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WASHINGTON — A former member of the Democratic Socialists of America has issued a dramatic warning about the far-left group’s growing political influence ahead of the November midterms.
Jake Altman told the Times of London he broke with the DSA in 2022, after nearly a decade of membership, when it responded to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by calling for the US to withdraw from NATO and blasted the Atlantic alliance as “imperialist expansionism that set the stage for this conflict.”
“I felt anger and confirmation that the organization had gone completely off the deep end and there’s nothing to be salvaged,” the Michigan resident recalled. “There’s no point in remaining in an organization that’s been taken over by people like this.”
“There were people who knew better on the inside, and they just did nothing. It’s very similar to what’s happening to the Democratic Party now.”
The DSA’s radical platform calls for the abolition of the Senate — something some scholars believe isn’t even possible through the constitutional amendment process — making the president and Supreme Court subservient to Congress, and defunding the Pentagon.
High-ranking members of the DSA have also called for defunding the police, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and sanctioning Israel over its war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Despite the DSA’s wild stances, members of the group have won Democratic primaries in at least half a dozen House races while even more candidates aligned with DSA values have notched victories across the country.
“My concern is that high-propensity Democratic Party primary voters, who tend to be the most engaged and the most ideological, have become radicalized, particularly the affluent ones. I’m troubled because there’s an underbelly to this movement,” explained Altman, who says he is backing Republican Mike Rogers over Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in his home state’s crucial Senate race
“My view is we cannot let these extremists get power because they really are dangerous,” he added. “Even the ones who have good intentions will do things that will have profound consequences for ordinary Americans.”
Altman, an Iowa native and a former union organizer, joined the DSA in response to the economic decay that ravaged the Rust Belt during his childhood in the 1990s and early 2000s.
According to the Times of London, the median age of a DSA member was about 68 at the time Altman joined in 2013. Five years later, that number was halved.
“The Bernie Sanders movement [in 2016] and then AOC’s victory [in 2018] brought a lot of fuel and energy,” Altman assessed. “It was showing we can actually do this. It was proof of concept that they could achieve their goal, which was to change the Democratic Party.”
Now, however, he feels that the DSA has been captured by young radicals and warned that “among some hardcore activists, there is a thrill to violence.”
“We need a renaissance of democracy where locals begin to take control back from national organizations that have become very extreme,” he concluded. “We all have a responsibility to try to stop this but I don’t think there are enough people resisting.”
The DSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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