ANDREW NEIL: If you want to know why socialism is on the march in America, look at the medieval kleptocracy that is the First Family

It was inevitable that, at some stage, America’s populist Left would try to do to the Democratic Party what the populist Right has already done to the Republican Party: take it over.Maybe now is the time their dreams will come true. Their chosen vehicle for the takeover bid is an organisation called Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).The DSA may have been around for almost 50 years, but throughout its existence it has been a political irrelevance. ‘Socialism’ has always been something of a dirty word in US politics, too akin to communism, too redolent of the old world (Europe).Mainstream Democrats have always shunned it. Yet, remarkably, it is now part of the US political lexicon as never before.The DSA has burgeoned since Donald Trump was re-elected in 2024. With more than 120,000 members – a majority of them new recruits – plus many tens of thousands more who regard themselves as ‘DSA adjacent’, it is now the largest explicitly socialist movement in American history. It’s not a third party. It contests Democratic primaries, which choose the party’s candidates, backing upstart radicals against old, complacent incumbents.Its $9million annual budget is peanuts by US political standards but it can count on an army of activists and it has already scored some remarkable successes. The DSA concentrates its efforts on heavily Democratic areas where, if you win the party’s primary nomination, you’re a shoo-in come the real election.Its poster boy, of course, is Zohran Mamdani, the young, charismatic, self-styled socialist who won last year’s Democratic primary for mayor of New York, which he duly became in January.Mamdani is to DSA what Trump is to MAGA: its most famous face and champion. Three Mamdani-backed radicals have recently ousted incumbent Democrats in New York congressional primaries for safe seats. This means, inevitably, they’ll be in the next House of Representatives. Zohran Mamdani is the poster boy of the DSA – a self-styled socialist who won last year’s Democratic primary for mayor of New York, which he duly became in January Mamdani is to DSA what Trump is to MAGA: its most famous face and champion, writes our columnist Andrew NeilMainstream Democrats have been quick to claim the DSA’s appeal is limited to the liberal elites of America’s coastal cities. But its candidates have also won primaries in places far away from the coast, including Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina, Vermont and Utah. It claims almost 40 wins, so far, in various primaries for both state and federal elections.Its biggest test comes on Tuesday in, of all places, Michigan, a no-nonsense, mid-western, blue-collar state which voted for Trump in 2016 and 2024 (but only just, both times).The incumbent Democratic senator has decided not to run again. So the primary is a straight fight between a rather run-of-the-mill mainstream Democratic congresswoman, Haley Stevens, and Abdul El-Sayed, rising star of the DSA-aligned Democrats.El-Sayed is a classic case of America’s new breed of socialist. The son of an Egyptian immigrant engineer, he’s a Muslim who was brought up in an affluent Detroit suburb.After winning a full scholarship to study medicine at the University of Michigan, he received a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to attend Oriel College, Oxford, where he captained the lacrosse team. He then completed his medical studies at Columbia, one of the select group of Ivy League universities.So we’re not talking about some horny-handed son of toil here. But then it has been a long time since the Democrats were the party of America’s working class. Today’s Democratic Party base is white-collar, educated, middle-class, metropolitan – and generally unhappy with life.Education levels are now the best predictor of how Americans will vote. In 2024, Trump won 29 of the 30 states with the lowest share of university graduates. His Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris (remember her?), won 14 of the 15 states with the highest share of university graduates.There’s an added twist to explain the DSA’s growing popularity. Rather than dwelling on the perceived exploitation of the workers – the traditional Marxist pitch – today’s US socialists appeal to the grievances of the young, educated metropolitan classes whose liberal arts degrees have not equipped them for careers at a time when artificial intelligence is gobbling up so many entry-level jobs.Though from affluent backgrounds, they do not feel well off themselves. Poor salaries, high housing costs and sticky inflation have seen to that.A downwardly mobile life beckons, and that scares them. It is on such sentiments that modern US socialism preys. Solutions are another matter. The DSA can make our own loony Left sound quite sensible. The Michigan Senate primary is a straight fight between Democratic congresswoman, Haley Stevens, and Abdul El-Sayed El-Sayed calls Israel a ‘rogue state’, accuses it of ‘genocide’ and wants the US to ban further arms sales to itIts online manifesto calls for the destruction of the ‘capitalist oligarchy’ and a ‘socialist future’, the abolition of prisons and police, the defunding of the US military and closure of all overseas bases, a 32-hour working week (with no pay cuts, of course), universal free housing, rent controls (why would they be needed if housing was free?), public ownership of ‘essential industries’ and the ‘largest corporations’, and an end to border controls.Plus the ripping apart of the US constitution. The Senate would be abolished, as would the Presidency and the Supreme Court, to be replaced by an executive and judiciary under the control of the House of Representatives – a sort of new ‘people’s parliament’.Michigan’s El-Sayed is trying not to run on any of this. After all, he wants to beat not just the Democratic opponents in the primary but his Republican candidate come November.He still has a lot of explaining to do. When riots raged in US cities after the death of George Floyd in 2020 he said the police should be defunded (he now says he was just using the language that was ‘in vogue’ at the time).He also once described a moderate Democratic senator as ‘an ogre’ whose head he’d like to put ‘on a pike’ to intimidate other moderates.He’s also cosied up to Hasan Piker, a notorious hard-Leftist who has opined that ‘America deserved 9/11’ and described Chairman Mao, the Chinese despot whose policies killed more than 40million, as ‘one of the great leaders of this world’.Piker is also pro-Hamas. El-Sayed may not be that. But he calls Israel a ‘rogue state’, accuses it of ‘genocide’ and wants the US to ban further arms sales to it. This is significant. Deep hostility to Israel, often spilling into outright anti-Semitism, is in the DNA of DSA activists. Whatever policy disagreements they may have, a loathing of Israel unites them.Just as a previous generation of young people was radicalised by the Vietnam War, so the DSA has been radicalised by Israel’s response in Gaza to the Hamas atrocities of October 7. It is what really fires them up, far more than any domestic agenda.Republicans see a ‘Get out of jail free’ card here. If the shrill, extreme voice of the DSA is increasingly the voice of the Democrats, then perhaps November’s midterms won’t be quite the bloodbath for Trump and his party they fear. Well, maybe. But three polls this week all put Trump’s approval below 35 per cent, an all-time low.More than 70 per cent think he’s handling the economy (the number one issue) badly and almost 75 per cent disapprove of his flailing war on Iran. Republican voter morale has slumped. Many have indicated they just won’t bother to vote come November.The Democrats, of course, are not in much better shape. Their approval rating is as low as Trump’s. The party is still run by a gerontocracy that hasn’t had an original idea or candidate with widespread appeal for years. At least the DSA is clearing out the dead wood, at last. Even moderate Democrats acknowledge that.US socialism still has some way to go before it becomes mainstream, if it ever does. But voters increasingly disillusioned with Trump and mainstream Democrats could easily look past their daft ideas and give them their votes – just for the hell of it.In a sense, it’s hard to blame them. Traditional Democrats have run out of steam and purpose. Trump has started another forever war of the sort he was elected to avoid. People see him, rightly, as indifferent to the crippling cost-of-living crisis ordinary families are enduring.Meanwhile, the kleptocracy that is the First Family and their hangers on stuff their own pockets with a level of greed that would shame a medieval monarch. If you wonder why socialism, of all things, is suddenly on the march in America – that’s the answer.