There is no entry in the Associated Press (AP) style book for “Deminazi,” and there likely never will be. That doesn’t make it any less accurate a descriptor for the dominant faction of the left known as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The closest I could come to a correct usage is to refer back to the inspiration behind the term – Rush Limbaugh’s descriptor for the feminist movement: “feminazis.” All one word, no capital "n." Works for me.
Along these same lines, it’s a shame Graham Platner had to drop out of the Senate race in Maine and go home, taking his Nazi tattoo along with him. Since the DSA has conducted its takeover of the Democrat Party, that was the only notable instance of truth in advertising. Still, if we’re not careful, the socialists are on their way to taking over the country.
Any DSA cult member who might read this would likely repeat the party’s key message point: “We’re not socialists, we’re Democratic socialists.” Right.
Aesop, the creator of those classic and rather dark children’s fables, may have had the DSA in mind when he wrote “The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.” He could just as easily have called the tale, “The Commie Who Will Lie and Do Anything It Takes to Win the 2026 Midterms.”
That said, one of the tricks today’s “DSA wolf” uses to seduce young people and unsuspecting voters is to skip over all of the lessons of socialism and communism throughout history and go right back to that age-old doctrine on paper that sounds so good to so many.
Concepts like: “Each according to his ability, to each according to his needs;” “People over profit;” “Redistribution of wealth;” and more bluntly, “Tax the rich.”
All of it is designed to appeal to that part of us that just doesn’t always want to do the work it takes to succeed in life, but instead, to become a nameless, faceless part of a larger group that will take care of us. Those of us who ignore that part of ourselves are not the targeted market for the DSA.
If you’re talking to the right people, usually the powerless or those who feel powerless, the concept practically sells itself. Just ask Lenin, Mao, Castro, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Hasan Piker, and now Abdul El-Sayed.
Socialism is a loss leader for totalitarianism
Those who’ve actually read a history book or two know that socialism is always a soft-sell – the loss-leader, the gateway drug to communism. While the two aren’t interchangeable, they’re on the same road. While socialism calls for the state to own and control the means of production, in reality, once the state gets that far, it pretty much finishes the job and takes control of everything.
Karl’s Marx’s vision for a communist utopia called for a classless society where there is common ownership of the means of production. Sounds just so nice, doesn’t it?
Both socialist and communist idealism quickly falls apart when you realize that someone has to be in charge. Someone has to set priorities, oversee all of this, and be the boss.
In other words, some human being still has to have more power than everyone else. But since under socialism and communism, self-governance is not really their thing (that would be something akin to American democracy), in practice, socialists find other ways to determine who’s in charge.
In China, Mao Zedong rose to power through his own embrace and interpretation of Marxist ideology, applying it to Chinese society, particularly in rural areas. He became the dominant leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the mid-1930s. Then in 1949 he established the People’s Republic of China.
Mao’s version of communism, the brand Piker seems to favor these days, was responsible for the deaths of 40 to 80 million Chinese, due largely to famine, but also a million or two were killed as part of his “Cultural Revolution.” People who weren’t quite on board with Mao suffered violent deaths through purges and in his famous “re-education camps.”
Once someone decides your country is going to be socialist, which is a stepping stone to communism, you’ve pretty much given up your own rights and voice. You’ve surrendered them to the group. But since everyone else did the same thing, “the collective” will always consist of a small handful of people at the top (oligarchs) who knew all along it was a ruse, something they had to use to eventually win absolute power over you.
Funny thing is, if you visit an American college campus this Fall, and you see that the DSA and socialism are all the rage, just like Taylor Swift and Black Lives Matter (BLM) were in recent years, none of those kids will know much about that whole absolute-power-over-you thing. They’re not thinking this through. Even if they did, they’d be hard-pressed to comprehend that socialist totalitarians have a tendency to let people die or actively kill them to consolidate power.
Why totalitarians like socialism
One of the catchphrases about socialism is that, “Yes it has been tried before, but they have never done it the right way,” or some variation of that.
In Russia, Vladimir Lenin led the Bolsheviks from the October 1917 Revolution until his death in 1924, which was preceded by a series of strokes. Like Mao, Lenin sold the people on what New York’s Mamdani has called “the warmth of collectivism.” They ate that stuff up.
But as is always the case, since under socialism and communism, there is no democratic decision-making, the shots are called by one or two or a handful of people who aren’t bashful about grabbing power and wielding it, usually mercilessly, and often violently.
Lenin personally oversaw something called “The Red Terror,” which killed 140,000 to 200,000 threats to his power.
Joseph Stalin succeeded Lenin, and he wasn’t all that into empathy or mercy, either. His brand of socialism and communism looked much like that of every other socialist or communist leader, except to scale. To make sure the people knew who was in charge under “Stalinism,” he oversaw the direct killing of 6 million people who didn’t fall in line, but that number rises to 9 million if you count famine.
