Democratic Socialists vs. Social Democrats
Why Hasan Piker cosplays as Chairman Mao, not Olof Palme.
Garry Kasparov is the founder and chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative, which publishes The Next Move.
A couple of years ago, the image of a speaker addressing a national Democratic Party gathering in a Zhongshan, the famous “Chairman Mao suit,” would have been the stuff of Republican fever dreams. Yet there leftist streamer Hasan Piker was, delivering a speech from the stage of the College Democrats Summer Convention while decked out like a Chinese communist functionary.
Piker regularly endorses primary candidates representing the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA. He considers Mao, a dictator responsible for tens of millions of deaths, to be “one of the great leaders.”
Piker’s decidedly illiberal heroes and fashion choices clash with what many on the left desperately want to believe about the DSA. Whenever I raise concerns about the DSA, the refrain is always that these socialists simply want the generous welfare state that exists in Scandinavian social democracies like Sweden and Denmark.
At the College Democrats convention, Piker devoted far more energy to supposed internal enemies than to the existential threat of MAGA authoritarianism. “No more to the Democrats who will collaborate with the fascists,” he thundered.
Listening to Piker’s speech, I heard echoes of the interwar years, when Joseph Stalin raged that “Social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism.” At the critical moment in the early 1930s, Moscow directed the German Communist Party to treat the Social Democrats as their primary enemies—effectively holding the door open for Adolf Hitler.
How does all of that square with the rationalizations that American socialists are just like Nordic social democrats? Tellingly, these excuses more frequently come from people who are outside of the DSA. For example, one Guardian article quotes European observers sanewashing Zohran Mamdani as “normal” by Nordic standards.
Instead of relying upon charitable third-party interpretations of what the Democratic Socialists of America is, we should again listen to the DSA themselves. The organization explicitly rejects the association with Scandinavian social democracy. A 2017 entry in the official party publication accuses social democrats of “retreat” and “eroding the very reforms they hope to preserve.”
“We need a mass socialist presence,” the text goes on to proclaim, “looking to not merely tame but overcome capitalism.”
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The key to understanding the difference is the noun. In social democracy, the priority is democracy. Under democratic socialism, the emphasis is on socialism, with democracy reduced to a mere modifier.
Social democrats want to remediate some of the injustice and unfairness that comes with unfettered capitalism. I get it: After all, I lived through the Russia of the 1990s. Ultimately, whatever disagreements I have with social democrats, we share common ground as democrats.
The same cannot be said for many socialists.
On Monday, Nicaragua’s socialist dictator Daniel Ortega declared that his country was done with holding elections. Forever.
Unsurprisingly, the DSA’s International Committee opposes US sanctions on the Nicaraguan regime. Bernie Sanders, America’s senior DSA representative, visited Nicaragua during Ortega’s first stint as president in the 1980s. When a constituent pressed Bernie over the Sandinista leader’s piss-poor human rights record, the then-Burlington mayor had only gaslighting to offer.
A “temporary suspension of certain civil liberties” was the Vermont politician’s spin on the situation in Nicaragua circa 1985. After being ousted in 1990, Daniel Ortega returned to the presidency in 2007 and never left. How’s that for “temporary”?
There’s a reason for this dictator apologia, and it’s the same reason that Piker’s icon is Mao and not, say, Olof Palme, Sweden’s Cold War Social Democratic prime minister. Palme introduced left-wing policies at home and was one of the harshest opponents of US foreign policy of his era—but he was also a sharp critic of the Soviet Union and its communist puppets in Eastern Europe. More than that, Palme was an elected head of government, not a revolutionary militant.
Many in the Democratic Party are still pretending that the DSA is something moderate, normal—something it does not claim to be. It’s time for those Democrats to wake up and recognize that the war they’re fighting now has two fronts.
What’s happening inside the Democratic Party now will lay the groundwork for the midterms and beyond. Stay tuned: I’ll have more to say about this in the weeks and months ahead.
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The proper thought with regard to what DSA stands for is more in line with FDR than Chairman Mao. In fact that is what I prefer to be called, an FDRian. If you don't think FDR was a good president then maybe you're not as astute as you believe you are.
When you begin by claiming the DSA is a uniquely American threat not to be conflated with Nordic social democracy, then have to dredge up 40 year old Bernie quotes and Daniel Ortega to make your point, it’s clear even you can’t show the DSA is a threat. Nevertheless, I’m glad you’re keeping an eye on them for us—some of their rhetoric is truly awful. I just hope you don’t end up like Chicken Little. I think you need to find a better balance between overheated claims and actual threats.