Fish or Cut Red-Bait

A peculiar bunch of statistics that has been making the rounds in the ongoing moral panic over the Democratic Socialists of America, whose successful endorsements in some recent elections and primaries have come as a shock to some writers, and led President Trump and colleagues to new flights of McCarthyism asserting that communists are "taking over" the Democratic party:

In a survey of New Jersey DSA members. “Nearly four out of 10 (39.3 percent) identified as anarchists, followed by Marxists at 35.7 percent and 10.7 percent as democratic socialists.” https://t.co/6vzmaA7qJl via @NYTOpinion

— Josh Kraushaar (@JoshKraushaar) June 30, 2026

What Kraushaar could have found out by looking more closely at the Times link or preferably the survey itself is that he was reporting it completely wrong: :

The mistake is from typos in a report by Thomas Edsall of a 2024 survey of the organization's Central New Jersey branch, covering six counties, which has been used to spread the story that "communists" have taken over the club. The Times corrected the error soon after publication, but Kraushaar apparently never checked. Anyway, it's not 10.7% that identify as democratic socialists; that was the anarchists, as probably should have been obvious (an organization that calls itself "democratic socialists" should really have more democratic socialists in its membership, that's what made me look it up myself). The democratic socialists are the 39.3%, and added together with the social democrats' 8.9% (plus I think one cis man calling himself a "social liberal") a bare majority of definitively non-communist members. The balance of 35.7 percent belong to an ice-cream parlor menu of "Marxists", not necessarily "communists".

Cruz Channels Lenin

 

Eleanor Roosevelt and Dorothy Height, 1960. Tell them the Republicans are the "party of the working class". Via Wikipedia.

I've long found it fun to say that American conservatives are the most doctrinaire Marxist ideological faction, in the sense of believing in the reality of class struggle, except that they want the proletariat to lose the war and give way to the permanent dictatorship of the revolutionary bourgeoisie instead of the more conventional other way around.

But I always meant it as a joke line, insightful but not meant to be taken literally, until I saw this from Rafael Theodore Cruz channeling Vladimir Il'ich Lenin here:

Today’s Dems are the party of the rich.

GOP is and should be the party of the working class. https://t.co/WMTDtKTzwU

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) November 29, 2020

Really? 

For the Record: Is Sanders a Russian tool?

Do Popes shit in the woods? More relevantly still, is the Bear Catholic?

Via.

Whether Sanders ends up being the nominee or not, if you don't like him it would be better not to dislike him on the basis of fake news: I was really annoyed by this:

That's not quite honest. The 2017 measure was a Republican bill including a poison pill meant to sink the Iran deal. pic.twitter.com/ItYsCA8Rrk

— Brand New Preexisting (@Yastreblyansky) February 22, 2020

In 2014 Sanders supported Obama's executive action to sanction Russia over Ukraine. Rightwing noise machine spread the idea that he didn't https://t.co/KDxG3E1zAU

— Brand New Preexisting (@Yastreblyansky) February 22, 2020

By all means oppose Sanders if you want--he's not my candidate either--but not with falsehood and rightwing propaganda.

— Brand New Preexisting (@Yastreblyansky) February 22, 2020

Update 3/1/2020: Wrong on that last item: Sanders and Whitehouse both voted against the second bill implementing Magnitsky sanctions as well.https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=112&session=2&vote=00223

What brought it on, obviously, is the Washington Post story on Russian efforts to "help" Sanders, of which he was apparently informed by national security officials a month or so ago. I don't see why anybody should be surprised to hear about these Russian efforts, by the way—they did the same thing in 2016, for the same reason, to foment quarrels and disaffection in the Democratic party and eventually as part of their strategy to boost Trump, not out of any desire for a Sanders presidency, as old Boot noted in the original tweet up there, and it's not a secret:

Fits Not Worth Having

From an Italian-language production of the Leben des Galilei at the Teatro Della Pergola, Florence, October-December 2015.

Mr. Bret Stephens discussing "Fights Worth Having", on the heroic opposition to Donald Trump inside the Republican Party or hanging out on the porch:

NeverTrumpers haunt the conservative movement the way Polish or Czech dissident intellectuals such as Czeslaw Milosz and Vaclav Havel haunted that segment of Central European intelligentsia that made its peace with Stalinism after World War II.

I'd say more like Bertolt Brecht and György Lukács, on a number of counts. Mainly, Miłosz and Havel were ideologically opposed to the Communist system installed in their countries, and fled it (in the case of Miłosz, who escaped to the West in 1951) or fought it (in the case of Havel, a paramount leader in the struggle that overturned it almost 40 years later), whereas Brecht and Lukács, in their different ways, remained loyal to the idea that Communism can never fail, only be failed, and devoted their post-revolutionary lives to trying obliquely to encourage the system to be less stupid and embarrassing—and fought with each other, of course—in a way that might remind you of the movement conservatives trying to cope with the embarrassment of having acquired a vulgar and unpleasant Emperor.

We hear that former job creator-by-attrition--or is it creative destroyer of jobs? ("I am Shiva, destroyer of jobs!")--Willard Mitt Romney is now offering a stump speech that describes President Obama as an adherent of this truly lost historical crypto-anarchist clubhouse Communism:

"[Theodore] Roosevelt believed that government should level the playing field to create equal opportunities. President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes.

"In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort, and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others. And the only people who truly enjoy any real rewards are those who do the redistributing—the government."

Holy cannoli, Emily, I just got used to having a socialist president, an' now it turns out he's the whole fracking Khmer Rouge?

The President in traditional Cambodian scarf or krama, in found art from the Siem Reap–resident bloggist and web designer Jinja, via Travel-Artist. Yes, it makes me happy too. Set me up for indefinite detention without charge, target me for execution by drone, I just can't stay mad at him. I'm sure we'll get an explanation sooner or later.