From an economic standpoint, socialism and communism are shortcuts to mass starvation and death as well.
At the same time, what always starts as an ideology that promises a perfect world through the power of the collective always ends with a totalitarian in charge. And to make sure that totalitarian stays in charge, many, many people have to pay the price, always with their freedom, often with their lives.
This all brings us to perhaps the most notorious socialists in history and his fascist sidekicks, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
Since both Hitler and Mussolini were known as much for waging war against the rest of the world as for destroying lives and killing large segments of their own populations, for our purposes here, we'll keep the focus narrower and center on a couple of terms. This is important because one thing the DSA and its allies like to do is frame Hitler as “far right,” and fascism as far right. The presumption is that socialism by definition is leftist, and so it can’t be fascist.
Hitler was a socialist
Hitler was part of and eventually led the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), also known as the Nazi Party. Mention this to any leftist today, and you’ll hear a word salad about how Hitler’s version of socialism wasn’t the same thing that they espouse, or that he really wasn’t a true socialist because he was a fascist. The fact is, however, there was a reason Hitler called himself a socialist, and that’s because he was one. Then he did what just about all socialist leaders do when they get power: They add “totalitarian” to their resumes.
Mussolini is credited with serving as the father of fascism, an ignoble moniker if ever there was one. He entered politics as a socialist and became a prominent member of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). That party kicked him out in 1914 due to his advocacy for Italian intervention in the First World War.
After that, he said something like, “Screw it, I’m just going to come up with my own thing and call it fascism,” though I believe he said it in Italian.
Mussolini’s fascism retained or adapted several socialist characteristics, including the way the party was organized, the way the people were mobilized, a hatred of individualism, the rhetoric of revolution, and most importantly, the belief that your economic life exists to serve the larger collective. That’s Mussolini, the OG of fascism.
The pattern through all of these examples is that socialism is an excellent pathway, and a well-worn one, on the way to communism, then to dictatorial fascism and totalitarianism.
‘Deminazis’ want to follow in the socialist tradition
Against this backdrop, the DSA today has built itself on a platform that may sound familiar to students of history, particularly students of German socialist or Nazi history.
The DSA wants universal healthcare, which means government control over every citizen’s health decisions and health outcomes, not to mention government access to every citizen’s private health information. Imagine that kind of power in the hands of a totalitarian.
The DSA wants “housing for all,” which like the healthcare item, puts government in control over every citizen’s home, whether he or she has a home, and the quality of that home. In the process, it puts government, and the small group of people in charge of government, in control over your quality of life. This sort of power can be wielded to reward you or punish you.
The DSA wants free college for all. Not that universities need much encouragement here, but such a policy would codify that university campuses serve as nothing more than indoctrination camps.
True to its organized labor roots, the DSA has much to say when it comes to work. Shorter workweeks, unionized workforces, higher wages, and likely higher union dues that end up finding their way back into “The Party.”
To create dependency on government, rather than on individual industriousness, hard work, and innovation, the DSA really likes policies that require employers to pay people for not working, and policies that kill profitability and productivity. These agenda items include long periods of paid family leave, costly regulations tied to “climate change,” and higher taxes on businesses and business owners.
The DSA’s “Free Palestine” pillar has been widely used as cover for antisemitism and all of the targeted discrimination and targeted and violent attacks on Jews, which are on the rise. It’s also been used to attack federal policymaking and foreign relations, including the country’s relationship with Israel.
The DSA wants to cut U.S. military spending while knowing that the country’s adversaries, like China and Russia, are building their military strength. And why would that be? I’m getting a “Manchurian candidate” vibe here.
The DSA is working to make it palatable to the masses to consider the piece-by-piece destruction of American democracy, starting with the dilution of citizen self-governance, declaring that non-citizens be given the same rights and the same voice in the nation’s governance. It wants to abolish the Senate, abolish the Electoral College, jerry-rig and expand Congress in accordance with its own designs, reduce the power of the Supreme Court, and pack the Supreme Court. None of this happens overnight, of course, but if they are eventually successful, it will be because we lost democracy piece by piece.
Every single one of these items, if implemented, would help to put America on the same well-trodden path that failed socialist and communist states have followed before. But failure is in the eye of the beholder. If you really believe in socialism as written on paper, then maybe these others have failed. But if you see socialism as a pathway to totalitarianism, then they were wildly successful, the most notable one being the case of that little German guy with the funny mustache who showed us what socialism looks like if you follow it to its logical conclusion.
In America, as we look ahead to the 2026 midterms, the DSA has enough momentum to constitute too much momentum. We as a nation should know by now socialism just can’t be on the table, but it is. And that’s why the Democratic Party is no longer a “democratic” party; it’s why the DSA has nothing to do with democracy; and it’s why the most fitting brand for the Democrats and the DSA is the “Deminazis.”
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