Former Democratic Chief Counsel for the House Judiciary Committee Julian Epstein said during an appearance on “The Alex Marlow Show” that the Democratic Socialists of America should be understood as a Communist organization. Epstein pointed to recent data about the DSA’s policy committee, which he described as the group’s governing board. He said 51% of the committee openly embraces Communism, Marxism, or Marxist-Leninism. Epstein also argued that Democrats are losing their old identity as the party increasingly makes room for socialist and communist candidates.
The comments came during a discussion with Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow about the direction of the Democratic Party and the rise of DSA-backed candidates. Epstein said Democrats have become a party centered on grievance and tearing down existing systems. He argued that the party is no longer focused on building institutions, improving schools, creating jobs, or solving problems in the way Democrats once claimed to be. The result, he says, is a party that is now willing to “get into bed with anybody” if it can turn resentment into enough votes to win elections.
Epstein said the rise of the DSA fits into that larger shift. “I think this is a party that is like sheep; they’re all falling off a cliff,” Epstein said. “I’ve been warning about this for a long time.” He said the Democratic Party has moved toward “nihilism” as its political ideology. Epstein added that when the message becomes nothing but grievance, “you aren’t about anything.”
Epstein continued, “By the way, the Free Press has done a great piece this week showing that 51% of the policy committee, which is the governing board of the DSA, all openly embrace communism, Marxism, or Marxist-Leninism.” He then made the point directly. “So the DSA is essentially a Communist organization, and that’s not McCarthyism. That’s not Red Scare. That’s how they describe themselves.”
He said the DSA presents itself as an alternative for voters who are angry with the current political order. “What the DSA is arguing is that if you’re tired of the status quo, then come over to our side because we’re not the status quo,” Epstein said. “We’re anti-status quo, and those are just empty words. Those are just platitudes.” He said the they depend on frustration with the status quo being leveraged into support for the DSA’s agenda.
“The conceit there is that if people are frustrated with the status quo, and a lot of people may be frustrated for legitimate reasons, that means they accept the communist agenda of DSA,” Epstein said. He then pointed to the 51% figure from the DSA policy committee. “So the DSA is essentially a communist organization, and that’s not McCarthyism,” Epstein said. “That’s not Red Scare. That’s how they describe themselves.”
Epstein said anger at the political system does not mean voters support the policies associated with the DSA. “Yes, people are disappointed, but it doesn’t mean that people are for ending the democratic free markets,” Epstein said. “It doesn’t mean people are for gender extremism or race essentialism, or climate extremism, or any of the other garbage that the DSA would have to sell to a public that we know 80 to 90% completely rejects.” He called that “the con job.” He added that he hopes the DSA surge is “more like a Roman candle than a movement that will sustain itself over years because the DSA can’t deliver on anything.”
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Check out the video interview with Julian Epstein here:
Epstein then compared the current Democratic message with the party he knew during earlier Democratic administrations. “You remember Clinton talking about a bridge to the 21st century,” Epstein said. “It was all about building.” He said that meant asking, “How are we going to build better schools? How are we going to make better jobs? How are we going to adjust our training for workers for the fourth phase of the industrial revolution?” He said that was the kind of message Democrats used to present before the rise of the party’s current far-left factions.
He also described who he believes is driving the DSA’s support. “DSA is not getting any support from working class Americans, not from Black Americans, Hispanic Americans,” Epstein said. “It’s all college-educated, the downward-mobile podcast class that wants to live in the most expensive cities in America and wants other people to foot the bill.” He said those activists feel “that if they’re not living the glam life of matcha lattes, that the system’s unfair to them.” Epstein called it “the garbage that communists and socialists have always peddled.”
Epstein said the ideas behind the movement are not new. “If nothing else, the DSA folks, in my mind, are boring,” Epstein said. “They’re just boring, boring people.” He continued, “They’re boring people with old ideas that don’t know anything about how to build. They don’t know how to create wealth or prosperity.” Epstein said the only question they focus on is “how do you redistribute what other people have created?”
He argued that socialists do not want to live under the kind of system they claim to support. “The whole thing’s a scam,” he said. “I don’t think any of them want to live in a world where socialism is simply redistributing poverty, which is what socialism does.” He described them as “typical champagne socialists” who “live high on the hog” while selling grievance to voters. Epstein concluded that working-class people tend to reject those ideologies because they want opportunity and a level playing field rather than dependence on handouts.
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.