On October 8, 2023, more than 1,000 demonstrators assembled in New York City to celebrate the previous day’s terror attack by Hamas. “The oppressed people of Palestine broke out of the open-air prison,” one speaker declared. “The [Biden] White House is telling all of its mouthpieces to tell us a false story, but we know that the real terrorist is the Israeli state.” The crowd chanted, “Resistance is justified when people are occupied,” “Globalize the intifada,” “Smash the settler Zionist state,” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

The pro-Hamas mob brandished a swastika and a picture of one of the hostages at Jewish counter-protestors, chanted the partial number of Israeli casualties who were then confirmed, and stomped on an Israeli flag. The bodies of the slain were hardly cold. Many terrorists who perpetrated the massacre were still at large in Israeli territory. Yet the large crowd gathered not to condemn the terror attack, but to condemn the Western-style, free democracy of Israel — for simply daring to exist. The demonstration made a strong case for being the worst anti-Semitic incident on U.S. soil in which no one actually died.

And, like Saul of Tarsus so many centuries before (Acts 8:1), Darializa Avila Chevalier was there, apparently approving of the event’s execution. “I can only say I have been advocating for the human rights of Palestinians for my adult life,” she told City & State N.Y. this month, justifying her presence.

Not quite three years later, Chevalier joined a slate of openly socialist candidates who rode New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s endorsement to victory in the Democratic primaries for congressional districts where Democrats are all but assured to win in November. The most radical of the bunch, Chevalier knocked out incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, in New York’s 13th congressional district.

Now 32, Chevalier’s most noteworthy achievements to date were in organizing student protests at Columbia University, from which she graduated in 2016. She joined Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which later celebrated the rapes, murders, tortures, and kidnappings of October 7 as a “historic win.” Chevalier also co-founded Columbia University Apartheid and Divest (CUAD). When Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar died, CUAD eulogized him as a “hero of the revolution” and exhorted followers to “reflect on how we can make ourselves more like him.”

Both groups were involved in the infamous campus encampments of 2024, which disrupted colleges across the nation. At Columbia in particular, the campus activists broke into Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall, erected metal barricades, and refused to leave unless the university agreed to their outrageous demands.

Despite graduating from Columbia eight years earlier, Chevalier returned in 2024 to praise the encampment to the Associated Press.

“They really are prioritizing one another’s safety, ensuring all of their needs are met in terms of health and security and protecting one another from doxxing and all of those worries,” she said. “On days like today where it’s very hot you see students walking around with electrolytes and water, and then in the evening when it starts to cool down, hand warmers, blankets, things of that nature. It’s been just a really beautiful thing to see.”

“The administration, [then-president] Minouche Shafik, could end this today by meeting the students’ demands,” Chevalier suggested. “They’re not unreasonable demands.”

Either Chevalier claimed this without ever reading the demands, or her definition of “reasonable” differs irreconcilably from that of the average American.

Although the original list appears to have been deleted, multiplecopies record that the SJP and CUAD demonstrators at Columbia University demanded the following:

“1. This action is the first of many. We will not stop until the university fully divests from all forms of settler-colonial violence

“2. Divestment is not an incrementalist goal. True divestment necessitates nothing short of the total collapse of the university structure and American empire itself. It is not possible for imperial spoils to remain so heavily concentrated in the metropole and its high-cultural repositories without the continuous suppression of all populations that resist the empire’s expansion; to divest from this is to undermine and eradicate America as we know it

“3. We refuse to allow Columbia to return to a state of ‘normalcy’. ‘Normalcy’ is the structurally impelled displacement and eventual destruction of the Palestinian people

“4. We act in full support of the Palestinian resistance. This action is first and foremost an effort to extend the successes of the Palestinian resistance to the heart of the empire itself, to translate their resilience in Gaza to unrest and violence in America.”

“The total collapse of the university structure and American empire,” “to undermine and eradicate America as we know it,” “to translate their resilience in Gaza to unrest and violence in America” — these are the demands Chevalier called “not unreasonable.” Now Chevalier is a shoe-in for the U.S. Congress. If elected, she will take office upon swearing an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, even though she seems to want to destroy it.

