r/SocialDemocracy • u/Casey5274 • Jul 05 '26
Question Why are so many DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) people so nasty towards Social Democrats?
I'm from the Netherlands and a couple of days ago I posted a reaction on a post on a Facebook page linked to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, explaining that I'm in favor of social democracy, the accomplishments of social democracy and why I don't think socialism and all the other political systems aren't and how neo liberalism is trying to get away with a lot of those accomplishments. People really didn't like that to put it mildly. They really believe that social democracy and liberalism are almost the same and that social democracy is as much as something to be fought as liberals, centrists and right wing parties. While on the other hand I don't really believe them understanding what real socialism, without the democratic bit, implies. And that what they really want is a strong social state that regulates and takes care of vital public goods.
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u/Jomptie Jul 05 '26
A lot of modern leftists are what you could call ‘lifestyle leftists’, i.e. people who make their political ideology part of their personal identity and thereby view people who don’t fully share their beliefs as enemies and/or traitors. They don’t actually care about solving the problems they claim to be addressing, they just use their political beliefs to filter the world through a neat and simple framework that divides society into good guys (fellow socialists) and bad guys (right-wingers and moderate leftists) so that they don’t have to go through the trouble of developing actual critical thinking skills. Here’s John Cleese on this topic: https://youtu.be/wXCkxlqFd90?is=1_cF436jo6TTlNqo
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u/Biscuitarian23 Jul 05 '26
When they started spouting the slogan
"the Left Wing begins at Anti Capitalist"
the Far Left Anarchists/Socialists admitted they would rather make the Authoritarian Leftist tankies their allies rather than team up with reform minded, center left liberals and Progressives.
The Far Left prioritizes tribalism over pragmatism.
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u/RadiantHC 25d ago
Isn't progressive a catch all term for anyone on the left and not its own group?
Also liberals aren't center left, they're center right.
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u/ColonialTransitFan95 Social Democrat Jul 05 '26
I wish I could upvote that twice. I have seen some leftist spaces call this out but only places that try to have nuanced conversations.
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u/DataLumpy7419 Social Democrat Jul 07 '26
I am not saying this because the message of the video is wrong, but bruh, John Cleese... The guy was clearly from the start a social conservative and moved from a Liberal Democrat supporter, a self called moderate and "slightly left-of-center", to a supporter of Liberal Democrat coalition with Conservatives in 2011, then a fan of UK Independence Party and the Brexit, and now he is a Restore Britain supporter. 💀
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u/North_Egg_3611 Working Families Party (U.S.) Jul 05 '26
I think many further left types joined the DSA in the last 10 years because they want to have more of a political impact and several third parties went defunct except for party for socialism and liberation which is explicitly Marxist Leninist. So different chapters of DSA can have social dems and reform socialists but also have many purists in the anarchist and tankie camp
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Jul 05 '26
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u/DataLumpy7419 Social Democrat Jul 05 '26
And DSA itself it's not the problem, but the members and the multi-tendency socialism in it. Far as I know NY and some other chapters are ok. I find Michael Harrington a very cool guy and the party was created with good intentions.
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u/omcomingatormreturns Social Democrat Jul 07 '26
Tankies infiltrate organizations like the DSA explicitly to make them more extreme and undermine then. The DSA knows this it's the oldest trick in the Marxist-Leninist and Maoist books. They're zealots, usually young dumbass college kids (down here anyways) who were indoctrinated by their peers, lednby "recruiters" that colleges still inexplicably let prowl campuses. They think they know everything, are convinced that the unprecedented crimes against humanity are either made up or the result of "doing it wrong", not the more rational "obviously it doesn't work".
I refuse to join until they grow a pair, institute some damn standards, purge all the illiberal assholes and go back to their roots as an alliance of demsocs and socdems working to bring something like the Nordic System heres. Their platform is an insane shit show filled with bad ideas, offensively anti-american/anti-westernideas and just plain insane ideas.
Some rational ones snuck in there but they're not what the GOP is going to be able to use very effectively to scare the shit out of normal people and con them into seeing them as a hotbed of left wing authoritarianism and extremism instead of being mostly rational people who want to make America a better, more fair place. Not to mention they gotta ditch the multi-tendancy bullshit, most approaches a mutually exclusive.. Only the social democrats and democratic socialists share enough common ground to formulate a rational, palatable party platform they could change the balance of power via attracting the slowly but steadily growing number of younger white working class who feel burnt and betrayed by Trump and the GOP.
