Politics
Former DSA Member Warns Group Now Basically Running Foreign Terror Org Handbook
By BSN Staff, . BSN Network. Satire.
A former member of the Democratic Socialists of America stepped forward this week to issue a public warning that the organization he once believed was a scrappy home for American labor advocates has been fully captured by hardline Marxist and Leninist factions, and that the group's politics have drifted into territory he can only describe as a rebranded foreign terror operation with better Instagram graphics.
The ex-member, who spent several years inside DSA chapters and attended more potlucks than he now cares to admit, specifically named Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan physician and former gubernatorial candidate who has been a prominent face of the DSA-adjacent progressive movement, calling him 'fundamentally dishonest' and 'the kind of guy who uses the word 'solidarity' the way a car salesman uses the word 'investment.''
El-Sayed, for his part, has not responded to the allegations, which is itself a kind of response.
The defector's account, delivered through a lengthy social media thread that has since been shared widely in circles where people still read lengthy social media threads, alleges that DSA leadership meetings have shifted from debates about healthcare policy and housing rights to what he calls 'ideological purity spirals so tight you need a centrifuge to get out of them.'
'I joined because I wanted universal healthcare,' he wrote. 'I left because someone at my chapter told me I had to have a position on a 1971 Congolese land dispute before I could vote on the snack budget.'
The DSA's national communications office issued a statement describing the former member's claims as 'a mischaracterization of our robust internal democratic processes,' which is the kind of sentence that proves his point better than he could have.
Critics of the DSA have long noted the organization's tendency to issue statements of solidarity with overseas militant groups in language so carefully hedged it could double as a legal brief, while simultaneously being unable to pass a resolution about local bus funding without three amendment votes and a walkout.
El-Sayed, who ran for Michigan governor in 2018 on a platform of single-payer healthcare and was endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders, has cultivated a reputation as a telegenic, accessible face for democratic socialism. According to the defector, that reputation is the whole problem. He describes El-Sayed as 'a man who has mastered the aesthetics of the movement while being allergic to its accountability structures,' which, to be fair, is a skill set with a lot of applications in American public life.
Sources close to DSA leadership say the organization is simply evolving, and that accusations of ideological capture are themselves a form of ideological capture, which is exactly what someone captured would say.
The former member says he has no regrets about leaving, except for the tote bag, which was genuinely high quality.
He is currently unaffiliated.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ex-dsa-member-rips-abdul-el-sayed-warns-far-left-adopting-politics-foreign-terror-org