what could be more un-American than, say, the oath sworn by members of the American Communist Party in the 1930s? It went like this: “I pledge myself to rally the masses to defend the Soviet Union, the land of victorious socialism. I pledge myself to remain at all times a vigilant and firm defender of the Leninist line of the party, the only line that insures the triumph of Soviet Power in the United States.” This particular oath was issued in 1935, just as Joseph Stalin was ramping up his Great Terror that annihilated tens of millions. 

Yes, that was the oath to which these American Stalinists swore their allegiance. They were loyal Soviet patriots, literally pledged by oath to defend socialism and the Soviet Union. As American Communist Party chief William Z. Foster candidly told Congress during his testimony in 1930, their flag was the red flag, not the stars and stripes. Sure, they might have been American citizens, but they certainly didn’t support America as conceived by the founding fathers. They wanted to replace the American system with a Soviet system. As Langston Hughes put it, “Put one more ‘S’ in the USA to make it Soviet. The USA when we take control will be the USSA.” Or as William Z. Foster called it, a “Soviet America.”

And yet, when these American Bolsheviks were called to testify before Congress on their pro-Soviet activities to subvert the American system — and were asked if they were now or had ever been a member of that Leninist-Stalinist party pledged to the USSR rather than the USA — what did they do? They wrapped themselves in the very American flag and U.S. Constitution that they secretly wanted to torch. They pleaded the First Amendment, and they pleaded the Fifth Amendment. The temerity of the whole thing was breathtaking, almost laughable if not so serious.

And yet — and yet — when a committee like “HUAC” called them out for being what they obviously were — which was un-American — they cried foul at the mere suggestion. Shouldn’t the accusation have been a badge of honor to these intrepid comrades?

All of which brings me to the American Left’s newest assemblage of un-Americans. It is the Democratic Socialists of America, which rightly bills itself “the largest socialist organization in the United States.” 

I’ve followed the DSA and its members for years, writing about them consistently at The American Spectator. I’ve warned about their cynical strategy to take over the Democratic Party. For this, I was called paranoid, akin to what “HUAC” committee members were called by the Left back in the day. They and I alike, you see, saw a red under every bed. But in truth, all you needed to do was follow these people and see what they were saying. 

To that end, a central figure who candidly spoke to this strategy was Justice Democrats founder Cenk Uygur, who said, “What we need to do is take over the Democratic Party. We’re going to primary all of the establishment Democrats ….  all vulnerable Democrats.” Collaborating with the DSA and its members-candidates, Uygur declared: “We want hundreds. We want to replace Congress.” He rightly noted that if they could elect to Congress a dozen or two individuals like Congressgirl Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, “People would freak the hell out.” 

Uygur said that over 10 years ago, and now folks are indeed freaking the hell out. Today’s Democrats are no longer scoffing. They’re sweating. They’re screaming. That would include the cackling, screeching, ragin’ Cajun James Carville. “I have no intention of ever being in the same  political party with that guy,” Carville says of Hasan Piker — one of the comrades. “Now, I think that a majority — overwhelming majority of Democrats agree with me — but this idea that we’re going to seize the means of production and this — just go look at the DSA platform.” 

Old Serpent Head Carville isn’t alone in his angst. He and traditional Democrats are looking at that DSA platform and are terrified at the very real prospect of DSA members hijacking their party with their socialist Trojan Horse. Actually, it isn’t even a Trojan Horse anymore. It’s out in the open, as are the Marxist sympathies and networks of the DSA’s leadership. 

The enemy is inside the gates, armed with its ideas.

Speaking of which, it’s a self-evident truth that socialism, communism, and Marxism are antithetical to the ideals the American system was founded upon. Any reading of the writings of leading socialists, communists, and Marxists makes that plain as day. Take a mere few hours to read the very brief Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels. It blatantly goes against everything the American founders believed. 

But if that wasn’t already obvious to everyday Americans at a theoretical level, the DSA is currently making it so obvious that a 5th-grader in an elementary school civics class can tell the difference. Today’s DSA members running for office as Democrats are openly calling for a radical restructuring of the American system. They’re not shy about it. Barack Obama was devious enough not to give details when he called for a “fundamental transformation” of the United States of America. But these people? They’re not hiding anything. They’re sharing their vision in media interviews with stunned reporters (including CNN reporters) and with slick pamphlets posted online with full transparency. 

You’ve heard the comments from DSA members-turned-Democratic Party candidates like Francesca Hong or from DSA co-chair Megan Romer, calling for everything from replacing to cancelling to abolishing prisons, the police, Thanksgiving, the presidency, the U.S. Supreme Court, to, hell, Congress itself. If you’re looking for formal statements on the record, you need go no further than clicking the current program for the Democratic Socialists of America at its website. The PDF is 20 pages long and includes official positions that call for everything from eliminating the Department of Defense (dubbed the “Department of War”) to “fully abolishing the police and prison system” to “Abolish the Senate…. Abolish the Electoral College. Replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.” 

The DSA’s “program for ending capitalist oligarchy and creating a real democracy” includes demands for “public ownership of the largest corporations.”

And of course, being that these people are cultural-sexual-moral maniacs, their platform also includes such gems as a “socialist feminism” that “fights for queer liberation” and ends “patriarchal restrictions on abortion, childbirth and childraising, gender expression and transition.”

What can we say about these ideas? Obviously, they’re infantile — what our founder, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., once described as “wombistic leftism.” They’re idiotic — as moronic as their (and Zohran Mamdani’s) new-fangled “municipal socialism.” They’re many things. They are many troubling things. We could all lay out a litany of just how bad they are and why.

But for here, for now, it should suffice to say that these ideas — and those behind them — are quintessentially un-American. Yes, these people may be American citizens, but they are un-American. They are the Un-Americans.

https://spectator.org/paul-kengor-meet-americas-new-un-americans-the-dsa/