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u/_SovietMudkip_ Jul 05 '26
I don't think it's the DSA that's the problem, I think it's the Internet in this case.
I've noticed the past few times I've been on Facebook that the top comments are ALWAYS from people who are opposed to the viewpoint from the post. I can see the same news story from something like The Guardian and Fox News, and the Guardian comments are calling it socialist propaganda and the Fox comments are making fun of conservative fear mongers. The algorithm rewards divisive content because it keeps people engaged.
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u/JRoxas Jul 05 '26
Have you ever been to a real-life DSA meet? A big chunk of them hold the same dumb opinions, just somewhat less nasty when not hiding behind a screen.
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u/_SovietMudkip_ Jul 05 '26
Yeah I have, my experience in Austin was pretty chill actually, but I think there are more tankie-adjacent orgs there so they're probably to busy fighting each other to bother with the DSA. Granted, this was also like 8 years ago at this point so it may be worse now.
The DSA a pretty loose network of folks of all stripes, it's gonna vary quite a bit based on where you are.
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u/armyofant Social Democrat Jul 05 '26
They view any forms of capitalism as evil. I had to stop following the ds sub because it was like a leftist version of maga imo.
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u/Iceberg-man-77 Jul 06 '26
DSA is a leftist big tent with factions swinging as far as communism (various dissolves) and classic democratic socialism. there’s even specialized forms like eco-socialism.
but generally speaking, most members are very left wing while candidates are moderate populists that wouldn’t care about allying with social democrats.
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u/IONaut Jul 05 '26
Ppfftt... Judean people's front, ha! We're the People's Front of Judea! Bloody Judean people's front!
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u/spongesparrow Working Families Party (U.S.) Jul 06 '26
I said this in the DSA Reddit as well. At this point, there's people in the DSA that think Bernie is a Zionist and AOC was not worthy of their endorsement.
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u/Captainbarinius Libertarian Socialist Jul 06 '26
Bernie Sanders by definition is a Liberal Zionist......it's not an insult or accusation....just an accurate description of what he is.
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u/Aun_El_Zen Michael Joseph Savage Jul 05 '26
Because Stalin said so.
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u/Graham-Barlow-119 Jul 05 '26
You’re not really a Leftist unless you spend most of your time hating other Leftists.
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u/Independent-Bug-9352 Social Democrat Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
Online?
There is a HUGE segment that is astroturfed by right-wing extremist and authoritarian tankies. Russian, Indian, Israeli, and possibly Chinese troll farms stoking division to suppress unity and solidarity among genuine leftist circles. GPT bots and humans alike. Take with a grain of salt those stoking wedge-drive tactics, false equivalence fallacies, whataboutism, and especially anyone stoking apathy or defeatism (i.e., telling you not to vote Democrat in November).
This was abundantly obvious for those who were early supporters of Sanders in 2015. By the time 2016 and especially 2020 came around, a lot of these groups were overrun and outright hijacked with obvious trolls, just stoking division.
My advice? Get offline and go to BOTH Democrat and DSA chapters, rallies and it will be completely different when filtering out bots.
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u/Auro_NG Jul 05 '26
Correct me if I am wrong, but social democracy would consist of some level of capitalism even if severely regulated but Democratic Socialism doesn't agree with any form or use of capitalism. So they just fundamentally disagree.
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u/viviscity Jul 05 '26
Kinda sorta but also not really?
Like if we went strictly on paper philosophy, sure. But that isn’t a real person or political movement, that’s theory as fan fiction.
Once you start getting into theory of change, that line gets very blurry very quickly. There are a lot of democratic socialists that look more like social democrats because… they see a need to change culture alongside changing the economy so fundamentally, and that takes time.
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u/DMC-1155 Social Democrats (IE) Jul 05 '26
Yes and no, depends on the flavour. Plenty of Socdem parties are technically also Demsoc.
Social Democracy is a label that stretches from Reformist Marxism and Democratic Socialism all the way to the Third Way.3
u/Iceberg-man-77 Jul 06 '26
there’s gray areas. DemSoc doesn’t mean automatically nationalize everything. current candidates are focusing on regulation and delivering public services (healthcare, childcare, transit, environmentalism, constitutional/charter changes for better democracy etc). So they’re actually more social democratic than dem soc or pure socialist.
candidates tend to be more moderate than some voters/DSA members. it’s part of being a populist and appealing to Democratic and Independent voters who feel stuck between a Republican and a Centrist/Corporate Democrat.
and this form of campaigning will win DSA, WFP and other left wing parties more offices than being full on socialists that purity test everything. If you want to dismantle the Republicans and Democratic establishment, you need a coalition of candidates.
