Nothing says “Big Tent Party” like a good Communist pogrom.
Hasan Piker, a close ally of Abdul El-Sayed, is calling for “Marxist-Leninist” punishment for those who criticize Michigan’s Democratic senatorial candidate. As radicals and anti-Semites like Piker flood the Democratic Party, establishment figures are struggling to justify their alliance with extremist candidates.
Ironically, Democrats are now fulfilling the false narrative that they used against President Donald Trump after the Charlottesville protests. They are maintaining that there are “many fine people” in the DSA despite their seeking to destroy our constitutional system, open our borders, defund the police, and embrace virtual anarchy. Now, some of these fine people are calling for moderates to be purged as radicals take over the Democratic Party.
In 2017, the media manufactured a controversy by suggesting that Trump had praised neo-Nazis and Klansmen in 2017 as “fine people” in Charlottesville. It was demonstrably false, but became the accepted truth in the media. In reality, Trump condemned the neo-Nazis, and the statement about “fine people on both sides” was in reference to the people on both sides of the debate over the removal of historic statues.
That narrative took on an added hypocrisy when some of the loudest voices later endorsed a candidate with an actual Nazi tattoo who allegedly assaulted women, mocked wounded veterans, and praised terrorists. However, he promised to deliver Maine and bring figures like Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren back to power.
Anti-Semites and communists are not “fine” additions to any party. Hasan Piker is not a “fine person” in any universe. He has said that the United States deserved the terrorist attacks on 9-11 and prominently displays a picture of the collapsing Twin Towers. He has downplayed the murders and rapes of innocent Israelis on Oct. 7th and called one Jewish man who challenged him a “bloodthirsty, violent pig dog.”
Figures like Harris and Buttigieg brush off El-Sayed’s allies, including Mohammad Baqer Qazwini, a prominent Muslim cleric who gave a sermon that called for followers to vote for El-Sayed while also calling upon them to pray for the death of President Donald Trump and to celebrate the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Then there is the Democratic House candidate in New York, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a prison abolitionist who boasted how she wiped her hands on the American flag in lieu of a napkin.
Chevalier and other DSA candidates are being welcomed in the Democratic Party despite anti-American views and a DSA platform calling for the destruction of our constitutional system, including scrapping the Supreme Court, the presidency, and the Senate. Many are also overwhelmingly anti-Israel, with many, like Piker, displaying virulent anti-Semitism.
When asked about the extreme agenda of these candidates, Schumer and others repeat the mantra that they need to win in the upcoming elections. In other words, the DSA is opposed to the core institutions and values of this country, but it could be useful in returning them to power.
What is interesting is that the establishment does not appear to care what these radicals represent for their party, but the radicals care deeply about what the establishment represents. This week, former DNC Vice-chair David Hogg told establishment figures that the “Big Tent” of his party is not big enough for them. He and other moderates have to go. When asked about Democratic moderates, Hogg replied, “They don’t have the right values.”
Piker has even grander plans for our post-constitutional republic, calling for mass arrests, demanding pledges from establishment figures to “arrest and prosecute every prominent member of the Trump administration” who engaged in what he views as corruption as well as “every ICE agent who committed crimes on the job.”
Piker also wants to purge any Democrats who do not support El-Sayed, calling them “haters” who deserved to be punished:
“There are haters in our ranks. Notice how whenever someone comes out and says, ‘Yeah that’s actually a bad association,’ immediately it’s weaponized by the Republicans. You can’t be out here saying like, ‘Oh, I’m a centrist Democrat. And I think Abdul is a bridge too far.’ That must be punished.”
Piker, who likes to parade around in a Mao jacket, seems to be longing for the good old days of party purges under Stalin and his contemporaries in the Comintern.
He notably accused critics of the sin of “factionalism.” Since the Jacobins of the French Revolution, factionalism has been the scourge of revolutionaries. In my book, Rage and the Republic, I discuss the difference between the American and French Revolutions. Where James Madison saw factions as a natural part of a democratic system, the Jacobins sought them as a traitorous and reactionary element. Madison saw compromise as the best solution to factions, while the Jacobins saw the guillotine as the final solution.
Piker is right out of that Jacobin tradition, calling moderate Democrats “Koch payroll ‘liberals'” and “irredeemable.” (Notably, the Jacobins also pushed for some of the same DSA demands such as a unicameral legislature).
Of course, conservatives can show the same intolerance for RINOs (Republicans in Name Only), but there is an added menacing element to communists calling for mass expulsion or punishment of moderates from their party. It is chillingly familiar.
Mao regularly purged the Communist Party of those not following the party lines, declaring, “Serious offenders should be punished by law, and when they are Party members they should also be dealt with according to Party discipline.”
Establishment figures continue to use the “Big Tent” narratives to brush off questions about the radical agenda and associations of these candidates. The only thing that they have in common is the desire for power. Once these candidates win, figures like Schumer will discover that this tent is not nearly as big as they think.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
This column appeared on Fox.com.
