Former DSA members say group has lost its way ahead of midterms: ‘Has to be fought’ 

Former members of the Democratic Socialists of America say the organization has strayed from the vision that first drew them to it, though they disagree over how dangerous it has become as DSA-backed candidates seek office in Tuesday’s midterms.

“I think it’s an organization that absolutely has to be fought,” Jake Altman, a DSA member from 2013 to 2022, told Heartlander News.

Altman said he began raising concerns internally in 2015, when he sensed the organization moving away from a vision of European social democracy. He is now outspoken about what he sees as DSA’s dangers, telling Heartlander News that “it’s very concerning that they look to the Bolsheviks and the Jacobins as their models.”

As DSA-backed candidates face voters in Tuesday’s midterms, Altman and other former members told Heartlander News that the organization they joined has become unrecognizable. They disagree, however, on how dangerous it has become.

DSA’s new platform, “Workers Deserve More,” calls for abolishing the Senate, the Electoral College and ICE; defunding the Department of War; and demilitarizing police departments. It would also replace the presidency and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary “chosen by and subordinate to Congress.”

The organization predicts that seven DSA-backed House candidates may win seats in the election.

DSA did not respond to Heartlander News’ request for comment, though a member of its National Political Committee previously discussed the organization’s platform in an interview.

‘Fundamentally anti-American’

Altman, a Christian, said he joined DSA believing there was a need to revive “Christian democracy and social democracy in the West,” because “the pendulum swung too far” toward market fundamentalism. He recalled speaking with a member in 2019 who “is not regarded as on the left wing of DSA,” yet supported the Maduro regime in Venezuela.

When DSA blamed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on American “imperialist expansionism,” Altman said he could no longer ignore the anti-Western sentiment within the organization.

“I don’t think there has been any organized and coordinated opposition to the takeover of the organization,” Altman said. He added that he believes DSA members view themselves as “fundamentally anti-American” and that part of their goal is to “erode American culture.”

Altman told Heartlander News he does not want to create a class of people fundamentally dependent on the state. He emphasized the importance of independent citizens, religious freedom and pluralism.

After lawmakers across the country received letters containing white powder last month, including one sent to Michigan Rep. Hillary Scholten, a Democrat, that claimed to be from DSA and warned of a “civil war,” Altman told Heartlander News that “people inside DSA do hold extremist views, and it should frighten all of us.”

He withheld judgment pending the ongoing investigation. DSA denied any involvement.

‘Beyond redemption’

Leo Casey joined DSA’s predecessor, the New American Movement, as a college student in the early 1970s. He left graduate school, interrupting his dissertation, to become one of DSA’s full-time leaders in 1982 and served as the organization’s first national field director.

Casey told Heartlander News he was the primary author of a November 2023 open letter in which 24 longtime members announced they were quitting over DSA’s response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. The letter described DSA as “beyond redemption.”

DSA “seemed unable to take a balanced position” that acknowledged both the crimes of Oct. 7 and Israel’s failings toward Palestinians, Casey said.

Unlike Altman, Casey said he sees no reason to believe DSA poses a violent threat.

“I don’t see any sort of attempt to organize something that’s violent. It’s just not what’s going on,” Casey said. He described DSA’s real problem as being “self-destructive to the left.”

Casey said the caucuses steering DSA’s national leadership identify as “Marxist, Leninist, and communist of various sorts.” Red Star, the caucus of national co-chair Megan Romer, calls itself “a Marxist-Leninist caucus,” while the Marxist Unity Group’s founding statement names “communism” as its goal.

Casey said DSA members who reached Congress, including Reps. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania and Greg Casar of Texas, were “being forced out by what has always been the problem for left organizations in breaking through, which is ultra left posture and a sectarianism.”

The American left’s history, Casey said, “is one of organizational self-destruction,” citing the Socialist Party in the 1930s and Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s. “It seems to be the direction that DSA is headed in.”

Casey, who acknowledged he had not studied DSA’s new platform closely, said the Senate is “not a democratic institution” because Wyoming residents have more representation per person than Californians. If he were to construct his ideal democracy, Casey said, “it would be entirely based on one person one vote, and so there wouldn’t be a body like a Senate.”

However, Casey called the organization’s decision to make abolishing the Senate a central plank “misguided,” and a fruitless path that will “lead to all sorts of caricatures.”

What does it mean to be an American?

Jeffrey Isaac, an Indiana University political scientist and former student of DSA founder Michael Harrington, signed the 2023 letter.

Isaac was most involved with DSA’s predecessor in the 1970s and rejoined after 2016, but told Heartlander News in an email that his involvement “quickly faded.” He said his connection to the letter was complicated because he had already let his dues lapse for other reasons.

Isaac pointed to an essay he wrote for Dissent magazine this summer about Eugene Debs, the Socialist Party leader who ran for president five times between 1900 and 1920. Debs “made clear he is an internationalist, yet he invoked three Americans who took their bearings from the American Revolution,” Isaac wrote.

Those who best honor America’s spirit of dissent “have insisted that redeeming the promise of the Declaration of Independence’s noble words is an ongoing struggle,” he wrote.

Asked what it means to be an American, Andrew Thompson, a member of DSA’s National Political Committee, previously told Heartlander News, “I don’t really know if I have an answer to this question,” adding, “I kind of see myself more as an internationalist.”

Asked the same question, Casey recalled Harrington’s view that if democratic socialists “didn’t love the country, then nobody would trust them with the country.”

“Every movement for equality and liberation has re-founded itself in the language of the Declaration of Independence,” Casey said, citing abolitionism, women’s suffrage and civil rights. “There is a capacity in the United States to fix a lot of what is wrong with it.”