It’s not just America. In a separate missive, CUAD declared as its goal “the total eradication of Western civilization.” If Chevalier believes the group she co-founded has drifted from her original purpose, she has never once said anything to indicate as much. In fact, she has taken multiple stands against America and the West, such as supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The CUAD missive continued, “As the fascism ingrained in the American consciousness becomes ever more explicit and irrefutable, we seek community and instruction from militants in the Global South, who have been on the frontlines in the fight against tyranny and domination which undergird the imperialist world order.”

The “fascism” in view here is not even the common progressive slur of the Trump administration. This declaration was issued during the Biden administration, and these pro-terror extremists called even his far-left administration “fascist.” To oppose this alleged “fascism,” these groups proposed to “fight against tyranny” in America by taking their marching orders “from militants in the Global South.” That sounds about as close to anti-American sedition as one could get.

This attitude is not limited to Chevalier. On the way to her own primary victory, fellow Mamdani-backed socialist Clair Valdez distributed literature declaring, “For decades, we have been sold a lie: that the U.S. empire defends freedom, advances democracy, and protects human rights.”

These anti-American positions are consistent with the rhetoric issuing from the Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) party machine. In April 2024, the DSA International Committee affirmed “Iran’s right to self-defense,” without granting Israel the same courtesy. In July 2024, the same committee supported the Houthis’ piracy and bombing of international shipping amid an ongoing firefight with the U.S. Navy.

For now, this radical new group of anti-Americans has calculated their efforts are best spent targeting Democratic politicians in primaries. That tactic is now propelling candidates like Chevalier and Valdez to likely easy victories in same Democratic congressional seats. But NYC-DSA co-chair Gustavo Gordillo explained in an interview that the socialists don’t “agree” with “the way the Democratic Party establishment organizes or runs its party apparatus.” They plan to build their own independent organization to capture the party from within.

Readers may wonder how these new socialists differ from the Democratic Party’s old guard. After all, don’t all Democrats endorse and vote for policies that could more or less be described as “socialist”? Doesn’t the federal government already have policies that could be described as socialist?

One key difference is that these new socialists are ideological true believers. They hate capitalism and want to tear the system down. The term “socialism” is not popular in America, so most politicians try to avoid it, even if it fairly describes the results they seek. For these socialists to openly embrace the term demonstrates that they dismiss America’s prejudice against it; they want to implement socialism, and they plan to do so whether ordinary Americans are on board or not.

A second, related difference is that these new socialists are more willing to challenge and rewrite the American social order. As New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in his inaugural address, he sought to “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” Historically speaking, the political viability of far-left socialism has often been sapped when capitalist economies merely adopt a few of their more popular welfare programs. Establishment Democrats favor this sort of middle way — preserving American society while adding on some extra bells and whistles. The out-and-out socialists want to raze every capitalist society to the ground.

A third difference is perhaps the most concerning. The new socialists are young, attractive, vivacious, and paint their ideas in bold strokes of bright color. The current Democratic Party establishment is aged, tired, and faded. There is no strength or energy anywhere in the Democratic Party except on its extreme left flank.

America has seen socialists enter politics before. In the 1912 presidential election, socialist candidate Eugene Debs won more than 900,000 votes, 6% of the total, even finishing second in Florida. In the 1930s, American socialism saw a resurgence (alongside American Nazism), but it was ultimately subsumed into FDR’s New Deal coalition. The difference is that these socialists are not willing to compromise with any party’s agenda. They believe they have the popularity and momentum to drive America full-on into the left ditch.

The bottom line is that these socialists are more radical than the Democratic Party leaders, or even than previous generations of socialists. As suggested by their virulent hatred of Israel, they have combined their Marxist thought with intersectional ideas, which expands the scope of their radicalism. Not only do candidates like Chevalier want to “seize all properties from landlords,” they also want to abolish prisons, and even “literally abolish the border.”

“In an interview last week with The New York Editorial Board,” The New York Times reported in disbelief, “Ms. Avila Chevalier repeatedly avoided answering whether she would send a man who randomly killed another man to prison.”

This woman, who cut her political teeth on Columbia campus occupations against Israel, is now on a fast track to the U.S. Congress. May God have mercy on our souls.