The Democratic Socialists of America, to whom Zohran Mamdani, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other young Democrat Party stars belong, is supposed to be a chummy, cuddly form of socialism. None of those gulags and reeducation camps, doncha know. The grand old socialist man, Bernie Sanders himself, explained this back in 2020, when he declared, to cheers and applause: “What happened and existed in the Soviet Union was not socialism, it was authoritarian communism.” Democratic socialism, he explained, was much more benign. Now, however, a DSA leader has let the cat out of the bag.

It was surprising enough to hear an avowed socialist proclaim that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics wasn’t socialist, and Bernie wasn’t finished. “And communism,” he continued, “whether in Cuba, whether in the Soviet Union, whether in other countries, was marked by totalitarianism, was marked by throwing millions of people into the gulag, Stalinism was about as bad as it got.”

Sanders claimed that he was offering a vastly different product: “Finland is a neighbor to Russia. They have a very democratic society with strong democratic socialist principles. Everybody in Finland has healthcare as a right. Their educational system is, perhaps, the best in the world and college there is free. They take environmental responsibility very, very seriously. They have one of the lowest rates of childhood poverty in the industrialized world. And you know what? Their voting rate, people who participate in their elections, is a lot higher than it is in the United States.”

Wow, let’s all be like Finland, eh? Bernie thought that would be a wonderful thing. “So when we talk about Democratic socialism,” he said, “I’m talking about Finland, I’m talking about Denmark, I’m talking about Sweden. I’m talking about countries all over the world who have used their government to try to improve lives for working families, not just the people on top."

That’s swell, but in a video that began circulating Saturday, DSA National Political Committee member John Lewis directly contradicted Sanders, saying: “I don't think that, like, for me there was ever a point where I wanted to stop at Nordic or European social democracy. It just didn't — it was never a concepulation where — a conceptualization where, like, it just made sense to me.”

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Lewis instead explained that he had a decided taste for what Bernie had derided as totalitarianism, continuing in the same crack-brained, semiliterate vein: “I just got back from our Cuba — from DSA's Cuba delegation. It was amazing being in a society steeped in solidarity, right? Like, steeped in solidarity, doing so much for the world, doing so much for the planet, right? And to come back here and then see all the things that they were doing, even underneath the blockade, for the rest of the planet, right?” Lewis did not bother to explain what he thought Communist Cuba was actually doing for the world. Instead, he went on to demonize the United States in which he lives a comfortable life.

“And then come back here and see how, like, you can just — and see how, like, imperialism is just choking them,” Lewis said. “You know. And it's like you can see this playing out across the entire planet, right?”

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This led Lewis to his idea of what socialism should look like when it’s applied in the United States:

And so it's like when you think about this idea of, like, what type of, like, Marxism or socialism or things that I would align around, the last thing I'll close with is that I think back to a specific letter where a socialist asked Marx about, like, how does all of your theory, all of your examinations are about Europe? Right? Like, how do I apply these things? How do I examine it? And the point was to examine the relationships that were identified, and then apply those to your conditions, examine your history, examine your political economy, examine your resources, examine the material in your area, and then develop your own conceptualization of that from there. Right? Like, where we get, like — I read a lot of Maoist thought. I read a lot of Ho Chi Minh thought, right? Shout out Luna Oi! I read a lot of Castro's thought.

Luna Oi! is a Communist "influencer" from Vietnam. Lewis explained that the bloody Communism of Mao and Ho Chi Minh was preferable to the socialism with a smiley face that AOC and her ilk proffer: “Right? Like, thinking about these things, examining it, and trying to think through how we conceptualize that here is one of the things that I try to, like, expand well beyond. Because if we stop at a point of, like, just reforming capitalism, slapping some nice bunny ears on it or something else, or, like, slapping some rainbows or making it diverse, you know, or doing some black capitalism, right? It's just gonna still be predisposed on suppressing and containing and consuming the rest of the planet. And we can't have that.”

Well, maybe we can and maybe we can. In the real world, after all, it’s vastly preferable to the killing fields and gulags Lewis apparently longs to establish. Patriots must do all they can at the ballot box to ensure that he and his comrades never get that opportunity.