Streetwise Professor

I have a confession. There is a skeleton in my family closet: my great grandfather was a socialist.

And not a barstool, lip service socialist either. A full-on, politically active one. He was an elector for Eugene V. Debs in the 1912 presidential election. The Socialist Party had sounded him out as a potential gubernatorial candidate for Ohio in that election.

He idolized Debs. My grandmother recalled how he would employ his skills as a former concert coronetist to attract crowds in Marietta, Ohio. He would set up on a downtown street corner and play his coronet with my 8 year old grandmother singing accompaniment. When a crowd gathered, he would launch into a speech lauding Debs and socialism.

I don’t know whether he converted anyone. I do know that he didn’t persuade my grandmother. She said “I adored my father, but even when I was 8 I knew socialism was for the birds.”

My great grandfather’s era was America’s first serious brush with socialism. We are now experiencing another. I sometimes wonder now what Frank Martin would have thought about Zohran Mamdani and his ilk. I am guessing one could say Mamdani is not my great grandfather’s socialist.

The most important distinction is that the core of the Debs era socialist support was manual laborers, whereas today’s DSA crowd consists mainly of lumpen bourgeoisie who have never performed physical labor in their lives, and shudder at the thought. Many are largely over credentialed, under educated intellectualoids infuriated at their marginal economic circumstances and the burden of student debt incurred to obtain unmarketable credentials. They are intellectual dilettantes, and living embodiments of Dunning-Kruger Syndrome, midwits convinced of their intellectual and moral superiority outraged that their social status and income falls far short of their lofty (but totally unrealistic) expectations. Rather than blame their bad choices, they attack the system that made those choices possible.

Schumpeter would understand.

In brief. 1912: swingers of hammers and machine operators. 2026: Starbucks baristas and NGO hangers on.

Another core 2026 socialist constituency is America-hating immigrants, of whom Mamdani is an exemplar. There is no better illustration of this than his 3 July speech, infuriatingly delivered while sitting at George Washington’s desk. It was a jeremiad (or more accurately a jihad-miad) against America and capitalism.

Mamdani blasts capitalism, foreign wars in America 250 address – while sitting at George Washington's desk https://t.co/yYGmUy9fmc pic.twitter.com/8HgzR3Vo9O

— New York Post (@nypost) July 3, 2026

Here is a man who achieved prominence in America, pissing on the hand that raised him up. Slandering America sitting at the desk of a far, far greater man on the eve of the country’s most important civic holiday. Indeed, on the eve of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

He should have been at Khamenei’s funeral instead. They have “death to America” in common.

And he’s not the worst. Take his wife. Please. Or Democratic Congressional primary winner Darializa Avila Chevalier, who drips hatred towards this country. I could go on.

The new socialists are also obsessed with “Palestine” and hate Israel. The new socialists are hardcore anti-semites (using “anti-Zionism” as a Trojan Horse). indeed, it is the main thing that differentiates them from the progressives whom they have vanquished in primaries. Old school socialists not so much.

Remember what Lenin said: “Anti-semitism is the socialism of fools.” And a la Lenin, the new socialists are truly fools.

As I noted not long ago, these socialists represent the energy in the Democratic Party, with Chevalier being just one candidate who vanquished extremely progressive incumbents. And other Democrats are bending the knee and kissing the ring, e.g., Kamala Harris reaching out to Mamdani. Or “Bill Clinton” posting a letter that mimics Mamdani’s screed:

My statement on America at 250 and the state of the country: pic.twitter.com/WyIzBFxfBq

— Bill Clinton (@BillClinton) July 4, 2026

I put “Bill Clinton” in quotes because he has been in public recently about as often as Mojtaba Khamenei, and when he has appeared he is clearly seriously mentally and physically diminished. So I strongly suspect that Hillary put this out in his name.

I could possibly take encouragement at this development. These people and their doctrine are poisonous. Their cause has a litany of abject failures stretching back more than a century. One may give my great grandfather a pass because the fatal defects of his doctrine had not been demonstrated by hard experience when he was expounding them. Today’s socialists have no such excuse. The history of socialism since 1917 is a trail of tears of poverty and death.

Certainly Americans–at least a majority thereof–will recognize this, and reject the new socialists outside of the lumpen bourgeois precincts of blue cities right?

But I am not so sure, especially since recent polls demonstrate widespread sympathy for socialism, especially among Democrats and the young, among whom a majority are supporters. The hysteresis of party loyalty, antipathy towards Trump, and the typical dynamics of midterm elections make it not improbable, and arguably probable, that in November Democrats will secure control of the House, and perhaps the Senate. In the event, the socialists will claim credit, and demand their due.

And that, my friends, is a dire prospect.