DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM: Facts, Fiction, and Fallacy
A primer on why the most disingenuous people you know are lying to you about who Zohran Mamdani, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ilhan Omar are
On November 4, 2025, one of the best things that could have happened in 2025 happened: Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral race. The cynics out there might have called it an “upset victory” in that he was running against political royalty (even if said royalty is a bit… tarnished) and had to claw his way through a very crowded primary just to become the Democratic candidate in the first place.
It’s a testament to his incredible campaign that he managed to clobber the competition every step of the way. This was a man who remained focused on the cost of living, the cost of traveling across the city, child care, and high housing costs, who did it all through good old fashioned grassroots organizing, with a modern technological approach. It certainly didn’t hurt that he found a way to never fold on his own convictions while still being able to hear concerns from EVERYONE in the city.
Yet as loud as the support has been of Mamdani, there’s been a susurran hum of backlash from conservatives and normies alike who take issue over one specific part of Zohran’s identity:
“I’m a Democratic socialist,” Zohran Mamdani once said in a Q&A, “and what socialism means to me is a commitment to dignity, a state that provides whatever is necessary for its people to live a dignified life. So the typical big three that we talk about are housing, health care, education.”
Oh no. The big nasty S word. It’s one that you’ve probably seen get thrown around at Zohran, but it’s also one that’s used interchangeably with “communist,” “Marxist,” and for the truly incendiary posters…. “Nazi.” None of those terms are really accurate for Zohran’s ethos, though. As he explained to CNN all the way back in June 2025,
“I have many critiques of capitalism. And I think ultimately, the definition for me of why I call myself a democratic socialist is the words of Dr. King decades ago. He said, call it democracy or call it democratic socialism. There must be a better distribution of wealth for all of God’s children in this country.”
Yet the confusion persists! Something called ‘The Patriot Post’ claims “the evidence” supports the “fact” that Zohran is “a communist, not a socialist.” The Blaze claimed he was something worse - “a woke zealot.” And Donald Trump, ever the man of sound mind, called him a “lunatic.”
What’s absolutely baffling about all of this is that Zohran Mamdani is neither communist nor lunatic; he might be a little bit woke, but as we discussed last week, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. This tells me one of two things is true:
Most people don’t know what the fuck a democratic socialist is; or, more likely,
Powerful opposition KNOW that most people don’t know what a democratic socialist is - and are WEAPONIZING that.
So we’re going to do something different today, and do a quick primer on what a democratic socialist even is. Who are they? What do they stand for? Who are some famous democratic socialists? Is it true that NAZIS were democratic socialists? And most importantly: is being a democratic socialist even a bad thing?
WHAT IS DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM?
One of the first places you might look when you’re trying to figure out what democratic socialism is in America is, fitting, the website for Democratic Socialists of America, or the DSA for short. However, their definition, while based, is not exactly a definition:
“Capitalism is a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit. We must replace it with democratic socialism, a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society. We believe there are many avenues that feed into the democratic road to socialism. Our vision pushes further than historic social democracy and leaves behind authoritarian visions of socialism in the dustbin of history.
We want a democracy that creates space for us all to flourish, not just survive, and answers the fundamental questions of our lives with the input of all. We want to collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation. We want the multiracial working class united in solidarity instead of divided by fear. We want to win “radical” reforms like single-payer Medicare for All, defunding the police/refunding communities, the Green New Deal, and more as a transition to a freer, more just life.
We want a democracy powered by everyday people. The capitalist class tells us we are powerless, but together we can take back control.”
These are all pretty incredible platforms to hold, but they don’t answer the key question. What is democratic socialism, and what differentiates it from run of the mill socialism? According to Brittannica, it’s a “political ideology that supports the establishment of a democratically run and decentralized form of socialist economy. Modern democratic socialists vary widely in their views of how a proper socialist economy should function, but all share the goal of abolishing capitalism rather than improving it through state regulation (as preferred by social democrats). They also prioritize democracy as an end over democracy as a means, and some democratic socialists see revolution as an acceptable method of achieving the democracy they desire.”
Whereas communism is defined via Marxist-Leninist beliefs rooted in eradicating the idea of a class system, democratic socialism is more in tune with making the government work FOR the people and making it more of a net positive in people’s lives. Think Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, or European welfare states that exist within a capitalistic framework while seeking to phase out capitalism in due time. Labor reform. Pro-union policies. Tuition-free universities and trade schools, universal healthcare, the list goes on.
Even though it’s not a perfect equivalent, think of democratic socialism as something akin to the UK or Australia’s Labor/Labour parties, which are historically center-left parties that are still further left than international Liberal parties or even the American Democratic party. Even though the long term goal of democratic socialism is to transform or even demolish capitalism, working within the system requires the starting point to be somewhere akin to Australian Labor: improving the rights of workers, while improving the welfare state and investing in public services.
The DSA is primarily led by the National Political Committee (NPC), a twenty-five-person board of directors of DSA elected every two years into DSA’s National Convention. According to the DSA, “Every DSA chapter is entitled to send a certain number of delegates to the National Convention, based upon the chapter’s size. There are also “at-large” delegates to represent areas where there are no active chapters.” The DSA even has an equalitarian constitution that states each chapter:
requires that no more than half NPC members shall be men, and that at least 20% of the NPC slots be reserved for people of color.
gives the NPC the power to charter DSA locals and commissions, as well as DSA’s Youth Section.
WHAT IS THE HISTORY BEHIND DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM?
You might want to sit down for this one, but democratic socialism did indeed branch off from socialism in America.
Back in 1901, the Socialist Party of America was founded through a merger of Social Democrat and Socialist Labor parties. The Socialist Party was a very ideologically diverse group, as you might have gathered from the merging of minds, but the most famous leader was a man named Eugene Debs who ran for president five times as a Socialist candidate and even gained 6% of the vote in 1912 with nearly a million votes, as well as over 3% in 1920 when he was in prison for opposing World War I.
Although he’s not considered the “father” of democratic socialism like many important figures, it can be argued that Debs is one of the most important figureheads in what we think about when we think about democratic socialism. According to a PBS biography, Debs was a high school dropout raised by intellectuals that found his calling as a train paint-scraper. It was working amongst the “rough-and-tumble of railway men” that Debs found strength in the common man, and he eventually co-founded the Industrial Workers of the World.
All of this coincided with the rise of new money - fewer and fewer people, such as Carnegie and Rockefeller, controlling said wealth. “For the nation’s working class, and leaders like Eugene Debs, it was a time to be angry,” PBS writes. This led to Debs leading the American Railway Union in a confrontation with federal troops who had been disbursed to break up the Pullman strike of 1894, which resulted in Debs’ being jailed - and his political awakening, in which he began to believe things roughly adjacent to European labor.
Debs was, and remains, one of the most famous socialists in America, long after his 1926 death. You might even remember a quote of his from Zohran Mamdani’s victory speech:
“As Eugene Debs once said, ‘I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity,’” Mamdani stated.
Eugene Debs’ beliefs inspired that of the Democratic Socialists of America, founded in 1982 by Michael Harrington - a Yale dropout that wanted to bring socialists from across America together, all while taking inspiration from the women’s movement, civil rights movement, gay rights movement, and really any other social movements in America. It was pretty ambitious, but Harrington considered the DSA “the left wing of the possible.”
OKAY, BUT ISN’T THIS JUST SOCIALISM?
Again, no.
And it’s not communism either.
As stated by Olivia B. Waxman for Time:
“The simple answer is that democratic socialists believe in a democracy, while communist forms of government are not democracies.
“Democratic socialists believe in elections, the First Amendment — [they] want ordinary people to have more power in a more democratic system,” [professor of History at Georgetown University Michael] Kazin says. “In communist countries, the state controls everything and a small group of people control the state, a tyrannical system.”
Confusion is understandable, however, because the USSR did stand for ‘Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.’ But for context, here’s how Kazin explains when the distinction started to be made between socialism and communism: “All communists call themselves socialists because they want it on the way to pure communism.” But, he explains, the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917 caused a split between those who identified primarily as communist and those who identified as socialist. In 1919, the Bolsheviks formed the Comintern (Communist International), an international organization of communist parties and groups. Those who wanted to follow in Russia’s footsteps joined, essentially declaring themselves communist, while others decided to stick with socialism.”
WHO ARE SOME FAMOUS DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS?
You probably know the biggest names in American politics currently, like Senator Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, and former Rep. Cori Bush. You probably also know of people like former UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn or political critic Noam Chomsky. But one of the common misconceptions people have about democratic socialism is who OTHER democratic socialists are.
For instance: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR’s New Deal is so emblematic of democratic socialist goals that he is often, incorrectly, called a democratic socialist. However, FDR can more accurately be called a social democrat or a social liberal. He wanted to save capitalism, and use the New Deal as the ends to do it, rather than the beginning of further reform of transformation. Michael Harrington once stated that the New Deal was “a good beginning, yet it still left ownership, as well as the power of decision-making, in private hands. And Senator Sanders has long stated he wants to expand the New Deal into “a 21st-century economic bill of rights.”
But interestingly, there’s a wealth of evidence to support the idea that Martin Luther King Jr. was a democratic socialist, if not a complete “secret” socialist. Michael Harrington was indeed one of King’s advisors, according to Time, and toward the end of his life, King became focused on economic justice - his March on Washington slogan, after all, was “jobs and freedom.” King was never officially tied to any socialist or democratic socialist group, but as the man behind The Poor People’s Campaign who once stated that “the triple evils” were “racism, economic exploitation, and militarism…” well.
I know how to add two and two. Do you?
BUT V, THE NAZIS!!!
*sigh*
I know most of us here are smarter than this. The old “SOCIALISTS ARE LITERALY NAZIS, THEY’RE NATIONAL SOCIALISTS, CHECKMATE LIBS ZOMG LOL” routine. But it’s worth mentioning, and even diving into, the fact that “national socialists” aren’t socialists at all - and they’re definitely not democratic socialists by any stretch of the imagination. The easiest way to put it is - you know how Donald Trump is technically a Republican, but his beliefs are more in line with far-right authoritarianism and rule by any means necessary? And therefore, he has effectively tainted the beliefs of the Republican party by dragging them far outside the confines of the Overtown window?
That’s effectively what happened to the National Socialists, or as you may know them by their original name, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. I’m sure you knew that. RIGHT? Anyway, the Nazis were a struggling regional party until Adolf Hitler joined them. Hitler was always a racist nationalist, and his rhetoric reflected that, but the brothers Otto and Grego Strasser, who founded the Nazi Party, were socialists. Hitler used them as a means to an end to reach impressionable minds with pro-worker messaging wrapped up in racist language.
According to Brittannica, “by the late 1920s… with the German economy in free fall, Hitler had enlisted support from wealthy industrialists who sought to pursue avowedly anti-socialist policies. Otto Strasser soon recognized that the Nazis were neither a party of socialists nor a party of workers, and in 1930 he broke away to form the anti-capitalist Schwarze Front (Black Front). Gregor remained the head of the left wing of the Nazi Party, but the lot for the ideological soul of the party had been cast. Hitler allied himself with leaders of German conservative and nationalist movements, and in January 1933 German President Paul von Hindenburg appointed him chancellor. Hitler’s Third Reich had been born, and it was entirely fascist in character.”
To put it all even more simply, you know how people often accuse Donald Trump of wrapping his fascistic beliefs in populist language, like he was doing the very worst kind of skinwalking of Bernie Sanders imaginable? That’s what Hitler did first: he took the LANGUAGE of socialism to achieve his own authoritarian goals, but he never once believed in anything resembling socialism.
This, effectively, made the name of the Nazi party a lie. An artifact of something Hitler stole from literal socialists. Jacobin actually has a very intriguing analysis of how the Nazi party were instead “hypercapitalists” using the “socialist” moniker at a time when socialism was, indeed, gaining popularity across the western world.
“They were strongly capitalist,” said Israeli historian Ishay Landa. “The Nazis placed great emphasis on private property and free competition. It’s true that they intervened in the free market, but it was also a time of a systemic failure of capitalism on a global scale. Almost all states intervened in the market at the time, and they did so to save the capitalist system from itself. This has nothing to do with socialist sentiment: it was pro-capitalist. In a way, there’s a parallel there with the way big banks were bailed out by governments after the 2008 financial crisis broke out. That, of course, did not reflect socialist intentions in any way, either. It was merely an attempt to stabilize the system a little bit.”
In short: no. National “socialists” are not socialists. They are not democratic socialists. They are, indeed, frauds.
CONCLUSION
Democratic socialists have beliefs that are likely far more in line with yours or mine than you might have previously believed, even if you consider yourself more of a moderate. There’s a lot of overlap between the DSA and the Working Families Party, for instance, a party I have platformed many times over, and one that Zohran actually ran as a candidate for via New York’s fusion voting.
Do you believe ordinary people should “have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society?” Do you believe in creating “a democracy that creates space for us all to flourish, not just survive, and answers the fundamental questions of our lives with the input of all?” Do you believe in expanding energy production and public transportation? Do you want Medicare for All? Do you believe in a “democracy powered by everyday people?”
In general, if you believe in using the government to make lives better in America, and possibly push it a little further to PERMANENTLY make it better, you might just align yourself with the Democratic Socialists of America. JUST SAYIN’.
One of the craziest things I’ve been seeing online as of late has been happening on Reddit.
For the uninitiated, Reddit is a confusing mess, but in a nutshell, it’s a series of message boards centered around niche topics. You want to make friends with YouTuber Todd In The Shadows’ fans? r/ToddInTheShadow is there for you (yes, it’s missing the s). You a fan of cooking? r/Baking is a few keystrokes away. Maybe you’re a little gossip and you want some hot celebrity goss - r/FauxMoi is your new God. If you’re seeking out any sort of community, you can find it on Reddit.
But then there’s the darker side of Reddit… the SNARK communities.
If you’re unaware, there’s a cottage industry of pages known as “Snark Reddits” where what can generously be described as “dedicated haters” come together to make hate comments and threads about a specific influencer or even an entire influencer scene or genre. These communities, in theory, are meant for one of two purposes:
Allowing people to get a little bit of hate out of their souls in a dedicated forum for that
Holding “bad” influencers accountable for their actions
We love a little goss around these parts, but it’s when the snark communities lean more into the second category that, more often than not, things get a little dicey. Unverified rumors of misconduct. Deleted content the creator had deleted for a reason. And in the worst cases… death threats and doxxing of the creator.
For those who don’t know, doxxing is when you “publicly identify or publish private information about (someone) especially as a form of punishment or revenge.” This is now such a common thing online that it’s even defined now in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Which is pretty wild, since it’s a word that’s only existed in small circles since the 90s, and has only been a part of the lexicon at large since Gamergate in the mid 2010’s.
It doesn’t actually matter if you’re a big time content creator or just a normal private citizen: doxxing can be frightening. Some may say “if you don’t want that info out there, don’t be a public figure,” but when we’re talking about things like your full name, address, and phone number being shared freely in a post that doesn’t “quite” break Reddit’s Terms of Service (“he’s lying about his name! DM me for more info” etc), you’re suddenly crossing the line into a dark, dark place.
Worse - all of this was found publicly on GOOGLE. And these reports they find often include known relatives, loved ones, and “associates” alongside THEIR doxxes.
So, WHY is it common? Unfortunately, it’s because that info can be obtained by data brokers selling you or your family’s personal data to anyone willing to pay for it. You might think you can just remove it yourself… best of luck with that. There are hundreds of data brokers trading your info around as easily as Reddit posts are shared. So what’s the solution?
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Thank you for sharing this; it has been driving me bonkers that people don't know the difference between socialism, communism, capitalism and variations such as democratic socialism. Sometimes it takes everything in me not to smack an idiot who doesn't get it, and refuses to educate themselves on the subject before they label someone incorrectly.
Stating the obvious, the problem (or one of them- a big one) is that there is so much mis-information all over the internet, podcasts, and every platform. Feeding the fears and misconceptions. It is crazy. And scary.