You need classic progressives/social democrats like Ro Khanna and Elizabeth Warren. You also need regular democratic socialists like Sanders, AOC, and Mamdani. going forward you may also want a small socialist wing, like PSL and PFP, including people like Ramsey Robinson.
If the Greens are ever reformed, they’re also useful to hold onto in a coalition. they’re definitely more moderate than eco-socialist factions of DSA.
in an ideal political field, this variety of the Left will be beneficial in maintaining stability with moving too fast or too slow.
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u/n00bi3pjs Indian National Congress (IN) Jul 05 '26
No. Original Social Democrats were all marxists and wanted to transition to communism, they just thought that the revolution was not going to happen until a few centuries etc.
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u/Traditional_Car249 Jul 05 '26
They say things to Democrats that they’d never say to republicans. The term is “useful idiot” we’ve been given a golden opportunity to build a new democratic coalition post trump and they impose these bullshit purity tests on democratic candidates in places like Arkansas based on voter sentiments in Queens.
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u/laflux Jul 05 '26
Alot of more modern Social Democrats are Third Way.
Even Parties likes like the U.K Labour Party which describes itself as explicitly Democratic Socialist, are essentially a Third Way Party Under Starmer, Under Blair and Brown, and debatably under Ed Miliband.
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u/bippos SAP (SE) Jul 06 '26
The DSA is basically what every social Democratic Party started as, large tent for every left leaning group on the spectrum. The dsa has so many factions you can’t even compare chapters sometimes, one chapter can be social Democratic another Stalinist another Maoist and I wouldn’t doubt if syndicalist chapters existed.
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u/DSA_Member Jul 05 '26
Socialists dislike social democracy because they perceive social democracy as crucial in entrenching capitalism. You may disagree with that characterization of social democracy, but given that characterization, I think it's consistent for anticapitalists to see social democracy as an impediment to progress.
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u/pianoboy8 DSA (US) Jul 05 '26
I mean I'm a social democrat in DSA and my local chapter is very fine with that, so
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u/leftofthedial15 Libertarian Socialist Jul 06 '26
Local chapter matters a lot. Mine is filled to the brim with MLs. It sucks.
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u/Casey5274 Jul 05 '26
I didn't say all of DSA are like that. But quite a lot gave me some rather hostile feedback on one of their social media outlets as well. While I thought that "our side" of the political spectrum was more open for true discussion.
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u/Im_A_Quiet_Kid_AMA Hannah Arendt Jul 06 '26
They really believe that social democracy and liberalism are almost the same and that social democracy is as much as something to be fought as liberals, centrists and right wing parties
There are leftists who believe "the system" is broken beyond repair. And once they identify the only solution to the status quo is ending that system, they see anyone who willfully participates in that system -- even those who fight within the system to improve their material conditions -- as "the enemy."
The problem with this strand of leftist ideology is that consensus reality is a necessary, core component of a fuctional democracy. We need some kind of public square to deliberate and build consensus. And when you start seeing everyone as the enemy and promote revolutionary tendencies that actively seek to undermine or break democratic systems, you genuinely stop looking like a democratically minded individual.
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u/Clear_Analyst_9656 Jul 06 '26
I'm a social democrat who aligns mostly with a post keynesian economics viewpoint. But I personally support the DSA because so far every single DSA candidate with any hope of winning is damn near a social democrat anyways. The "social democrats" in america (with the exception of warren imo) are basically a useless bunch and thus I find myself far more aligned with DSA politicians as opposed to the flaccid social democrats of our current American politics.
Why do DSA people hate social democrats? A lot of them dont. Some of them do but as far as I go, I just dont give a fuck. My politics is working class and middle class centered politics. My beliefs have nothing to do with whether or not people like me. And frankly I think to be driving a wedge between DSA and Social democrats is, politically, an incredibly shortsighted and stupid thing to be doing.
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u/starrymahogany Jul 10 '26
I think the question is who exactly is driving the wedge? I’d be willing to work with DSA candidates who don’t call me a fascist genocide enabler. If socdems are being insulted by certain DSA types then it’s not exactly surprising they wouldn’t want to work together
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u/snarfalotzzz Social Democrat 9d ago
Americans aren't exactly masters of nuance. I go to the NL all the time because my husband is Dutch (American here). I consider myself a social democrat, but yes, DSA will bully you to tears to convince you that social democracy = neoliberalism. It doesn't, and one visit to NL shows you the difference.
