With Anti-DSA Bill, Congress Is Red-Baiting Like It’s 1955
The House just passed a resolution condemning the Democratic Socialists of America and socialism broadly. While it rehearses opposition to Stalinist authoritarianism, the bill’s real preoccupation is with socialists’ advocacy for expanded democracy.
The Republican-dominated Congress thinks that the very mention of socialism will inspire terror in the hearts of patriotic Americans. But it’s wrong to assume the American people are on board. (Tom Williams / CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)
As summer turns into fall, the United States remains mired in a wildly unpopular war in Iran. On the home front, inflation is stubbornly persistent. All indications point to the president’s party suffering major losses in the November midterms — if, that is, the various Republican attempts to interfere with the integrity of the election fall short.
Even with all this going on, though, the House found time on Tuesday to pass a resolution symbolically condemning the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and “all forms of socialism,” quite obviously inspired by Zohran Mamdani’s mayoralty and the primary victories of several DSA-backed congressional candidates.
The anti-DSA bill is a strange document. It starts so similarly to the other congressional resolutions condemning socialism over the last two years that I initially wondered whether the authors had simply cut and pasted an earlier one.
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