My mom, reasonable Democrat that she is, informed me that socialism isn’t so scary after all because Norway has free health care. We were debating the Wisconsin governor’s race. I almost tore the hair out of my head in despair.
I’m not picking on her here. She’s my sounding board for what a thoughtful Democrat thinks. She tries to research issues, and she cares about Wisconsin. My mom is a good person. I’m sharing this conversation to engage with all of you who mistakenly think like she does – that this is something we’ve seen before (it’s not); that it’s harmless (it’s not); that Bernie was kind of funny so socialism isn’t that big of a deal (it is); and that, my God, they have decent healthcare in Copenhagen after all (sure, but that’s not what we’re taking about here.)
The media have done their part, waxing on about Frank Zeidler and sewer socialists. More stories explored Hong’s failed Ramen noodle business than her desire to remake capitalism or the terrifying tenets of DSA, to which she belongs. Stories sanitize her. The liberal Wisconsin Examiner buries the lead. The ideological Madison-Milwaukee media industrial complex plays its part.
Wisconsin matters. We are being painted as socialism’s test in a Heartland battleground. If we stop it here, we demonstrate its limits, and the movement may fizzle. If Hong prevails, it’s going to light the bonfire. Far left social media circulated a graphic after the DSA convention, alleging that 51.9% of DSA leaders identify as Communists and most of the rest as reformists. That’s according to Manhattan Institute’s Stu Smith, who has worked hard to expose the group.
“A majority of DSA’s national leadership is shaped by Communists, Marxist-Leninists, and members who see the org as fertile ground for radicalization,” he wrote. He quoted a national DSA leader who said on video, of Communism: “The number one pathway to that is to end the greatest threat to that in the world, which is the United States.”
The group has a platform that calls to abolish the Senate, replace the President and Supreme Court, draft a new constitution, and create a “democratic socialist republic.” He quoted a national DSA leader as saying the term is vague enough to easy people into the “harder sh*t” like crushing the “bourgeoisie.” Their own website says they want non-citizens to have full voting rights, to reduce the power of the Supreme Court and to create a new Constitution.
“Our goal is to put workers in charge of the government through a new democratic constitution that establishes civil, political, and democratic rights for all, is based on proportional representation in a single federal legislature,” DSA’s own website says. Its governing board adopted a platform to replace the President and Supreme Court “with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress, eliminating ‘the carceral forces of the capitalist state,’ ending all economic sanctions (including those on Iran, Cuba, and Russia), and granting universal amnesty to all immigrants,” according to an article in Cross Currents and Smith.
The Wisconsin media almost entirely ignored, with a few exceptions, Hong’s appearances on the podcasts of men who despicably said America deserved 9/11 (Hasan Piker) and Jewish people are “demon*c” (Michael Beyer). Hong tried to claim that she wasn’t aware of the latter podcaster’s comments and insisted she’s against antisemitism and the violence on October 7, which one of the podcasters also downplayed. You are the company you keep. Now ask her if she thinks Israel should exist or whether we deserved 9/11. They won’t.
That’s all like going on a podcast with Hitler and explaining it away by saying, “we just spoke about helping workers get childcare.” Yeah, fine…you just sat down with e*tl*r.
But the podcaster drama is not even the biggest threat.
City Journal’s Brian Anderson wrote, “At the DSA’s 2025 convention, as the indefatigable Stu Smith reports, a ‘coalition of Communist caucuses’ seized a majority on the party’s National Political Committee. They repealed the existing ban on Leninist ‘democratic centralism,’ backed a Maoist with a soft spot for revolutionary bloodletting on a security commission, and narrowly passed an amendment calling to get rid of the US presidency and Supreme Court for bodies subordinate to Congress.”
Again, Hong is a card carrying member of DSA. According to Action Network, she has been a Madison area DSA member since 2020. She described herself as an anti-capitalist to Meal Magazine in 2025. Hong wrote in 2021, “We must collectively work to end the violence and abolish the police state. Reform has never been the answer to this system of harm.”
She speaks openly of all of this yet the media frame her around a harmless sounding economic message of wanting to help workers get more money in their pockets. The best coverage of Hong has come from national media, not local.
Blame Bernie
Before Bernie Sanders, socialism and communism were lines that normal folks just didn’t cross in America. He made it seem trendy and like harmless fun with his professorial Doc Brown eyes and disheveled hair. Then came a generation that is too young to remember the CCCP, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” and Checkpoint Charlie. And then came the pandemic and a generation was taught that being handed a government check is nice. And staying home watching Netflix beats punching a time card every time.
The young socialists are good-looking, flashy, social media savvy communicators and charismatic decoys juxtaposed against a backdrop of geriatric capitalists. Whatever could go wrong.
How socialism gets framed could determine this election, both the primary and the general. This is a very important conversation, nationally as well.