Democratic Socialists, National Socialists, Communists, dictators, fascists in community organization, oh, my. Abort. Sequester.
You say “Many are also overwhelmingly anti-Israel, with many, like Piker, displaying virulent anti-Semitism.”
That seems to be your overwhelming issue with them: that they don’t eagerly serve a foreign nation, and that they don’t seem to care much for Jews.
*My* issue with them is that they don’t serve America (they seek to destroy it), and that they hate White people. Why do you focus on their feelings toward Jews, and not their blaring, much-more-obvious hatred of White people? Why are Israel and Jews your main concern, instead of America and White people?
A Jewish woman in the Mamdani administration openly discussed taking property away from White people, solely because they are White. Have you written about that?
“Why are Israel and Jews your *main* concern . . .” (emphasis added)
You have a vivid imagination.
JT’s “main concern,” the theme of his article, is stated in the title:
“Radicals Call for Purges”
Prof. Turley is at his best when he doesn’t sound strident.
New CDC Director Promises Abortion Surveillance
On Wednesday, Dr Erica Schwartz was confirmed by the US Senate as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), making her the first Black woman to hold the position. This is the first time in almost a year that the agency has had a permanent leader; the previous director, Susan Monarez, only lasted 29 days before she was ousted for butting heads with RFK about US vaccine policies.
So is Schwartz an RFK-approved vaccine skeptic who thinks you can cure cancer by praying to trees? Surprisingly: no. Schwartz, who served as deputy surgeon general during Trump’s first term, actually has government experience and a public health background.
But don’t breathe a sigh of relief quite yet. During that same confirmation hearing, Schwartz made some chilling remarks about abortion surveillance when quizzed on the issue by Missouri senator Josh Hawley, an anti-abortion lawmaker who wants to ban the abortion pill mifepristone nationwide.
“The CDC collects data on abortions that are committed in the United States of America through a system called the Abortion Reporting System,” Hawley said when asking Schwartz if she would commit to collecting detailed data on abortions.
“Senator, you have my commitment,” Schwartz replied. “Abortion surveillance is absolutely a critical component of what the CDC is currently doing … I also want to make sure that certain states are not conflating emergency services and hiding abortions in that emergency services case definition,” she added. “We need to make sure we’re pulling out true abortions and making sure that we’re really having clear case definitions regarding abortions so the data is actually accurate.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/08/cdc-abortion-surveillance-schwartz-hawley
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Democratic Socialists are not the only people talking wacky sh!t. Like abortion surveillance is “absolutely critical”..? Critical for ‘who’? Anti-abortion activists??
Opinion and nothing more.
Why do you hate babies
Human rites (e.g. one-child, selective-child) are performed for social, clinical, criminal, political, and climate progress. A wicked solution to a hard problem. Abortive ideation is entertained to relieve “burdens” of state, State, and in advocacy for RAAT.
The DSA is radically leftist Communist anarchist, cut from the same cloth of ideological dystopian purity as radicals from Robespierre’s Jacobins, to Lenin/Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Castro, who considered terror as a legitimate tool to deal with its ideological ‘politically incorrect’ enemies.
Truly disenlightenment enemies of Western Enlightenment Civilization, and its ideals of freedom, liberty, individual rights, freedom of speech.
America will never stand for this, and will meet and defeat the ideological enemies of freedom and liberty.
They will soon be swept into the dustbin of history, where they rightly belong.
When John Lennon said, “And if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao you ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow”, he was mistaken.
“. . . a DSA platform calling for the destruction of our constitutional system, including scrapping the Supreme Court, the presidency, and the Senate.” (JT)
Some believe that the Constitution (with its stringent requirements for a constitutional amendment) makes that “scrapping” an insurmountable barrier.
It is — for those, like you, who are principled and believe in the rule of law. But you are making the mistake of seeing them as you see yourself. And, as Americans often do, you are not taking evil seriously.
The DSA, Piker, and their ilk are not principled. Their MO is: The ends justifies the means. And: By any means necessary. Given every chicanery the Left has pulled over the last ten years — operating on that MO — do you seriously believe that their more radical offspring are not capable of another?
Your “insurmountable barrier” arguments also fail to recognize that DSA types reject the rule of law, for rule of the mob. Those who rule by mob couldn’t care less about a “silly piece of parchment” — a piece of paper that D. constitutional scholars have themselves argued should be scrapped.
What do you think Piker would say when presented with that “insurmountable barrier?” We don’t have to guess his answer. It was given by his hero, Mao:
“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
Try convincing the SCOTUS to support the Constitution.
Start with what the American Founders implemented as that which was the most fundamental, the absolute right to private property, which is everything from land to free enterprises, including development, the right to discriminate among buyers, prices, rent, wages, and every other related aspect and facet.
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“[Private property is] that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
– James Madison
What about crime? If a thief steals your car, is it then his property? Government and policing are essential parts of property law. Right now, AIs are massively stealing private IP property, and selling it as their own.
This is no different from stealing cars, and then selling them for cash. Are you concerned about rich corporations stealing IP? I am.