As political candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) continue to win elections and gain increasing national prominence, a key factor in their success appears to be the growing influence and money provided by far-left American socialists and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sympathizers who are operating from within China.

On Sunday, The Free Press published a profile of Eric Hovagim, a video producer who “helped film or edit three primary campaign videos” for Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist who won New York City’s mayoral race in November 2025. Hovagim, who also helped produce a documentary about communist apologist Hasan Piker’s goodwill trip to Cuba in March, has amassed over three million online followers as a “geopolitical commentator.” As noted by The Free Press, his commentaries “echo positions of the Democratic Socialists of America and often hinge on three themes: conspiracy, anti-Americanism, and glorifying political violence, often connecting all three.”

These views include seeing America as “the fourth Reich” and Israel as “the most dangerous threat to humanity.” While claiming that he is “against ... violence of any kind,” Hovagim also displays a hypocritical penchant for violence. He called Elon Musk “a valid military target,” called the New York City street where UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered “hallowed ground,” and affectionately referred to Thompson’s accused killer, Luigi Mangione, as a “bisexual sweetheart” who did it on behalf of “all working-class Americans.”

Perhaps most telling about the underlying goals and ultimate direction of the DSA is Hovagim’s unabashed enthusiasm and defense of Xi Jinping’s communist regime. He moved to Shanghai following Mamdani’s NYC mayoral victory in order to “enjoy the fruits of socialism firsthand,” according to a social media post. As highlighted by The Free Press, his social media accounts are full of him posing with paintings of former dictator Mao Zedong, whose policies directly led to the deaths of 70 million of his own people. As one historian noted, “At least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in China” during Mao’s four-year “Great Leap Forward” from 1958 to 1962.

But Hovagim can’t be bothered with such inconvenient historical facts. He also dismisses the CCP’s mass incarceration and extermination of the Uyghur minority as “CIA propaganda.” This way of thinking lines up with many prominent DSA members such as Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who act as apologists for communist regimes like Cuba.

As influential as Hovagim has become, another far-left socialist American also living in Shanghai has even more clout: billionaire financier Neville Roy Singham. During “Washington Watch” last month, Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) Co-Founder Joel Finkelstein chronicled how Singham has became a tycoon of far-left communism.

“[H]he shares a building with a Chinese owned company called Mako Media,” he explained. “This is a CCP asset which is responsible for laundering China’s reputation in the global south and facilitating propaganda across the world about China’s bright future. This mogul has sold his business for … nearly $1 billion and now work[s] closely … with Chinese executives and leadership in the CCP. He regularly commits … over $200 million to 501(c)(3) [organizations] across the United States. Now, these not-for-profit organizations have been responsible for some of the most disruptive behavior in recent protests history in the United States — confrontation with law enforcement, shutting down bridges such that emergency vehicles can’t pass, invading Colombia, locking up janitors in closets, tearing down American flags. This kind of activity I think our legal system has formally corroborated as being criminal, and so it’s quite strange to see it now formally labeled as charitable and worthy of tax deductions.”

NCRI has also “linked Singham’s network to content defending the Iranian regime, North Korea, and Chinese state policy in Xinjiang and Taiwan.”

The DSA’s support for communist China is now becoming increasingly public, with over a dozen high-ranking members recently pledging to “support the People’s Republic of China and to promote understanding of Chinese socialism,” according to a report from The Times last week.

In addition, CCP officials are now reaching out to the DSA to organize trips for members to visit China, according to the report. “A five-person delegation of DSA members to China last year is understood to have been organised and co-ordinated by the office of foreign affairs of Guizhou, a province in southwest China,” it noted. After a 2024 trip to China, New York City DSA member Dee Knight wrote, “The provincial foreign affairs department staff called us ‘VIPs’ and treated us royally … There is a serene and comfortable spirit of confidence and conviviality among our Chinese hosts.”

Knight went on to dismiss the widespread and verified reports of the CCP’s enslavement and forced organ harvesting of the Uyghur population after visiting the Xinjiang region, describing the reports as “scandal stories” and insisting he “found nothing to support western accusations of slave labour.”

Experts like Alexander Reid Ross, a Portland State University professor specializing in radicalism, told The Times that the CCP’s efforts to work with the DSA are part of its far-reaching plan to undermine the U.S.

“While these seem like quirky activist trips to get people to like China, they’re treated as extraordinarily important vehicles to change the western perception of China by the Chinese Communist Party,” he emphasized. “They exhibit fingerprints of extraordinarily high-level co-ordination by the People’s Republic of China.”