Membership for the Democratic Socialists of America has tripled since last year

[Famous Mortimer]

I'm a member of the DSA since before the recent explosion. Actually most of these people are kind of nuts and talk about "abolishing capitalism", making every business be a worker co-op. They generally make fun of people (like me) who think "socialism is just the government doing stuff".

[Famous Mortimer]

If it takes an empowered, unabashed socialist movement to fight the far-right Republicans, then so be it.  I would side with the former before the latter any day of the week (as long as we aren't veering into the nutty elements like Trotskyism or Marxism-Leninism).

Not really much of a chance of that. the DSA leaders like Cornel West despise the far-far-left.

They're almost entirely Marxists although Leninists are still a minority.

Cornel West isn't really involved in the organization at all. He's an "honorary co-chair" which means he got a special letter in the mail about 10 years ago and he didn't actively reject it.

[Famous Mortimer]

I've been leaning towards joining up myself.

Are these a lot of ex-Democratic Sanders fans? Very curious if the DSA can grow to the size of the Greens by 2024 if not 2020.

Having a liberal alternative party not run by kooks would be great.

Yes, the DSA is mostly people who supported Bernie Sanders.

It is not really a political party in the traditional sense. It does not have ballot access anywhere and so far it has not made any attempts to gain it. Historically, it has been an organization that did all of its activity within the Democratic Party. Now that it has taken on all these new members, there is some debate about that, but it still appears to be the main strategy for the time being.

Actually, DSA is still pretty kooky. It's weird because its resurgence has been primarily the result of promotion by Jacobin and Chapo Trap House, both of which are identity politics skeptical enterprises. Most of the new members, however, are too dumb to pick up on this. Every meeting is still derailed by discussions about police abolition, abolishing borders, and how we can recruit more women in hijabs.

[Famous Mortimer]

Membership profile is basically the same as the Green Party except a little bit less New Age-y but even that's not really that much of a difference since I would say the New Age-y-ness of the Green Party is often overplayed for humorous effect.

[Famous Mortimer]

I love how socialism and communism is okay and hip nowadays but if someone is right-wing they go crazy and call you a fascist. Why is fascism worse than communism? Both are terrible and have killed millions in the past.

I known many people who are involved in DSA, Antifa and other left-wing groups. I have never met a single communist. Every one of them was a socialist of the European variety.

Communism is a terrible ideology, sure, but these people are all socialists. To slander hundreds of thousands of people (not to mention declare false equivalence with fascists) is despicable.

Basically everyone-everyone-in NYC DSA is a Marxist at least. Most call themselves communist although some will point out that Soviet style Marxism-Leninism wasn't "real Communism" and they are advocating for anarcho-communism (which is actually dumber if you ask me, at least Marxism-Leninism can actually exist). This wouldn't be that embarrassing except these people are not all college freshmen, some are pushing 30.

Re:Antifa,  although not an organized group, people who identify as Antifa are pretty much all anarcho-communists by definition. They would be outraged to be compared to European style socialists. Most think social democracy and fascism are literally the same.

So in conclusion, I don't know which DSAers and Antifa you are talking to but they are extremely unrepresentative.

[Famous Mortimer]

So two more people joined the Democratic Socialists of America?

It really was basically a paper organization until late last year. Prior to that, it was mostly 90 year old Upper East Side Jews who actually were normal social democrats and anti-Communists (real Bernie Sanders types if you will). The old guard has been completely overwhelmed by the new members though. A few months ago a social media person got fired because they tweeted that the DSA was anti-communist (this is in the organization's constitution) and all the new members freaked out.

[Famous Mortimer]

Another controversy that has torn the group apart: someone made a very nice animated propaganda video about how great democratic socialism is. It was a bunch of stick figure people. Of course all the stick figure people were POC, there was a hijabi among them. Everyone really liked the video at first. Then someone pointed out that one of the stick figure people was a police officer (non-White of course) and people started demanding the video be taken off. "Democratic socialism benefits everyone" was the tag line of the video but lots of people were saying that we shouldn't promote the idea that it benefits cops. Others wanted to keep the video but tried to be Moderate Heroes by saying things like "look, I support prison and police abolition but for right now cops exist".