The Democratic Socialists of America is no longer a fringe movement of aging Marxists and campus idealists. It has become one of the most corrosive forces operating inside the Democratic Party.
The problem is not that DSA supports higher taxes, stronger unions or universal healthcare. Those are legitimate positions within democratic politics. The danger is that DSA increasingly functions as an ideological sect — rewarding conformity, punishing dissent and dividing the world into the righteous and the irredeemable.
No issue reveals this more clearly than Israel and the Jews.
For DSA, anti-Zionism is not one policy preference among many. It is a political litmus test.
Candidates seeking DSA endorsements — even for local offices with no role in foreign policy — are asked to pledge that they will boycott events that “promote Zionism.” In Washington, D.C., mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George has faced sharp criticism after completing such a questionnaire. In New York City, DSA-backed officials and candidates have championed an arms embargo on Israel and treated support for the Jewish state as evidence of moral disqualification.
This is not simply criticism of Israeli policy.
Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people, after centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust, are entitled to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. One may oppose the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as many Israelis do. But requiring Jews to renounce Zionism as the price of admission to progressive politics is a demand that they disavow a core element of modern Jewish identity.
After the Oct. 7 massacre, when Hamas murdered, raped and kidnapped Israeli civilians, DSA blamed Israel and called for protests against American support for the Jewish state. At the very moment Jews were mourning the dead and praying for hostages, DSA treated the victims’ national identity as the real offense.
The organization’s broader record follows the same pattern. DSA chapters have promoted “defund the police,” flirted with prison abolition and embraced a politics in which compromise is betrayal and moderation is cowardice. Internal dissent is often punished. Coalitions are tolerated only so long as they move steadily leftward.
This is why many critics believe DSA borders on something genuinely sinister.
Not because it advocates socialism, but because it seeks to delegitimize Jews unless they repudiate a central part of who they are. A movement that demands ideological confession from a minority community in exchange for political acceptance is practicing discrimination under the banner of social justice.
DSA’s influence rests on organization and intensity. In low-turnout primaries, a few thousand highly motivated activists can defeat mainstream candidates while party leaders look the other way.
That complacency must end.
Democratic leaders should declare that anti-Zionist litmus tests and antisemitic double standards are incompatible with democratic pluralism. Donors should stop funding candidates who embrace them. Jewish organizations, moderate Democrats and principled progressives should challenge DSA-backed candidates wherever they appear, particularly in local races where a small but disciplined cadre can dominate.
If Democrats cannot draw a line against a movement that treats Jewish identity as a political defect, they will forfeit both Jewish trust and their claim to moral seriousness. The time has come to expose DSA’s intolerance, isolate its most destructive tendencies and return the organization to the ideological margins where it belongs.