SDL Profile picture
Mar 21, 2023 8 tweets 3 min read Read on X
new Substack:

The DSA is the largest US socialist org in 99 years -- and the first mass org in half a century.

That's a big fucking deal!

Thread:🧵 Image
At 90,000 members, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the biggest socialist organization in the United States since 1914. 🧵

That's 99 years ago: Image
It's hard to overstate how much the DSA dominates the modern socialist left. It dwarfs every other org. 🧵

The DSA's membership makes up about 90% of organized socialists -- even if we assume that the ~45 tiny socialist orgs with no public membership info have ~250 members each: Image
How did DSA get here? 🧵

1: Electoral work: DSA grew enormously from the massive popularity of Bernie Sanders and AOC.

2: Anti-Trump energy: DSA and most progressive orgs grew enormously as people organized against Trump's racist, sexist, and anti-queer threat. Image
Interest in democratic socialism has declined since Trump left office. Easy anti-Trump recruitment is over: 🧵 Image
Where should DSA go? 🧵

1. DSA's electoral work in the Dems got thousands of people into the org and built huge platforms for our reps to promote socialism.

2. DSA must cooperate with other socialist and progressive orgs to beat Trump in '24, then beat the movement behind him.
3. DSA must re-unionize the unorganized.

To learn a bit more about how massive the DSA is --and what that tells us about socialist strategy:

Read the blog! 🧵socdoneleft.substack.com/p/dsa-is-the-l…
oh my god I did the mental math wrong and it's actually 109 years, not 99, like my title says Image

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More from @SocDoneLeft

Aug 31, 2025
I'm sorry, but not even DSA members read our "platform"

It's a wishlist, not a serious minimal program, and includes dumb shit like ending USAID!

Zohran not "decriminalizing all misdemeanors" -- which includes, eg, most domestic violence charges! -- is not "distancing from DSA"
DSA's "platform" is 38 pages with 287 (!!) bullet points

It's >90% good policy, like Medicare For All & end the Senate

But has a bunch of stinkers, like "abolish USAID", "free **all** people from involuntary confinement", "eliminate sales taxes" 🤢, "protect small farmers" 🤮
100% agree on this. US police are terrible, in part, because they spend so much time enforcing misdemeanor offenses (like drug offenses) rather than halting & investigating serious crime (roughly 1/2 of murderers get away with it!).
Read 5 tweets
Jul 13, 2025
Sawant is VERY funny

- narrowly wins Seattle city council seat as open socialist
- Trot, loves to hate DSA
- looks like she will lose recall election
- joins DSA, we canvass for her, she wins by <1%
- resigns her city council position
- becomes a full-time anti-DSA podcaster
- her Trot org splits in three (lol), she takes ~200 ppl
- she talks shit about Zohran (DSA), until he wins
- her org uses his win & face to promote her vanity campaign for US House (will get <5%)
- she talks more shit about Zohran

What can you say but opportunist? Image
"They don't want power. They want to endlessly podcast about power."
Read 4 tweets
Mar 12, 2025
The idea that "atheists only have subjective preferences, because objective morality only exists with God" is extremely funny.

It's been 2400 years, and theocratic theists have yet to give a single good response to the Euthyphro dilemma. Image
This is Hobbes' response: Might makes right.

Who cares if God is arbitrary? As absolute ruler, he has "irresistible power", and you must kneel.

But we reject this for weaker tyrants with smaller arbitrary demands. Why accept it from the strongest tyrant?
If God "reveals morality through his character", then morality is independent of God. He transmits moral law. Back to horn 1.

If God's character alone determines what is moral, then morality is arbitrary. He sets moral law as he pleases. Back to horn 2.
Read 18 tweets
Feb 5, 2025
The Nazis privatized dozens of state-owned enterprises. In fact, that's what "privatization" was coined to describe.

The Nazis wanted to place all political & economic power in the hands of a small group of loyalist rich elites & state oligarchs. And so they did. Image
The Nazis crushed unions. (They created a single, state-controlled one that never struck and never demanded higher wages.)

The Nazis dramatically expanded wealth inequality (right) while barely raising real wages (left).

Which party does that sound like? Image
Image
Conservatives never seem to understand: Leftists want **equality of power**.

Big government (or small) is just a means to an end. That end is isonomia -- equal power over society -- which we today call "democracy".

Why should Musk have 400 billion times more power than you do? Image
Read 4 tweets
Jan 21, 2025
For good and bad, the world was on demographic track for a Long American Century.

At current growth, fertility, & immigration levels: The US would be the ONLY world power with exponential total GDP growth by 2100.

If Trump ends birthright citizenship, he ends that trajectory. Image
"America First" types ignore how immigration makes the USA stronger: It makes us bigger!

Remember when Japan was going to take over the world? Japan never stopped growing more productive -- it just stopped growing more populous.

Without immigration, the US would be shrinking. Image
All the world's geniuses want to move here.

Trumpists would turn them away -- and lower innovation, lower growth, lower population, weaken the USA -- all to please mediocre White racists that can't intellectually compete.

Trumpists are genuinely too stupid to run an empire. Image
Read 4 tweets
Sep 3, 2024
New blogpost:

Socialists will overwhelmingly vote for Kamala Harris. 🧵 Image
Most polls only let voters identify as "liberal", "moderate", or "conservative". To know how socialists will vote, that's worthless.

Last month, University of New Hampshire added "socialist" to their list.

About 90% of socialist likely voters will vote for Kamala in ME, NH, VT: Image
The same rate holds across the US.

In August, Fairleigh Dickinson University also added "socialist" to their ideology list.

The result? Again, about 90% of self-identified socialist registered voters will vote Kamala. Image
Read 7 tweets

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