Whatever happened to our Socialist party?

Beginning in the early 20th century, the socialist ethos was ingrained into our Jewish character and behavior. Irving Howe, a socialist himself, in his magisterial “World of Our Fathers,” felt this inclination “in part because the Jewish immigrants brought with them not merely habits derived from petty trading but also such traditional elements of Jewish messianism,” albeit through a secular lens. So, you had the socialist Jewish Forverts, which some readers idolized as the Torah, scowling at anyone throwing out its outdated pages as trash. Then the formation of socialist institutions such as the Workman’s Circle and its associated camps and the multi-term election to Congress of the Socialist Meyer London.

The quixotic Socialist candidate for president, Eugene Victor Debs, was immortalized in Jewish circles by gracing the Yiddish-speaking radio station with his initials, WEVD.

Years later, the founders of the State of Israel were largely socialists who founded the Labor Party, which dominated Israeli politics until the reign of Menachim Begin in the late 1970s. The communal kibbutz and moshav were inaugurated during the early days of the Yishuv, in the 1930s and 40s. So dominant was this socialist ethos that the state controlled more portions of the economy than in any other nation outside the Soviet bloc until the last two decades of the 20th century. And the Labor Party was a full-fledged member of the Socialist International, observing May Day like its socialist European peers.

Stateside, Michael Harrington, author of the best-selling book on poverty, “The Other America,” succeeded the long-tenured Norman Thomas as head of the Socialist Party. He put the Democratic before Socialist because he believed so many socialist regimes were undemocratic. He was anti-Communist as a result, and he also endorsed Zionism.

Against the backdrop of the Vietnam war and the rise of neo-Maoist and Trotskyite organizations on the college campus, such as Students for a Democratic Society, which endorsed hatred of Israel, I joined the only pro-Israel socialist campus organization, the student arm of the Socialist Party-Young People’s Socialist league, known as YPSL. I was influenced by my CCNY history professor, Bernard Bellush, who was a frequent columnist for the Forward. Our textbook of choice was “From Laissez Faire to the Welfare State.” My classmate was also president of YPSL nationally. Other luminaries in the party whom I respected included Albert Shanker, head of the American Federation of Teachers, Bayard Rustin, the organizer of the Washington Civil Rights Mobilization in Washington in 1963, and the aforementioned Irving Howe, editor of the socialist quarterly “Dissent” and my professor at the YIVO Institute.

My parents thought I was a communist, as the letters addressed to me by YPSL started with the salutation: “Dear Comrade.” When I went to Whitehall for my pre-draft physical, I was concerned that YPSL would be included in the list of subversive organizations that I would have to acknowledge joining. Fortunately, it was not. And I received a high enough number in the draft lottery to forgo military service

Years later, I followed the adage attributed to Winston Churchill: “He who was not a socialist in his youth has no heart. He who is a socialist in middle-age has no brain.” When Irving Kristol was asked why he left his radical past, he replied: “I was mugged by reality.”

So now we have the Democratic Socialists of America, who have ostracized the Harrington wing and proclaimed a platform that is dazingly radical and anti-American. Its preamble decares its wish for a classless society, following in the footsteps of the Bolsheviks. Stalin tried implementing this in Ukraine with the elimination of the Kulaks, prosperous peasants, resulting in the “red famine” so well documented by the historian Robert Service.

In our 250th anniversary celebration of the longest and most prosperous democracy in human history, even with our faults, the DSA calls for the elimination of the Supreme Court, the Senate, and the Electoral College, defunding the Department of War and ICE, and Medicare for ALL, when it’s on the precipice of insolvency in six to seven years.

On foreign policy, it calls for the end of embargoes against Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran, of all places. The only country it condemns is Israel, supporting embargoes of arms, including defensive, supporting BDS and Hamas, de facto. This is antisemitic according to IHRA, as it applies double standards against the only Jewish state.

This toxic mixture of neo-communism, Jew-hatred, and Islamic radicalism has now infiltrated the Democratic party, using a well-worn technique of the Communist International in the 1930s by “boring from within.”

We already see so-called Democratic establishment figures echoing many of the points espoused by the DSA instead of serving as a ballast against a tidal wave of DSA extremism. This is no longer the Democratic party I know.

In the upcoming election 11th Congressional District election, I call on all to insure that Representative Mejia, a DSA fellow-traveler who shares its radical politics and hatred of Israel, is defeated by voting for Joe Hathaway, who’s pro-Israel and a moderate Republican. Don’t let your hatred of Trump supplant the need to have the right representative for your congressional district. You will also help give a message to the Democratic party that radicalism and hatred of Israel have no place in our community.

Don’t complain. Act!

Max Kleinman of Fairfield was the CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest from 1995 to 2014. He is the president of the Fifth Commandment Foundation and consultant for the Jewish Community Legacy Project.

Opinion