Getting Rid of Capitalism
Let’s be clear. The group to which Hong belongs wants to GET RID of capitalism.
As noted, she is a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America or DSA. The problem is that the name has the word Democratic in it, which softens it in people’s minds. There’s nothing soft about it. I’ve advocated for calling her an anarchist.
Imagine the Gov. Hong budget to pay for all of this. Imagine what she would do to the prison system she wants to abolish.
“Capitalism is a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit. We must replace it with democratic socialism,” DSA says.
Not Like Scandinavian Countries
Mark Farinella, a former Democratic consultant and senior adviser at the University of Chicago, told Time that “democratic socialism also isn’t the kind of social democracy seen in Scandinavian countries, which reject authoritarianism and, in his words, ‘combine free market capitalism with high taxes’ to fund social programs such as health care and education. Democratic socialists, meanwhile, don’t support capitalism.”
He added, “They want to replace capitalism with an economy driven by social need rather than by profit motive.” They also want open borders and to provide illegal immigrants with all the benefits of citizenship.
The DSA Housing Commission terrifyingly wrote: “Social housing must expropriate property from capitalists and deliver it to the working class, through which it may be sustained and rejuvenated. Capitalism requires the private ownership of land, upon which the very possibility of surplus value extraction is based. A definition of social housing must challenge this fundamental relation of the capitalist mode of production.”
And they advocate for “land reform and redistribution based on the sustainable use of land and natural resources in the general interest of the public, rather than the narrow interests of private landowners and capitalists.”
Cancelling Rent and Replacing Police
A DSA chapter in Minnesota wants to seize private property and give it to Indian tribes. They want to “take into public ownership key industries and workplaces.” They want to turn privately owned workplaces into “worker cooperatives.”
They support reparations, want to get rid of highways, and want to abolish the state legislature’s two houses and replace them with a new body. They want to replace police with an elected force of neighbors. It goes on and on. This isn’t just radical, and it certainly isn’t Sweden. It’s a complete rethinking of the American experience. A chapter in Los Angeles wants to cancel rent. Seattle’s DSA writes, “Housing under capitalism is an unstable, racist system of competition.”
How much of this does Hong believe? She belongs to the same umbrella org. And has for years, and DSA endorsed her. The media are too busy asking Hong about her credit card debt to ask her about seizing private property (and who can believe her anyway at election time). Don’t think they will stop if they get a little, either. The Marxist roots of BLM are well-known.
How about the Madison DSA in Hong’s backyard? They write, “We believe that abolition is a key tenet of socialism as prisons and policing are some of the most direct and personal means of state-driven oppression in our current society.” And when endorsing her, they said they’d hold Hong to the commitment.
The other Wisconsin Democrats and the party have been utterly silent in the face of most of this. The media, which is ideologically left in too many cases, are sanitizing it. Frankly, the focus on abolishing police and Hasan Piker is obscuring the bigger idea: DSA wants to fundamentally restructure the American government and economic system. It starts with negative rhetoric like Zohran Mamdani delivered for July 4 because you won’t dismantle what you love.
DSA’s national website contains an article written by a man who says, “Maybe in the very long run we’ll manage to do away with it,” referring to all private property. They want to start with utilities and large corporations first.
This Isn’t About Waitresses Paying Their Bills
Don’t let Hong dress this ideology up as helping waitresses pay their bills (and she voted against removing taxation of their tips and overtime anyway).
My mom is an old-school Democrat, who doesn’t want police abolished, capitalism trashed, and who doesn’t think Jewish people should be called vile names. Basic stuff like that. And she won’t stand for it if that’s what she thinks is going on. The problem is that she doesn’t.
The problem is that, until our conversation over pancakes at the Family Restaurant in Ladysmith, she wasn’t getting it. And I think that’s a product of her media sources, which are limited to local TV news (watched religiously at 6 p.m.) and NPR. There are a lot of old-school Democrats like this. They could determine the election.
And she’s not alone. I interviewed voters in Hayward the other day, and I met a woman who voted for McCain and then Obama and then sat home in 2016 and then voted twice for Trump but now can’t stand him over Iran, the economy and what she perceives as grifting. But she said she won’t vote for an establishment Democrat like Newsom, either. She would, however, vote for an AOC. What? How can a rural voter swing from Trump to AOC in the span of two years? Because they both seem like something different; like they’re not normal politicians; and like they will blow up the old mold that people think isn’t working for them. They smash norms. Now we expect it.
I moderated an event in Racine with Reince Priebus, the former RNC chair, Trump chief of staff and Wisconsin lawyer. He told the crowd that the leftwing populists scare him most. That’s why.
Hong is leading – again – in a poll that came out today. And the petridish is there.