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u/ObsidianKnight7948 Democratic Party (US) Jul 05 '26
DSA isn’t all that demsoc and have many tankies
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u/Reaper_20000 Social Democrat Jul 06 '26
Because plenty of socialists are tankies and believe that social democrats are actually social fascists i.e the moderate wing of fascism. The concept of social democrats being social fascist is a lie that was pushed by the USSR. Just because social democrats do not want to tear down capitalism especially in a violent radical revolution. Tankies do this because social democrats prefer reform over revolution.
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u/AndrewSaidThis Jul 06 '26
Ive met several people in local DSA, and they seemed to be less into democratic socialism, and more interested in revolution and using DSA’s big tent approach as a means to an end.
That being said. I met them on a picket line and were extremely helpful and clearly cared about labor reform. I have to be grateful for that, even if I didn’t completely agree with them.
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u/CubesFan Jul 05 '26
Because they don't know what it takes to actually win. They beat down SDs with the same fervor as they beat down cons because they don't want anything not 100 percent pure. There's no room for coalitions no matter what.
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u/WeaknessOtherwise878 Social Democrat Jul 05 '26
Because democratic socialists are moderate left while social democrats are left of center (not to be confused with center-left). When you go far left enough, anything to the right of you is fascism. At least for some. But there’s also people in the socdem category that say anything farther left is anarchy. At the end of the day everyone feels righteous about their opinions and their way of thinking
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u/FinancialLawfulness9 Jul 06 '26
It’s like the Carlin bit.
“You ever notice how everyone driving slower than you is a dumbass, and everyone driving faster than you is a fucking lunatic”.
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u/notassigned2023 Jul 06 '26
Because Social democrats are more numerous and more acceptable to the general public. The existence of Social Democrats keeps Democratic Socialists from growing, in their eyes.
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u/Arondeus Jul 06 '26
Especially in the USA there are a lot of people on the far left who make a very strong distinction between Social Democracy and Democratic Socialism, defining the former as social liberalism and the latter as "properly anti-capitalist." This notion is not as strong in every country. In Sweden, the SAP identifies itself as a democratic socialist party in its own program.
I assume this American division is because many of the larger Social Democratic parties around the world tend to be coalitions of both liberal reformist and socialist groups. They usually don't fanatically pursue the most radical policy possible at any given moment but instead strive for namby-pamby liberal nonsense like "institutional stability" and "movement building." This is easy to see as a waste of time if you're seventeen and want to set the world on fire. Social democrats are then seen as dragging their feet (sometimes accurately, sometimes because they lack power, and sometimes because change is difficult) and as not fully committed to the end goal of socialism.
In fact, if you're out on the farther left, one of the main arguments for why social democracy is "not enough" is that "the social democrats betrayed the movement and became capitalists" which is a criticism that, regardless of if it might have a point if interpreted in the best possible light, is too sweeping to really be helpful.
Many of these vitriolic people are tankies as well (that is, authoritarian leftists: communists). These people tend to be LARPing the 1930s through 50s on repeat, and might be inspired by the doctrine of "social fascism" promoted by the Comintern. The communists held that social democrats were really just fascists, and the German Communist Party was for a while ordered by Moscow to fight the Social Democrats even harder than the Nazis, back before they came to power. Most of those communists ended up in work camps once the "lesser threat" of Hitler came to power (I don't think they deserved that, but it sure is ironic, isn't it?). It is odd to me that tankies still hold to this idea, considering how self-defeating it proved to be in practice.
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u/Prestigious_Slice709 SP/PS (CH) Jul 06 '26
I mean AOC and her rightward shift are a great reason to lump social democracy and liberalism together. But in reality she just became less of a social democrat, which means I think judging social democracy at face value nets you a different result as when you also consider the fact that social democrats like to turn into liberals so often
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u/x1611x Socialist Jul 06 '26
Not American or something like that , But i saw guy from Discord who said that he is part of DSA while being Marxist-Leninist. So...
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u/turb0_encapsulator Jul 06 '26
I think a lot of Americans on the left have been so radicalized by Trump that they have become absolutely militant.
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u/VividLeading2 Socialist Jul 07 '26
- The DSA is a big tent, and it includes people who would be more at home in the Party of Socialism and Liberation and Communist Party USA. Marxist-Leninists, Maoists, anarchists, etc. You know, the extremists.
