Why Being ‘Progressive’ Is No Longer Enough on the Left

Nine of 10 candidates endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America won primaries for the state Legislature and Congress. All three insurgents Mayor Zohran Mamdani backed for Congress prevailed, and two of them defeated left-wing incumbents. Is this the beginning of the Mamdani reign of terror?

The Democratic party turmoil calls to mind William Butler Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming” (1919): “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, . . . / The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” The last certainly seems to describe the Democrats running for office these days.

In the race for New York’s open Seventh Congressional District, the Mamdani-backed Claire Valdez defeated Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, who had the support of Attorney General Letitia James, left-wing City Council members and the union-led Working Families Party.

Mr. Reynoso backed Medicare for All, called for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and favored a wealth tax broader and more punitive than the one Bernie Sanders has proposed on billionaires. The Reynoso plan would impose a 5% annual tax on fortunes above $50 million and 10% on assets exceeding $250 million.

Mr. Reynoso sought to forge solidarity with Mr. Mamdani’s supporters by accusing Israel of “genocide.” But he stressed the need to “tone down this antisemitism that we’re seeing in our city.” His DSA opponent saw no such need. Ms. Valdez, a state assemblywoman, lambasted police for restraining anti-Israel mobs chanting “Globalize the Intifada” and waving Hezbollah flags outside a Brooklyn synagogue last month. “New Yorkers don’t just have the right to protest the sale of stolen Palestinian land—they have a responsibility to,” she said.

She differed from Mr. Reynoso mainly in the degree of her militancy. She worked in Columbia University’s visual arts department, where she served as a union organizer and became radicalized. Her comrade Darializa Avila Chevalier, another Mamdani ally who won Tuesday, led the encampments at Columbia.

Ms. Avila Chevalier’s incendiary posts on social media—calling Joe Biden a “war criminal” and the U.S. a “f— disgrace”—could hurt Democrats in November, but they helped her win votes from disaffected young progressives.

Recent college grads inculcated in Marxism have grown disenchanted with the flaccid Democratic “establishment.” They are attracted to Mr. Mamdani and his acolytes for the same reason Republicans were drawn to Donald Trump in 2016: They are tired of mealy-mouthed politicians and want someone who “fights.”

Here’s how the socialist magazine Jacobin explained the success of DSA candidates: “At a time when both established parties and most politicians are widely viewed as corrupt and dishonest, voters at the doors appeared to value candidates who identified as democratic socialists. . . . It’s a development that likely couldn’t have happened without the Democratic Party’s collapse in standing among its own voters over the past year and a half.”

Feeding the fury is the 34-year-old social-media charlatan Hasan Piker—the left’s version of Alex Jones—who has made a lucrative living from decrying the U.S. and capitalism in videos on YouTube and Amazon’s Twitch. He bought a $2.7 million home in West Hollywood when he was 29. Only in America can one get rich by assailing the wealthy.

Mr. Piker has used his social-media platform to campaign for socialist candidates, including the New York insurgents, Nithya Raman (for Los Angeles mayor), Melat Kiros (Colorado’s First Congressional District) and Abdul El-Sayed (U.S. Senate in Michigan). Besides Marxist ideology, one thing Mr. Piker, Mr. Mamdani and most of these candidates have in common is that they are children of immigrants.

Regardless of their background, all graduated from college and some obtained multiple degrees. They may have assimilated all too well to the culture of academia and big cities. Even so, they exemplify the economic mobility that they claim isn’t possible in the U.S.

Mr. El-Sayed, born in Detroit to Egyptian immigrants, has earned a master’s, a doctorate and a medical degree. Ms. Kiros, who has a law degree and is a doctoral candidate, says she was born in Ethiopia “just weeks before her father was selected by the United States’ Diversity Visa Lottery.” Have these socialists pondered why their parents sought to come to America?

Perhaps for the economic opportunities enabled by America’s free-market system and government safeguards for individual liberties. Young progressives take for granted their constitutional right to criticize and protest their government—acts that in socialist regimes get citizens thrown in jail.