Are the Democratic Socialists of America Growing in Influence? The Answer Would Seem to Be Yes, with 250 Members Holding Elected Office, Most Since 2019, and a 16-Fold Increase in Membership Over the Past Decade: Emzari Gelashvili’s Unique Perspective

       I have been seeing a lot of articles about the rise of the DSA and the fact that they are winning elections in favorable districts. The right-leaning articles point them out as a clear danger, but the left has had a variable approach. A few of the more sensible on the left, like Senator John Fetterman and long-time Democratic Party operative James Carville, have condemned the socialists, saying they don’t belong in the party. Others, including Senator Chris Murphy, former NYC mayor Bill De Blasio, and even Senator Cory Booker, have tolerated them as collateral damage or said they can even welcome them into the “big tent” as a change to the status quo, as De Blasio noted. I don’t want to believe their influence is growing, but, unfortunately, the data show that it is.

     Washington Examiner writer Emzari Gelashvili grew up in the Soviet Republic of Georgia and knows firsthand the problems with socialism, Marxism, and communism, which are all, if not synonymous, certainly closely related. He was also a Georgian politician. He presents an interesting case that the DSA influence is growing and will likely continue to grow if it is not actively opposed within the Democratic Party. However, he also notes, and I agree, that their growing influence does not reflect the Democratic Party or the American people as a whole. They have outside influence due to their organization and playing the primaries in favorable districts that tend to be low turnout.

“Here is the part the radicals would rather you ignore. Pew Research Center's June political typology shows their core faction, the leftward progressives, makes up only about 7% of U.S. adults. They win because they are loud and disciplined, while the sensible majority is passive. The largest Democratic-leaning group, the order and opportunity Left at 18%, is economically liberal but wants secure borders and rejects abolishing the police or the Constitution. The center does not want what the DSA is selling. But the leftward progressives are also the youngest group in the typology — and as centrist Democrats age out, this faction becomes the party's center of gravity. Give it a decade, and the platform stops being radical and starts being mainstream.”

     I still think smarter and more sensible people will prevail, and the influence of the DSA will wane. I don’t think people will want what they are proposing. There does need to be better messaging and more pushback against these extremist ideas, like abolishing necessary societal institutions and governing bodies. The goal of these folks is to tear down existing governmental and economic institutions, then allow the new government to own private entities by “seizing the means of production.” All previous attempts at this immensely authoritarian idea have failed miserably. People just aren’t gonna go for that on any large scale.

     Gelashvili links to an article he wrote last week, urging people to look at the DSA platform as he has done. He points out that their goals go far beyond the social democracy of countries like Denmark, which has abundant social welfare but also a higher economic freedom, which is a proxy for a higher degree of free market capitalism. The country also pays for its social welfare programs with a high middle-class tax rate and a 25% sales tax. He points out that the DSA may use Scandinavian social democracy as an example, but their platform goes much further:

“The DSA has considered the Denmark argument and rejected it. In their own words, on their own website, they say their vision “pushes further than historic social democracy.” They do not want a softer safety net under capitalism. They want, in their phrasing, to “collectively own the key economic drivers” of American life. One of the organization’s founders put it without decoration: The end goal is social control of the means of production. They do not want to improve capitalism — they want to get rid of it. The group’s 2025 platform calls for abolishing the Senate, dismantling the police, and building “a new society from the ground up.”

     He also notes that Denmark does not have government-owned grocery stores.

     Below, he refers to what happened to his family. They were deported to Kazakhstan and lived in harsh poverty after they got on a Soviet deportation list in the 1950s. In the second paragraph below, he talks about how the Soviet society was authoritarian and manipulative. The third paragraph below beseeches us to heed the warnings. I believe his words should be well-considered.

“Socialism does not begin with deportation lists. It begins with a state that decides who may sell what, at what price, and to whom, and with politics that sort citizens into oppressors and oppressed. The lists come later, and always for the same kind of person: the capable, the independent, the one who refuses to be made smaller. The welfare state redistributes money. Socialism, the article the DSA names in its own documents, redistributes power. Only one of those promises has ever needed barbed wire to keep it.”

“I know the difference because I did not read about it in a seminar. In 1996, while serving in Georgia’s security services, I reviewed original Soviet-era intelligence archives in Tbilisi. What struck me was not the espionage. It was how much of the effort went to what the KGB called active measures — the long-term shaping of education, culture, and institutions, designed not to steal secrets but to change how a future generation understood its own society, until it came to see its own civilization as the thing most in need of tearing down. The Soviet Union disappeared in 1991. The assumptions it worked to plant in Western minds did not disappear with it. A young American raising a red flag over an American city is no one’s agent. He is something the planners wanted more than any agent: a free citizen, certain he is liberating his country, doing the work they once had to pay for.”

“That is why the Denmark answer cannot be left standing. The New Yorkers who chanted three letters last week believe they chose a kinder society. Their own movement’s documents tell a different story. I gave my warning before the vote, and the vote came anyway. That is democracy, and I do not begrudge it. But a warning ignored is not a warning disproven. The least a free people can do, before the next election and before the next flag is raised, is read what the flag-wavers have already written in their own platform.” 

 

References:

 

Soviet flag flies in New York: A survivor’s warning about socialist takeover. Emzari Gelashvili, Washington Examiner. July 2, 2026. Soviet flag flies in New York: A survivor’s warning about socialist takeover

The socialists won New York. Have you seen their platform?  Emzari Gelashvili. Wahington Examiner. June 26, 2026. The socialists won New York. Have you seen their platform?