Democratic Socialists are on a roll with two members of the U.S. House of Representatives, the mayor of the nation’s largest city and three June primary winners in New York and Colorado.
The wins led President Donald Trump to criticize “communists” nearly 100 times since, calling them “godless” and “lunatics.”
Socialists aren’t communists. Socialists want the people to own society’s resources, while communists seek state control. But the two groups share one priority — replacing capitalism with something better.
Republicans — and conservative evangelicals who say capitalism is “biblical” — are busy conflating the two ideologies to paint all Democrats Communist-red ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Gary Bauer
“We must rise up to defeat the growing threat of communism,” said Gary Bauer in “Defending Liberty, Defeating Communism,” a recent program for the late James Dobson’s ministry.
While Trump made more than $2 billion last year, and Elon Musk recently became the world’s first trillionaire, millions of Americans worry they’ll never afford homes, which now average an all-time high of $440,660.
Who are Democratic Socialists?
The Democratic Socialists of America isn’t a political party (that would be the Socialist Party USA). DSA is an advocacy group founded in 1982 to promote the idea “that working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few.”
“Where Democrats aim to reform the capitalist system, the Democratic Socialists of America want to replace it,” said the Washington Post.
Zohran Mamdani (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
“Capitalism is a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit,” says DSA. “We must replace it with democratic socialism, a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods and society.
Before Zohran Mamdani’s election as mayor of New York City, DSA had fewer than 100,000 members. It now has 120,000 members in campus- and community-based chapters in all 50 states. (By comparison, there are an estimated 39 million registered Republicans and 45 million Democrats.)
Some DSA-member candidates target establishment Democrats they see as little better than Republicans.
“In most races, Americans will have the choice between far-right Republicans and corporate Democrats. In both cases, workers lose, and our politicians will remain controlled by their corporate donors, not the ordinary people who voted for them,” says the DSA website.
DSA’s political priorities include limiting (or eliminating) police and military and promoting labor unions, voting access, green energy, housing justice and trans rights and bodily autonomy.
Democratic response
Democrats are divided. Some cheer the DSA’s growth, its influence on their party and its allure with younger voters. Others oppose DSA, see it as their party’s version of the GOP’s anti-establishment Tea Party, believe it may alienate voters and fear it could end their political careers
Some mainstream Democratic officials and candidates are putting their opposition to the DSA on record by signing on to the “Promise to America” campaign. “We are capitalist, not socialist,” says the promise. “We are mainstream, not extreme. We are proud, not ashamed of America.”
Anti-communist history
Sen. Joe McCarthy holding a newspaper ad denouncing his hunt for communists. (Wisconsin Historical Images)
American anti-communism went into high gear in the early 1920s after the founding of the USSR and Communist China. During the Red Sacre of the 1950s, Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s televised hearings claimed the State Department and Protestant pulpits housed hundreds of dangerous commies and sympathizers.
McCarthy ruined the lives and careers of government officials, Hollywood figures, teachers and labor union leaders before the Senate censured him for his excesses.
Candy mogul Robert Welch founded the John Birch Society in 1958 to recruit and mobilize anti-red warriors. Heeding the call were society members Tim LaHaye and Phyllis Schlafly.
Welch was a conspiracist who claimed the U.S. government was “60% to 80% communist dominated” and that Dwight Eisenhower, the 34th president and victorious supreme commander of Allied forces in World War II, was a “conscious, dedicated agent of the communist conspiracy.”
Billy Graham and Billy James Hargis preached against communism. Biblical worldview ministry Summit Ministries, which battles Marxism and other “anti-Christian” worldviews, started out as an anti-communist boot camp.
Roots of Christian socialism
Christian Socialists claim their roots go back to first-century Christians in Jerusalem, where “all the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need,” as recorded in Acts 2:44-45.
In the 1800s, socialist utopian communities such as Robert Owen’s New Harmony, Indiana, sought to revive voluntary socialism. New Harmony failed, but Owens’ utopianism remains.
“In this new world, the inhabitants will attain a state of existence, in which a spirit of charity and affection will pervade the whole human race, man will become spiritualized and happy amidst a race of superior beings,” Owen wrote. “Under this change, man will appear to be a new-created being.”
Today, the Institute for Christian Socialism supports believers and churches “in confronting the world’s captivity to capitalism and in claiming, embodying and promoting the radical socialism of the Christian faith and life.”
The institute was founded on “the conviction — absent among both conservative and progressive Christians — that the gospel of Jesus is irreconcilable with capitalism’s intrinsically anti-social logics and effects and thus demands Christian participation in new forms of political economy.”
The biblical foundation of their advocacy is “The Socialism of Jesus’ Gospel”: “Jesus of Nazareth’s ministry began with an announcement of good news to the poor by calling for the release of captives, the liberation of the oppressed, the forgiveness of financial debts, and the redistribution of wealth (Luke 4:18). He warned against making money a god (Luke 16:13) and taught that the highest law is the love of God and neighbor (Luke 10:27).”
DSA says it welcomes religious socialists: “There is a long tradition of religious socialism in the United States that has been ignored or forgotten. … We’re building a coalition of religious people with socialist values to defeat Christian nationalism and build a more just world.”
Socialism and happy countries
Socialism has inspired political parties in countries worldwide, including Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
The 2025 edition of the UN’s “World Happiness Report” found three “socialist-friendly” countries were the happiest out of 156 nations surveyed. Citizens of Finland, Iceland and Denmark pay hefty taxes but receive hefty benefits, including education and health care, that reduce stress, improve health and apparently increase happiness.
The U.S. ranked 23rd in happiness, right behind No. 22 Saudi Arabia, but ahead of No. 24 Poland and No. 25 Canada.
How received in USA
Polls suggest many Americans like some socialist policies, but they’re turned off by the words “socialism” and “socialists.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders is not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, but he is one of its biggest boosters. DSA says there has been “a socialist revival in the United States” since his first presidential run in 2016, when the group had fewer than 10,000 members.
DSA members now hold two of the 435 seats in the U.S. House, with both winning in 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024:
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) campaigned for Sanders in 2016 and became the youngest female elected to the House in 2018.
- Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), a Palestinian Muslim, served in the Michigan House before winning her seat in Congress.
Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez hope they will be joined in January by all three of the DSA candidates who won primary races this year in deep-blue districts in New York and Colorado.
Ironically, some say no one is doing more to push America toward communism than Trump, who shared a video on social media that called for the U.S. to arrest and deport “hardcore communist bastards” like Mamdani.
Trump’s second term has seen the U.S. pursue something Marx and Lenin envisioned: State ownership of a nation’s companies.
“Trump’s aversion to the heavy hand of the state has not kept him from wielding it himself,” the Washington Post reported. The president has had the federal government take partial ownership of nearly two dozen companies since he returned to the White House, including chipmaker Intel and MP Materials, a leading producer of rare earth minerals.”
Critics say Trump’s ventures into state ownership of companies won’t be any more successful than Stalin’s, which yielded “cronyism, waste and inefficiency.”
Steve Rabey is a veteran religion journalist who lives in Colorado Springs, Colo.