By Staff
A former organizer with the Democratic Socialists of America says the organization has transformed from a moderate social democratic club into a revolutionary machine run by affluent elites, and that its growing influence now threatens to drive the Democratic Party into a dangerous and disconnected direction.
Jake Altman, who spent nearly a decade inside the DSA and left in 2022, offered an insider account in a recent interview with The Free Press. His central claim is stark: the DSA no longer represents working class people, and the Michigan primary results prove it.
Abdul El-Sayed, who ran on Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, and ending military aid to Israel, won the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan by roughly one percent. But Altman pointed to the demographics of that victory as the clearest evidence of the organization's disconnect.
"El-Sayed won with young, suburban, white, college educated voters," Altman said. "His moderate opponent won with working class, rural, and Black voters." His conclusion was blunt. "The DSA is made up of very affluent, very culturally affluent people. The DSA doesn't represent working class people."
Altman described joining the organization in 2013 after being repelled by more extreme left groups, including an organizer who urged support for Gaddafi against American imperialism. At the time, he said, the DSA was pragmatic, aligned with European social democracy, and welcomed Zionists. "DSA was a Zionist organization. Zionists were welcome in DSA," he recalled.
That changed, he said, after a left caucus formed in 2014. Anti-communism became forbidden, and the organization threw open its doors to extremists. The demographic shift was dramatic. In 2013, the median age of DSA members was 68. Following Bernie Sanders' failed presidential bid, the median age was cut in half to 33 by 2018, and by 2021 roughly three in four members were under 40.
Altman said the transformation was driven in part by academia, including people teaching in universities who advanced these views inside the organization. He also described what he called mob tactics used to silence dissenters, including coordinated online swarms, denunciations, and smears against anyone who spoke out.
As evidence of the organization's radical turn, Altman pointed to its new platform, which he said includes defunding the Department of Defense, replacing the president and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress, prosecuting American and Israeli leaders for the situation in Gaza, ending economic warfare against Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran, and a 32 hour work week.
"Sounds like satire. It's not," he said.
Altman rejected the argument that only a small fringe of the organization are actual communists. He cited a 2021 survey in which roughly 36 percent of DSA members identified as communist, and said he is confident that number has grown.
His own breaking point came over foreign policy. He described the DSA issuing statements defending the Maduro regime in Venezuela and, in 2022, blaming the United States, NATO, and Western Europe for Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
"At that point, I had just had it with the Putin apologism," Altman said. "You're not social democrats. You're not democratic socialists."
Altman framed the stakes in existential terms. He predicted that by 2028 the choice could be between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and J.D. Vance, and said no moderate centrist has caught fire. He described a hollowed out Democratic Party with no grassroots presence, while the DSA has deep infrastructure, media discipline, and diehard volunteers.
"The Democratic Party is a shell. The unions are a shell of their former selves," Altman said. "All the energy, it's Hasan Piker's party now."
He described a radicalized base among affluent, high propensity Democratic voters, and said he has heard Democrats privately say that Tucker Carlson is right about Gaza. "There is a lot of horseshoe theory being proven in practice," he said. "It is really, really frightening."
Altman attributed much of the shift to higher education and the erasure of the anti-communist tradition. He noted that most American socialists of the 20th century became ardent anti-communists, but that tradition is now gone, and almost everyone who fought communists in the labor movement is dead.
He was careful to concede that there were bad elements of McCarthyism. But he drew a line at what he considers a false equivalence. "Don't tell me that I am a red baiter when you are prancing around dressed like Mao talking about killing landlords," he said.
Altman's advice to mainstream Democratic voters was threefold. Get organized around the few people willing to speak out. Do not go along with Democrats willing to fall in behind terror sympathizers. And have these fights out in the open, even though it will be hard and painful.
He warned that the consequences will fall on ordinary people, not the young activists he described as downwardly mobile in relation to their parents but still doing well by most American standards. As an example, he pointed to Chicago, which he said is borrowing to cover operating expenses under a DSA aligned mayor.
"This is not going to fall on the DSA kids. This is going to fall on hardworking people in Chicago," Altman said. "They will run these cities. They will run this country into the ground. Now is the time to make time."
Sources:
The interview itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61tUsrNejRM (the Confessions episode on The Free Press)
The Free Press generally: thefreepress.com
The DSA 2021 membership survey (the ~36% communist figure and median age data)
The DSA's current platform document (defund DoD, replace the president/Supreme Court, etc.)
The CNN poll on a third of Democrats identifying as democratic socialists
The Michigan primary results and exit/demographic data
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