How America’s Largest Socialist Organization Went from Supporting Israel to Boycotting It

This fall, Jamaal Bowman, the Democratic congressman from New York’s 16th district, found himself threatened with expulsion by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a hard-left outfit whose most prominent member is Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (popularly known as AOC). The reason? He had voted, along with most of his fellow Democrats, in favor of funding Israel’s Iron Dome system, which blows up incoming missiles aimed by Hamas at its population centers. There is a double irony here. First, the far-left Bowman had just last year unseated Eliot Engel, a sixteen-term incumbent who represented exactly the sort of mainstream (and pro-Israel) Democrat the DSA wishes to see replaced. Second, the DSA was founded by a group of people disgusted by the left’s turn against Israel, and was now getting ready to drive out a member for being insufficiently anti-Israel.

To understand how this situation developed, we must first turn to Bernie Sanders’s 2016 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. Although he failed to win the primary, his campaign had a galvanizing effect on the left, inspiring scores of his acolytes to join the DSA, an organization most Americans had previously never heard of. While not a political party in the proper sense, the DSA endorses candidates and tries to put its members on Democratic tickets wherever it can. Thanks to Sanders, the group grew from about 25,000 in 2016 to about twice that in two years. After their 2021 convention, DSA leadership reported that it now had “94,914 comrades” enrolled in the organization. Most groups exaggerate their actual membership, but the real figure is probably not far from that. Numbers aside, it has become an influential force in American politics, and each election cycle brings more of its affiliates into Congress, state legislatures, and local governments.

Most famous, of course, is the radical group in the House of Representatives dubbed the squad, which includes, besides the aforementioned Ocasio-Cortez and Bowman, two additional DSA members: Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush. A fifth congressman, Danny K. Davis of Chicago, belongs to the DSA as well. The group can also count among its ranks eight senior state officials, 32 members of state assemblies, and countless members of city councils and county commissions. As of this year, DSA members also control the Nevada Democratic party, something not attained by U.S. socialists since the New Deal era, when the American Communist Party controlled the Democratic apparatus in California, and when the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) had a few members in the House, who kept their affiliation hidden.