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Earlier this week the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) uploaded to YouTube the video of a panel discussion from its annual Socialism Conference, held in Chicago over Independence Day weekend. For those who hear the term democratic socialism and picture happy Scandinavians living their best lives instead of being chewed up in a capitalist rat race, it’s worth noting that the discussion featured open calls for the abolition of the nuclear family in the United States.
No surprise there. The DSA is not a separate political party but aligns with far Left Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (until they determined she wasn’t pro-Hamas enough) and Independents like lifelong communist Bernie Sanders. Like the Democrat Party itself, the DSA has become increasingly radical with younger generations over the last half century. Their anti-family stance aligns with Karl Marx’s imperative to abolish the family, which is essential to the establishment of his collectivist utopia. Why is it essential? Because Marx and the DSA view the nuclear family to be – as the video description on YouTube declares – “an inherently repressive, racist, and hetero-sexist institution that functionally reinforces and reproduces capitalism.” So it must be deconstructed, dismantled, and discarded on the ash heap of history.
The panel, titled “The Left and the Family: A Roundtable,” took place on July 4, while patriotic Americans everywhere were celebrating their freedom from tyranny. Socialist ideologues have no time for such unserious recreation; after all, they have an entire, deeply entrenched system of oppression to tear down. As my friend, author Michael Walsh, is fond of pointing out, “The Left never stop, they never sleep, they never quit.”
The all-female panel featured speakers Emily Janakiram of New York City for Abortion Rights, University of Chicago sociologist Eman Abdelhadi, Katie Gibson of the University of Chicago, and long-time BDS activist and Portland DSA member Olivia Katbi. As an aside: of course she is a BDS activist, because the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement designed to permanently destroy Israel as a Jewish nation-state has in recent years become one of the more prominent intersectional goals of socialism; at the DSA national convention in August 2017, for example, the organization passed a resolution explicitly affirming “solidarity with Palestinian civil society’s nonviolent [!] struggle against apartheid, colonialism, [and] military occupation, and for equality, human rights and self-determination.”
In the video (the comments section of which has been turned off, unsurprisingly, because the Left is totalitarian at heart and doesn’t tolerate opposing opinions), Abdelhadi declared that she and her fellow socialists are in a “reactionary, fascist moment” and must keep their eyes on the prize of a “radical liberatory horizon” in which food, housing, education, and child care are collectivized – just as Marx envisioned. She stated that black women and “indigenous communities” – groups that she claimed are “disposable to capitalism” – have already modeled this and the rest of the world should follow suit, as if this sort of collectivization is such a rousing success. She didn’t mention that a disproportionate number of black women have been forced to model this way of life because there is no husband and father in the home, which has proven disastrous for the black community and society at large.
Katie Gibson championed the liberation of children from the legal authority of parents, saying, “If you are born into a home headed by a Christian fundamentalist tyrant, for instance, you have [only] the rights that that Christian fundamentalist tyrant gives you.” Imagine if she had said “Muslim fundamentalist tyrant” — her DSA card would be revoked.
Janakiram questioned the very legitimacy of marriage, invoking a quote from Burkina Faso revolutionary Thomas Sankara: “The only real difference between marriage and prostitution is the price and duration of the contract.” She also asserted, “The institution of marriage can only exist alongside the criminalization of sex workers,” adding, “Women lead the fight against capitalism and imperialism, period.”
“I’m ambivalent about whether we use the F word [family] or not,” Abdelhadi said. “But I think for me it’s about focusing on policies, right? And being really clear about what material benefits we are gonna give people.” She emphasized that the Republican Party provides people with a “narrative,” and that the Left must offer a competing one with clear policy aims. She later lauded the far-Left proposals of New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, an avowed communist, saying, “All of that stands out for me as the kind of work that we need to be doing.”
During the Q&A segment of the discussion, one self-identified Baptist minister from Austin, a DSA member, told the panel he wants to be able to “perform abortions at a church” as part of the “revolutionary horizon.” What kind of demonic dream is this? What kind of church tolerates such a satanic saboteur as its minister? What kind of political movement embraces such a dark vision?
Activists like these at the DSA are in thrall to the most destructive atheist ideology known to history, but they are very serious, very committed, and chafing at the bit to overthrow the bourgeois status quo and to reach that utopian “liberatory horizon,” which includes the dissolution of family bonds so that mothers and fathers can commit themselves fully to the service of the state, while the children are raised by random adults in the “collective.” MAGA Americans are currently riding a wave of successes under the transformative Trump administration, but we must be on guard against complacency and over-confidence lest anti-capitalist revolutionaries like the DSA build momentum. New York City, after all, seems poised to elect a Muslim communist, who openly calls for seizing control of the means of production, as its next mayor.
Speaking of communism: “democratic socialists” can blather all they want about distinctions between communism and the much more palatable-sounding democratic socialism, but the end result of both is and always will be the same: an authoritarian government overseeing mass misery and murder for a populace stripped of private property and individual liberties. The liberatory horizon they dream of is a mirage obscuring a hellish future.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior
