Back in the seventies I spoke with Michael Harrington, who had just given a speech at the University of Illinois, and who would go on to found the Democratic Socialists of America in 1982. I agreed with him on nothing, except his being appalled by the Communist nations, including Cuba, of the day. He started as a Catholic, but ended up as an atheist. He knows better now, having died in 1989, and my guess is that he mourns what his movement has morphed into.
It is amazing that there aren’t throngs of these DSA denizens just aching to go to Cuba, North Korea, et al. I’m just stunned. /sarc
Harrington’s outfit was one of three which emerged from the decomposition of the old Socialist Party of America in 1971. It was initially called the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee; that outfit merged with another outfit called the New American Movement in 1982 to form DSA. It was a very different organization then. I’ll refer you to an article published in Harper’s ca. 1997 by someone formerly involved in DSA, depicting a declining and demoralized organization. It stuns one that it is so vigorous today, but with an entirely different set of motors. Harrington’s main interest was industrial organization, very different from DSA today. DSA now seems like the re-incarnation of the old SDS in its most obnoxious phase, but rolling in sorosphere money.
==
What gets you about these characters is that everything they advocate will make the world worse for ordinary people. The only things even superficially appealing would be student loan forgiveness and (you could argue) rent control. Why anyone votes for them is baffling.
*DSA*
Democratic States of America?
Confederacy 2.0?
“All of the arrogance, none of the honor.”
I love William F. Buckley, Jr.
For more information on communism see: EWTN/on demand. The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing II: John Paul Sartre, the God is dead tome.