I still think most people are normal, and we badly need better incentives for people to go into policy (right now the incentives are for all our best people to go into private sector)
I agree. I also think much of this is driven by an online culture focused on driving clicks rather than discussion. It's easier to get noticed with socialist or nationalist hot takes than boring discussions about improving public services.
Why are we tolerating foreign Marxists who hate our nation? Revoke their naturalization, and deport them all. The time for niceties is over. We either fight them now or fight them later. Later will be more costly.
I used to describe my beliefs as "democratic socialist" (the Nordic model), but the DSA has ruined that. I need a new term for it.
The DSA movement is no different than what fuels MAGA on the right. The K-shaped economy is keeping a lot of people down. Right leaning people bought what Trump was selling because it was something different than the same politics that has led to GDP growth with wage stagnation and high inflation. Affordability is the issue driving all of this extremism because mainstream politicians weren't doing anything about it. The housing bill, assuming it becomes law, is the first thing Congress has done to address the issue in recent memory.
Another great post, full of interesting terms and themes! For one, it's tricky to use the word "liberal," since the term originally meant everything you say above - free choice, free markets, free enterprise, etc. There are not that many modern-day "liberals" who would put those ideas at the top of their lists; I personally use the term "progressive" when I'm thinking about the standard left-wing perspective today. This Left is hostile to an economy (and society) dictated to by market demands and often rejects laws (e.g. ICE) they disagree with.
The folks who just won those primaries sound like a bunch of crazies - Stalinists instead of actual DEMOCRATIC socialists, as in those of northern Europe, who run high-functioning, politically free (but small and often racially homogeneous) societies. So I ask that we not tar all socialisms with the same brush: garbage pick-up once a week is socialism - so is a group of firefighters saving your house without your having to write them a check. Banning foreign and/or wealthy American investors from buying up all the housing is socialism, as are price- and wage-protections (including tariffs) of any kind. The Mamdani effect is yet another overreaction to the election of 2024, which many on the Left will simply never get over - socialism in name only.
Okay, on this we're in agreement: Darializa Avila Chevalier is a plainly unfit person for office. But, hey, there's a lot of that going around these days (See: MTG, Trump et. al.) and her appointment to Congress isn't a choice we get to make (it's up to her constituency; that's America for you).
As usual, there's a lot to unpack (not always a good thing, imho; we can benefit from a narrow scope). I'm going to dive into what I feel is unwarranted anxiety around today's American socialist movement and actual implemented policy in today's administration.
First, the godless commies. Donald Trump and his administration has implemented a systematic approach to terrorizing immigrants (both legal, illegal, and naturalized), abducting aforementioned immigrants *and* Americans and sending them to literal gulags, restricting speech on free press, otherizing critics/declaring them accessories to terrorism, declaring the opposing party as "enemies of the state," launched a war without congressional consent or advice, created a shortage of fuel, increased inflation, forced public investment in private companies (chips, crypto, etc.), depressed trade, caused famine, and is working its way towards establishing the primacy of one religion over others. This is before we even start touching on the establishment of a kleptocracy, led by Elon Musk.
Each point above is a real, actual thing that the Trump administration has done. Almost line for line, this administration has done the bad socialist thing that you are so concerned about.
So, by the criteria you've listed above, Donald Trump, the Republican Party, and supporters of both are all godless commies.
But all of that is largely beside the point.
The concerns you have over regimes oppressing and systematically murdering populaces whilst in power has a name: authoritarianism. Authoritarianism manifests in many different ways and one common path to it is through populism. The medium it uses (socialism/fascism) is almost irrelevant.
So if what you fear is already here, then what is the distinguishing factor? It looks like it might be the normalization of extremist rhetoric within Congress. But there are two rebuttals/caveats to this:
1) Extremist rhetoric within politics has been fairly common since the Gingrich revolution in 1994, which accelerated today's extremist "winner take all" form of politics and cemented "party above country" loyalty among conservatives. (Democrats have tried to emulate this and have failed because its constituency is far more diverse.)