The younger generation lacks the foundational history to counter TikTok indoctrination. This is the result of years of cultural and educational negativity about the American experiment. I’ve lived through the end of the Cold War, 9/11 (breathed the dust of the dead in lower Manhattan reporting there the next day), and the Iraq War and have never felt the country was truly in peril. Until now.
Democrats Must Root This Out
And, right now, only Democrats can defeat it. This is taking root inside YOUR party. Stand against it. All of you. Not just a few people in Congress and a random candidate or two.
You helped build this dragon. And in a five-way primary, everyone thinks they need those votes. Too bad. Stand against it or you own it. You’re just the predator’s host. I’ll take a normal Democrat any day over this nonsense, but it goes without saying that Republican Tom Tiffany is against all of it. Still, reasonable Democrats and Republicans and Independents should be able to unite over this.
My mom is a former kindergarten teacher with a farm up north. She said she won’t vote for Hong, at least, but she wasn’t fully getting it.
“We’re not talking about Norway here or Denmark,” I said to her. “This is something very different, and it’s dangerous. And your party needs to firmly call it out. Didn’t you see what Hasan Piker said?”
“No,” she said. “How could you have not?” I asked.
“Because the media didn’t talk about it.”
Of course, Wisconsin Right Now talked about it, and she subscribes because I’m her kid. Ha! Exposed! She doesn’t read it.
And there it is in a nutshell – why alternative media sources matter. Fran Hong is not funny or cute no matter how many times she ties a red handkerchief around her head and runs around in bright blue jumpsuits or compares herself to Gaylord Nelson. And it’s not just her. In the 3rd congressional district, former leftwing operative and Kirk Bangstad campaign worker Rebecca Cooke says she supports New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a DSA member.
Euphemisms, Euphemisms Everywhere
Hong is downright dangerous. She’s on paper standing for abolishing prisons and police. WRN broke that angle months ago. Don’t let them use the softer euphemisms of defunding police and prison “reform.”
She’s an unabashed Ilhan Omar-endorsed anti-capitalist. She’s a card carrying member of a group that wants to get rid of the U.S. Senate. She has praised the election of a woman who said she wiped her dirty hand on an American flag. Darializa Chevalier also opposes all deportations, called for police abolition, hesitated to condemn Ham*s, and started a campus group to “totally eradicate western civilization.” That is documented. Worse Hong promises to bring this mindset to Wisconsin.
She practically screamed with joy over that election. Wisconsin is next! she insisted with glee matched only by Mamdani, who raised arms with Chevalier with a big grin. Sick.
“Anti-Israel. Anti-America. Anti-Western Civilization. Why am I the only Democrat in the U.S. Senate that refuses to excuse this or defend any of those self-identified communists?” Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., said. Good question.
Convergence With Hostile Foreign States
According to the Network Contagion Research Institute’s report, “Democratic Socialists of America: Policy, Advocacy and Narrative Convergence with Hostile Foreign States,” the DSA organization “has been engaging in a dynamic called ‘narrative convergence,’ advancing narratives that stoke domestic unrest and delegitimize state institutions while advancing talking points aligned with ‘hostile foreign governments,’” Fox News reported.
The report cites “repeated foreign-facilitated engagements, receipt of apparent in-kind benefits, and subsequent U.S. political advocacy aligned with the interests of the Venezuelan, Cuban and Chinese governments.”
Hong went on Piker’s stream and took the money he raised. I can’t properly explain how vile his comments are because Facebook is terrible at reading context so I can’t risk repeating them here even to criticize them. His comments are the worst I have ever read.
They run the gamut from saying America deserved 9/11 to calling Jewish people horrific names to downplaying rape. Check out the annotated letter that a Democratic congressman, Richie Torres, sent to Twitch. It’s sort of a listing of Piker’s greatest hate hits with videos. And it should horrify you. Stu Smith has documented Piker giving a shout-out to a DSA “Maoist” faction that called for the release of a man accused of murdering two embassy workers.
Hong’s legislative history is terrible too. She’s for gender ideology all the way, including surgeries for minors, and she opposed criminalizing grooming of kids. She voted against the surplus deal to fund schools.
The other Democratic candidates almost entirely stayed silent. A few stood up. David Crowley criticized Piker. Kelda Roys did too. Joel Brennan released a wish washy statement. Democratic Wisconsin Election Commission Chair Ann Jacobs called it out. But the Wisconsin Democratic Party, Sara Rodriguez and Mandela Barnes, are among those who have not. Josh Kaul has stayed silent.
Where is their strident defense of capitalism? Why the timidity? Is it that far gone?
Silence is unacceptable. It normalizes the unthinkable. Democrats who have been focused on Trump rage – this is your biggest and actual threat. Perceive it.
Normal Democrats like my mom need to stand up and weed this out. And they can’t do that if they think this is only turning Milwaukee into Oslo. It’s not.
This is a blinking red warning light. The engine is about to overheat. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. You’ll have to live with what you enable.
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