AP Photo/Seth Wenig New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani celebrates with Democratic congressional nominee Darializa Avila Chevalier. For the last decade, legacy news outlets have produced endless handwringing over the rise of President Trump and “MAGA-aligned” Republicans. And what some have called a “hostile takeover” of the Republican Party has indeed been a problem, arguably turning the party into a personality cult. But at least it has been acknowledged.
The radical progressive and socialist takeover of the Democratic Party poses an equal, if not greater, problem. But one would hardly know it, given our media’s selective sense of urgency.
The last three years have seen a flurry of activity both inside and outside the political space, suggesting a shift toward ever-more extreme and revolutionary leftist activity. There have been at least three assassination attempts against President Trump, a targeted political assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk (celebrated publicly by a shocking, embarrassing number of liberals), multiple deadly or potentially deadly attacks on government facilities and officers by leftist radicals, and actual hostage-taking by pro-Hamas student activists.
Meanwhile, in the electoral space, Democratic voters are continuing the trend of nominating socialists for both state and federal office. Avowed socialists now rule Seattle and New York. One of them will soon be mayor of Washington, D.C. — perhaps also Los Angeles.
The swath of socialist Democrats nominated last week in New York — some of them defeating longtime incumbent Democrats — are not just ignorant, inexperienced and hostile toward the United States as a concept. They are also opposed to fundamental social frameworks that make life in a free society possible. Some of them, for example, do not even support imprisoning murderers and other violent criminals, let alone deporting criminal aliens.
This new breed of Democrat also makes litmus tests of extreme fringe positions on issues that poll 80-20 against them. This is not a continuation of Democratic politics in a new direction, but a hostile takeover of the party by revolutionaries who want to scrap its modern center-left ethos altogether.
Outside of conservative media, there have been few, if any, doomsday warnings about this — certainly not from the usual suspects who typically warn that anything vaguely conservative, including disparaging remarks about biased media or angry parents at school board meetings, is a threat to the republic.
Among those who won their New York primaries last week was Palestinian-American activist Aber Kawas (D), who has described the Sept. 11 attacks as a “manifestation” of America’s systems of “capitalism and racism and white supremacy.” Kawas, a fierce ICE abolitionist, regularly cites her deported father as evidence of America’s “cruel immigration system.” Her father was deported after he was convicted of fraud and making false statements.
New York voters also handed Darializa Chevalier a nomination for U.S. House. On Oct. 8, 2023, long before Israel counterattacked Gaza, she was marching in celebration of the Palestinian slaughter of Israeli civilians. Chevalier has endorsed defunding and abolishing the police, abolishing borders, and “seizing the means of production.” She believes “all deportations are wrong,” even of convicted criminals, and she co-founded a student group dedicated explicitly to “the total eradication of Western Civilization.”
Asked last week to respond to allegations that she is a communist, Chevalier — who has been in college for 14 years — offered up a lot of word salad but did not deny it. “For far too long, this reactive conversation of what we should be afraid of has prevented us from being able to have a politics of hope and a politics of life that Democrats can actually identify with,” she said.
The New York primaries come after Maine Democrats nominated Graham Platner, a self-described “Antifa supersoldier” and “communist.” Platner helped train the Socialist Rifle Association, a leftist paramilitary group, and proudly, knowingly wore a Nazi SS skull tattoo for nearly two decades before covering it up to run for office.
This is in addition to New Jersey Democrats’ selection of Adam Hamawy from a field of 12 U.S. House primary candidates. Hamawy’s record includes testifying on behalf of the “Blind Sheikh” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and working for an al-Qaida-linked financing front.
Democratic voters in Michigan may soon nominate Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D). El-Sayed’s top campaign surrogate, Hasan Piker, believes that communism is great, that Mao Zedong did nothing wrong and that murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson got what he deserved for committing “social murder.” Piker preaches to a large and growing streaming audience online that theft is good and refers to Jews as “inbred” and “pig-dogs.”
Add to this recent polling showing that only 36 percent of Democrats take pride in being American. Separate data show that liberals are more likely to say political violence is sometimes justified. Are you getting the picture here? The remaining non-radicalized Democrats are right to be worried.
Both the Republican and Democratic Parties have changed in the last 30 to 50 years. But the modern left is quite a bit farther from Bill Clinton than the right is from Ronald Reagan. Could you imagine Clinton — Bill or Hillary — chalking 9/11 up to “white supremacy?” Or arguing that we should not deport convicted criminal aliens because then they would be victimized by the system twice?
Based on the calm and measured news coverage of last week’s victorious clowns, you would think that Democrats were having a normal election cycle. They are not. The surge of left-wing socialist types into the political space is surely at least as concerning as the success of Republican candidates who are too slavishly devoted to President Trump.
This is more than a simple editorial gripe. The failure to treat left-wing fanatics for what they are builds a permission structure for such radicals to become even more unhinged and incite others to do the same. There is no real social cost to being a degenerate dirtbag left-winger — not like there is for being the right-wing equivalent, a racist or a fascist. White supremacist David Duke was laughed out of politics 34 years ago after serving a single term in a state office that he had won in a special election. Domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, in contrast, was a guest recently at the grand opening of the Obama Presidential Center, seated three rows down from the former president.
Every major newsroom is still getting mileage out of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, even six years later. For some in the news and entertainment business, it was worse than Sept. 11. Now compare this to the spotty, misleading coverage last week of the eight members of a North Texas Antifa cell who were sentenced to a combined 450 years in prison for their respective roles in a premeditated ambush and attempted murder of government workers at an ICE detention center.
Chances are, you didn’t even see anything in the news about their botched attack — and if you did, it might have been framed as “a protest that turned violent,” which it most certainly was not. PBS, newly liberated from its federal funding, incredibly tried to frame the prison sentences as “Trump’s crackdown on dissent.”
Political radicalization is political radicalization. Either we start taking it all seriously, or we’re not being serious at all.
Becket Adams is a journalist and media critic in Washington.
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Opinions - Campaign I’m a Democratic strategist. I won’t stay silent about Graham Platner. by Laurie A. Watkins, opinion contributor 35 seconds ago Opinions - Campaign / 35 seconds ago 