2) You're using loud extremists to paint the middle. This is a pretty common fallacy, but it appears you're equating the entirety of the DSA with Chevalier's positions and rhetoric. They may support each other in the short term because they're from the same ideological bloc, but the act of governing is much different than the rhetoric of running for office.
Mamdani, for example, has actually balanced New York City's budget — which was a $12 billion deficit (Notably, people aren't being shipped off to gulags to do this). He's also increasing NYPD headcount against the wishes of the DSA. This isn't to say that I'm a Mamdani fan or supporter, but suggest that self-described socialists are capable of responsible governance.
That all being said, yeah, the DSA is not my preferred choice. I prefer a moderate democrat and/or a squishy neoliberal. But if I have to choose between a DSA candidate or a generic Republican who will acquiesce to anything the current administration wants (including protecting literal pedophiles), then I'm going to vote for the DSA candidate every time.
It’s very troublesome that liberals and conservatives do not apparently fully understand the risk presented by the ultra liberals/socialists. What would it take for the younger generation to realize the potential dangers of socialism. Can’t they see what is happening to NYC?
I see how apathy begins. A couple blows, and ppl become tired. It's extremely silent. It occurs like we've collectively just missed a coffee. The other side gets energized, fanatical. And that's how you lose a game.
I'm sad that you took an otherwise great piece and spoiled it with your conspiracy theory about colleges indoctrinating students.
Still with no evidence you provided links to the Washington Times (known misinformation source) and a substack known for the same.
Universities are non-profits and have long raised funds from a wide variety of donors. Most professors never even meet the donors, or if they do it's a very small amount of time. Waving donor rolls around like a smoking gun is both misleading and inaccurate.
Meanwhile, you still promote Twitter which has proven data on misinformation and influence strategies that are active right now. Perhaps it's not the universities you should be worried about, but those same campaigns that would cause you to reference the Washington Times as an authoritative source.
Thanks that you liked (sounds like most) of the story I appreciate that. I'll reply to your other points which might help a bit.
The foreign funding data isn't from a Substack, it's from the Department of Education's own disclosure portal, the Network Contagion Research Institute, and the American Enterprise Institute. You can disagree with the implications but calling it a conspiracy theory when it's federally reported data is just inaccurate.
The "professors never meet donors" framing isn't persuasive to me, influence doesn't require a professor to shake a donor's hand. It works through grants, research priorities, campus organizations, speaker series, and the slow institutional drift that follows money.
On Twitter, I've never argued everything on any platform is true. My whole point is that you have to actively carve out a reliable signal from the noise, on every platform. And to add I don't think the misinformation on Twitter or TikTok is anodyne, agree with you there, but at least Twitter does have an occasional community note.
But here's what I find most interesting about your reply: even setting aside the funding data entirely, if a foreign adversary WERE successfully running an influence operation against American institutions, what would it look like? It would produce elected officials who openly disdain the country they're seeking to govern. Doesn't feel like a hypothetical this week, we just watched it win primaries. I feel like debating these points isn't the part we should be focused on anyway, we should be focused on getting better people into politics (bi-partisan for sure)
It's absolutely a conspiracy theory! You're taking one piece of data (donation rolls) and claiming it has unproven implications elsewhere. That's how conspiracy theories work!
And your response is textbook conspiracy theory defense. "But the data is correct". It is! It just doesn't say what you are claiming it says. It's like the folks talking about COVID vaccinated mothers having babies with birth defects at 2.3% (which is true) while the overall rate of birth defects for all mothers is... 2.3%.
Meanwhile, you think you can accurately filter through the misinformation on Twitter but college students are helpless victims of professors. That's another part of conspiracy theories: "Everyone else is a victim except for me".
I'm not debating the overall post, just the part about the universities. The issue of foreign influence in our elections is a big problem, and DSA isn't even the biggest example - MAGA is.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying a donor list proves a professor was bought or that every student is being indoctrinated. That would be an absurd claim.