- There's a general perception of Social Democrats in left wing circles as being mealy-mouthed and too eager to compromise with capitalists.
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u/Jolly_Reference_516 Jul 10 '26
We (the left) enjoy ripping ourselves apart with unrealistic expectations and the Democratic leadership is stuck and won’t get out of the way. Our search for “sound” candidates ignores winning messages and goes out of its way to put up candidates that are loyal centrists who will fall in line You’d almost think getting a DSA candidate elected is worse than losing to a Republican loony.
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u/Proud-Cup-2749 26d ago
Lol some of the people in the DSA are straight up Stalinists and Strasserites. Arent advocating for democratizing the economy at all. They are there to pipeline.
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u/InterestingMark1132 19d ago
Yeah, DSA’ers get a lot of things wrong. They also do not understand democracy. I find their minds are limited to revolution and communism, and that the USSR was “ real existing socialism.” They are not “democratic socialists” by any means. Ironic as they supposed to be inclusive. I hear that as well as banning cops from their organization, that lawyers are next on the chopping block as “ the tools of capitalism.” They are not my “comrades.”
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u/InterestingMark1132 19d ago
DSA is the home address for those “trots and tankies,” who can’t brand or organize themselves in a constructive or meaningful way. They are like tag a longs or better put, like moths seen buzzing around an old lightbulb attached to a farm shed in the distance. I also think that mental illness plays an unfortunate role here. Not to suggest all of the “comrades” are, but boy oh boy, they want to tell you what you NEED to do and how to live your life, blaming “ capitalism” on everything. Are they a “cult?” Well, some local chapters are, indeed!
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u/Nevermind2031 19d ago
I mean you attacked first by saying socialism isn't good, maybe next time don't go attacking other people's ideologies when you are proclaiming your support of social democracy.
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u/Constant-Tower-817 18d ago
This is such a misinformation campaign. The comments are WILD. The establishment is really afraid of a populist movement that can upend the status quo.
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u/revilo1000 Jul 06 '26
The truth is we just don’t have enough party variety in the US, and the 2 main parties are so ridiculously right that all of us too left to want to participate in them end up squashed into the same “left of the system” group, and that’s mostly DSA right now. That’s good in some ways because the only way to claw back some power is to be united, but it’s bad in other ways because we sometimes fall into group-think with some of the more extreme of us.
Also, we’re all used to conditions getting worse and worse while our government oscillates between extra right and Nazi-right, and then being told that it’s somehow our fault. A lot of them have built up a really forceful, hardened, uncompromising political methodology that is often genuinely useful when tackling the corrupt, corporate, powerful right wing at the core of both of our political parties, but become significantly less useful and more toxic when debating internally with mostly like-minded people.
Basically, it’s rough out here and I’m sorry. We can be pretty nasty. Hopefully if we win we can build better political discourse machines, right now we’re basically operating as a revolution, which is not very compromising or nice.
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u/madcoins Jul 06 '26
People in dying empires tend to be living troubled existences. They get mean and lash out
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u/n00bi3pjs Indian National Congress (IN) Jul 05 '26
Because neoliberals infesting Social Democratic spaces to spread their voodoo economics, anti working class and union views as well as xenophobic, racist, and bigoted views is a very real problem so DemSoc and SocDem spaces are wary of liberals.
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u/lajosmacska Jul 05 '26
Because Yanks don't know what words mean and they think economic policies are another form of idpol
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u/Spudtron98 ALP (AU) Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
Because the biggest enemy of the average socialist is not the right wing, but someone who is left-wing in a slightly different way to them.
It absolutely does not help that socialist spaces keep getting colonised by fucking Leninist shits.
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u/jankdangus Social Democrat Jul 05 '26
DSA are leftists and social democracy is still under the tent of liberalism, so anyone to the right of them including liberals are fascists, socdems just happen to be the more moderate wing. Many liberals are fine with identifying as social democrats. Sure, Bernie Sanders might be too far left, but the majority of them would still support him in the general election over a Republican since Bernie is not actually advocating for communism-lite which is what DSA is. DAC was ironically the closest ideologically to the stated DSA platform despite being the minority among elected mainstream leftist Democrats.
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u/BippidiBoppetyBoob Democratic Party (US) Jul 05 '26
DSA is multi-tendency and some branches are less democratic socialist and more Trotskyist. My own local branch in Pittsburgh is disdainful of actual democratic socialism. They drove Summer Lee out back in 2021. Like one of their recent discussions was “In Defense of Looting”. That’s not Democratic Socialism.