An avalanche rocked American politics last week.
Across New York City, candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) won closely-watched Democratic Party primary contests. Buoyed by the support of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, himself a DSA member, they romped to victory over mainstream Democrats.
This is bad news for New York City and New York State, both of which face enormous fiscal challenges. It’s also bad news for national security. The more power socialists get, the more ruinous American foreign policy will be.
Consider Darializa Avila Chevalier. Avila Chevalier’s narrow win over Representative Adriano Espaillat means that will almost certainly be the next U.S. congresswoman for New York’s 13th district. Avila Chevalier is a radical in every sense of the word. Just 32 years old, she’s a PhD student researching “how the U.S. immigration system criminalizes Black immigrants from Latin America.” She’s chastised black and Arab men for “fetishizing ugly colonizer women.” She’s a prison abolitionist who won’t say whether the state should lock up murderers. She doesn’t mind being called a communist. She wants to remove America’s borders and “seize the means of production.” As for her patriotism, she’s called the United States “a f****** disgrace.” She despises Republicans and thinks no better of Democrats, calling Joe Biden a “war criminal.”
Speaking of foreign policy, Avila Chevalier’s views on the matter are extreme. Her mantra is to “invest in our babies here and not in bombs abroad.” As she sees it, America can do no right. It’s an imperialist enterprise that subjugates the oppressed peoples of the world. What’s the root of all global problems? The United States. Her blame America first mindset drove her in February 2022 to hold the United States, not Russia, responsible for the war in Ukraine. Yes, Vladimir Putin was coerced by Washington into mounting a massive invasion of his sovereign neighbor. This is part and parcel of Avila Chevalier’s worldview. Rather than a benevolent hegemon that has expended so much in defense of freedom, she views America as a force for evil.
The United States is rivaled only by Israel in this department. Avila Chevalier regards Israel, a parliamentary democracy with full political rights for all citizens, whether Jewish, Arab, or otherwise, with a striking degree of contempt. To call her anti-Zionist is to understate her antipathy. On October 8, 2023, one day after the worst terror attack in Israel’s history, Avila Chevalier attended a rally in Times Square celebrating Hamas’ bloodlust. The gathering was so vile that even Mamdani denounced it. When asked more recently to condemn Hamas, Avila Chevalier replied that the question “ignores the 75 years of occupation that the Palestinian people have been subjected to and the conditions that folks were living under before this genocide began.” She co-founded Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which turned the Ivy League school into an encampment-filled laughingstock in 2024, and called the infantile display “beautiful.” This is socialism in action.
If only Avila Chevalier’s antics were confined to a university seminar. Come next January, Avila Chevalier will no longer be a graduate student. She’ll be one of only 535 lawmakers in the U.S. government. That means she’ll be an integral part of the legislative branch of the most powerful country on earth. She’ll sit on committees, participate in hearings, and vote on legislation. She’ll have a large platform to disseminate her ideas. There’s precedent for her tenure. Avila Chevalier will follow in the footsteps of two DSA members already in Congress: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib. Both are ardent opponents of American engagement overseas.
As Avila Chevalier and more DSA politicians are elected to Congress, they will steer American foreign policy in a dangerous direction. The consequences are foreseeable. They’ll rail against American “militarism.” They’ll advocate cutting, if not abolishing, the U.S. armed forces. They’ll favor withdrawing from NATO and abrogating defense treaties with Japan, South Korea, and other allies out of the conviction that America is the main threat to global security. They’ll be friendly to American adversaries like China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, and North Korea. They’ll align themselves with anti-American ideologies like jihadism and communism.
This is no way to run a country. For America to prosper, it must reject the socialism of Avila Chevalier and her fellow travelers in favor of capitalism. For America to be secure, it must engage with the world ways anathema to socialists. For America to be free, it must restrain the state, not accord socialists the absolute power they invariably desire.
Right now, the DSA is a minority of the Democratic Party. But things are changing fast. If the Democratic establishment is unable to keep the DSA in check, socialists could soon dominate one of America’s two major parties. If they get their way, the world will be less prosperous, less secure, and less free.