I’m saying institutions have incentives, and influence can happen through funding, priorities, networks, and culture without anyone needing to hand out instructions. Universities are not uniquely immune from that, neither is our media.
I also agree with you that foreign influence and misinformation are problems across the political spectrum, including the right. My point is simply that we should be willing to examine influence wherever it appears, including institutions we generally trust.
No, your point was that universities are indoctrinating students and they are the cause of radicalism like the DSA. From the article: "The people driving this don't emerge from nowhere. They come from schools where anti-American professors, many funded by Qatar and China, have correctly identified the American university as the highest-leverage point for capturing the next productive class."
Incentives exist everywhere, that is not proof of anything. We all have incentives to lie on our taxes, but very few people actually do. You need actual evidence or else it's just a conspiracy theory.
"The Democrats would win in a walk if they simply acted like a normal party. Instead the machinery keeps selecting for whoever most aggressively signals opposition to American civilization, and the centrists keep complying rather than fighting."
The centrists tried fighting -- most notably in '16 and '24 -- and got dogwalked by Trump. If it wasn't for a one-in-a-lifetime global pandemic they most likely would have been annihilated in that cycle as well.
Specifically in NYC the DSA wouldn't be rising if the "centrists" had bothered to put up a better candidate for mayor than fucking Andrew Cuomo, who as governor of NY seemed to despise the city, has never lived there, and had previously been seen resigning his office in disgrace.
Fortunately the GOP has never claimed "centrists" like Barack Hussein Obama, Kamala Harris, the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi etc etc are communists so I'm sure them calling out the DSA as communists will definitely work and not just be more boy-who-cried-wolf nonsense.
Thank you for this. I feel like we, as a civilization, have taken a bunch of crazy pills. Hopefully, the effect wears off one of these days.
I still think most people are normal, and we badly need better incentives for people to go into policy (right now the incentives are for all our best people to go into private sector)
I agree. I also think much of this is driven by an online culture focused on driving clicks rather than discussion. It's easier to get noticed with socialist or nationalist hot takes than boring discussions about improving public services.
The crimes of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot should be highlighted just as much as the crimes of Hitler.
yes
Why are we tolerating foreign Marxists who hate our nation? Revoke their naturalization, and deport them all. The time for niceties is over. We either fight them now or fight them later. Later will be more costly.
I used to describe my beliefs as "democratic socialist" (the Nordic model), but the DSA has ruined that. I need a new term for it.
The DSA movement is no different than what fuels MAGA on the right. The K-shaped economy is keeping a lot of people down. Right leaning people bought what Trump was selling because it was something different than the same politics that has led to GDP growth with wage stagnation and high inflation. Affordability is the issue driving all of this extremism because mainstream politicians weren't doing anything about it. The housing bill, assuming it becomes law, is the first thing Congress has done to address the issue in recent memory.
Another great post, full of interesting terms and themes! For one, it's tricky to use the word "liberal," since the term originally meant everything you say above - free choice, free markets, free enterprise, etc. There are not that many modern-day "liberals" who would put those ideas at the top of their lists; I personally use the term "progressive" when I'm thinking about the standard left-wing perspective today. This Left is hostile to an economy (and society) dictated to by market demands and often rejects laws (e.g. ICE) they disagree with.
The folks who just won those primaries sound like a bunch of crazies - Stalinists instead of actual DEMOCRATIC socialists, as in those of northern Europe, who run high-functioning, politically free (but small and often racially homogeneous) societies. So I ask that we not tar all socialisms with the same brush: garbage pick-up once a week is socialism - so is a group of firefighters saving your house without your having to write them a check. Banning foreign and/or wealthy American investors from buying up all the housing is socialism, as are price- and wage-protections (including tariffs) of any kind. The Mamdani effect is yet another overreaction to the election of 2024, which many on the Left will simply never get over - socialism in name only.
Okay, on this we're in agreement: Darializa Avila Chevalier is a plainly unfit person for office. But, hey, there's a lot of that going around these days (See: MTG, Trump et. al.) and her appointment to Congress isn't a choice we get to make (it's up to her constituency; that's America for you).
As usual, there's a lot to unpack (not always a good thing, imho; we can benefit from a narrow scope). I'm going to dive into what I feel is unwarranted anxiety around today's American socialist movement and actual implemented policy in today's administration.
First, the godless commies. Donald Trump and his administration has implemented a systematic approach to terrorizing immigrants (both legal, illegal, and naturalized), abducting aforementioned immigrants *and* Americans and sending them to literal gulags, restricting speech on free press, otherizing critics/declaring them accessories to terrorism, declaring the opposing party as "enemies of the state," launched a war without congressional consent or advice, created a shortage of fuel, increased inflation, forced public investment in private companies (chips, crypto, etc.), depressed trade, caused famine, and is working its way towards establishing the primacy of one religion over others. This is before we even start touching on the establishment of a kleptocracy, led by Elon Musk.
Each point above is a real, actual thing that the Trump administration has done. Almost line for line, this administration has done the bad socialist thing that you are so concerned about.
- engineered famines (https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/04/world/lancet-usaid-global-aid-cuts-intl)
- gulags (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/trump-deportations-el-salvador/682267/)
- empty shelves (https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/22/tariff-pause-boosts-china-imports-retail-empty-shelves-supply-risk.html)
- millions of dead (https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-shutdown-has-led-to-hundreds-of-thousands-of-deaths/)
So, by the criteria you've listed above, Donald Trump, the Republican Party, and supporters of both are all godless commies.
But all of that is largely beside the point.
The concerns you have over regimes oppressing and systematically murdering populaces whilst in power has a name: authoritarianism. Authoritarianism manifests in many different ways and one common path to it is through populism. The medium it uses (socialism/fascism) is almost irrelevant.
So if what you fear is already here, then what is the distinguishing factor? It looks like it might be the normalization of extremist rhetoric within Congress. But there are two rebuttals/caveats to this:
1) Extremist rhetoric within politics has been fairly common since the Gingrich revolution in 1994, which accelerated today's extremist "winner take all" form of politics and cemented "party above country" loyalty among conservatives. (Democrats have tried to emulate this and have failed because its constituency is far more diverse.)
2) You're using loud extremists to paint the middle. This is a pretty common fallacy, but it appears you're equating the entirety of the DSA with Chevalier's positions and rhetoric. They may support each other in the short term because they're from the same ideological bloc, but the act of governing is much different than the rhetoric of running for office.
Mamdani, for example, has actually balanced New York City's budget — which was a $12 billion deficit (Notably, people aren't being shipped off to gulags to do this). He's also increasing NYPD headcount against the wishes of the DSA. This isn't to say that I'm a Mamdani fan or supporter, but suggest that self-described socialists are capable of responsible governance.
That all being said, yeah, the DSA is not my preferred choice. I prefer a moderate democrat and/or a squishy neoliberal. But if I have to choose between a DSA candidate or a generic Republican who will acquiesce to anything the current administration wants (including protecting literal pedophiles), then I'm going to vote for the DSA candidate every time.
Always appreciate your commentary Michael - I really just want normal centrist-esque people in both parties please
It’s very troublesome that liberals and conservatives do not apparently fully understand the risk presented by the ultra liberals/socialists. What would it take for the younger generation to realize the potential dangers of socialism. Can’t they see what is happening to NYC?
I see how apathy begins. A couple blows, and ppl become tired. It's extremely silent. It occurs like we've collectively just missed a coffee. The other side gets energized, fanatical. And that's how you lose a game.
🎯
I'm sad that you took an otherwise great piece and spoiled it with your conspiracy theory about colleges indoctrinating students.
Still with no evidence you provided links to the Washington Times (known misinformation source) and a substack known for the same.
Universities are non-profits and have long raised funds from a wide variety of donors. Most professors never even meet the donors, or if they do it's a very small amount of time. Waving donor rolls around like a smoking gun is both misleading and inaccurate.
Meanwhile, you still promote Twitter which has proven data on misinformation and influence strategies that are active right now. Perhaps it's not the universities you should be worried about, but those same campaigns that would cause you to reference the Washington Times as an authoritative source.
Thanks that you liked (sounds like most) of the story I appreciate that. I'll reply to your other points which might help a bit.
The foreign funding data isn't from a Substack, it's from the Department of Education's own disclosure portal, the Network Contagion Research Institute, and the American Enterprise Institute. You can disagree with the implications but calling it a conspiracy theory when it's federally reported data is just inaccurate.
The "professors never meet donors" framing isn't persuasive to me, influence doesn't require a professor to shake a donor's hand. It works through grants, research priorities, campus organizations, speaker series, and the slow institutional drift that follows money.
On Twitter, I've never argued everything on any platform is true. My whole point is that you have to actively carve out a reliable signal from the noise, on every platform. And to add I don't think the misinformation on Twitter or TikTok is anodyne, agree with you there, but at least Twitter does have an occasional community note.
But here's what I find most interesting about your reply: even setting aside the funding data entirely, if a foreign adversary WERE successfully running an influence operation against American institutions, what would it look like? It would produce elected officials who openly disdain the country they're seeking to govern. Doesn't feel like a hypothetical this week, we just watched it win primaries. I feel like debating these points isn't the part we should be focused on anyway, we should be focused on getting better people into politics (bi-partisan for sure)
It's absolutely a conspiracy theory! You're taking one piece of data (donation rolls) and claiming it has unproven implications elsewhere. That's how conspiracy theories work!
And your response is textbook conspiracy theory defense. "But the data is correct". It is! It just doesn't say what you are claiming it says. It's like the folks talking about COVID vaccinated mothers having babies with birth defects at 2.3% (which is true) while the overall rate of birth defects for all mothers is... 2.3%.
Meanwhile, you think you can accurately filter through the misinformation on Twitter but college students are helpless victims of professors. That's another part of conspiracy theories: "Everyone else is a victim except for me".
I'm not debating the overall post, just the part about the universities. The issue of foreign influence in our elections is a big problem, and DSA isn't even the biggest example - MAGA is.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying a donor list proves a professor was bought or that every student is being indoctrinated. That would be an absurd claim.
I’m saying institutions have incentives, and influence can happen through funding, priorities, networks, and culture without anyone needing to hand out instructions. Universities are not uniquely immune from that, neither is our media.
I also agree with you that foreign influence and misinformation are problems across the political spectrum, including the right. My point is simply that we should be willing to examine influence wherever it appears, including institutions we generally trust.
No, your point was that universities are indoctrinating students and they are the cause of radicalism like the DSA. From the article: "The people driving this don't emerge from nowhere. They come from schools where anti-American professors, many funded by Qatar and China, have correctly identified the American university as the highest-leverage point for capturing the next productive class."
Incentives exist everywhere, that is not proof of anything. We all have incentives to lie on our taxes, but very few people actually do. You need actual evidence or else it's just a conspiracy theory.
"The Democrats would win in a walk if they simply acted like a normal party. Instead the machinery keeps selecting for whoever most aggressively signals opposition to American civilization, and the centrists keep complying rather than fighting."
The centrists tried fighting -- most notably in '16 and '24 -- and got dogwalked by Trump. If it wasn't for a one-in-a-lifetime global pandemic they most likely would have been annihilated in that cycle as well.
Specifically in NYC the DSA wouldn't be rising if the "centrists" had bothered to put up a better candidate for mayor than fucking Andrew Cuomo, who as governor of NY seemed to despise the city, has never lived there, and had previously been seen resigning his office in disgrace.
Fortunately the GOP has never claimed "centrists" like Barack Hussein Obama, Kamala Harris, the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi etc etc are communists so I'm sure them calling out the DSA as communists will definitely work and not just be more boy-who-cried-wolf nonsense.
Hard agree. Democratic centrists today seem uniquely good at choosing terrible candidates.