Photo: Anti-revisionist contingent reads a speech detailing the crimes of DSA and reasons for confrontation

By Daniel Reed

On October 12, a contingent of anti-revisionist combatants confronted a public meeting of the Kansas City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Online propaganda from the DSA and their supporters has tried to portray the event as a brutal attack on the elderly, but in reality, a DSA member who attacked a woman combatant was repelled, taking multiple blows that left him bloodied and sent to the hospital.

Only two local DSA chapter leaders and two other members who were helping to set up for the event were present when the militant activists blocked the door to the venue and made their way inside.

Upon entry, a speech was read by one of the revolutionaries detailing the rotten nature of DSA’s practices locally and nationally, as well as how the struggle against fascism must include confronting social-fascism, as revisionism is the enemy of genuine socialism.

The charges made against DSA were that nationally they have had police union organizers in elected positions of leadership, that they act as foot soldiers for the imperialist Democratic Party, and that they are a revisionist formation that is aiming to corral the working class under the wing of the bourgeoisie in the name of socialism by encouraging participation in the bourgeois electoral farce.

During the speech, propaganda materials and the projector were confiscated by the revolutionaries, DSA leadership making no attempt to stop them. “Revolution’s not for play, down with the DSA!” and “DSA will never win, social democracy is fascism’s twin!” were chanted as the event supplies were taken.

It was at this point that a local activist, Carl, who has been kicked out of another organization for defending sexual abusers and is known for trying to publicly expose the identities of communists, rushed at the combatants attempting to reclaim his propaganda yelling, “This is a safe space!”

He threw the first punch, targeting one of the woman revolutionaries, but was immediately beaten back by the combatants, while one DSA leader tried to defend him. The brawl broke out again when Carl grabbed another revolutionary and tackled him to the ground. The revolutionaries rallied and freed their comrade, and Carl was left bloodied along with the remnants of his propaganda strewn on the floor.

Greg Mueller, another of the local DSA leaders, called the director of the space to rush to the scene, while Kansas/Missouri Dream Alliance (KSMODA), who were holding a DACA clinic next door called the police, showing their bourgeois character.

KCDSA, Carl, and his wife Brianna, have subsequently crafted an online counterpropaganda effort to blur the real contradictions that led to this action, painting the actions against Carl as as “attacking the elderly” and referring to him as a “disabled veteran.” KCDSA traffics in identity opportunism when convenient to their cause.

Before the skirmish, the revolutionaries had made it clear that the reason for their disruption and confiscation of materials was due to the social-fascist nature of DSA. Carl targeted a woman revolutionary and the other revolutionaries responded accordingly. The primary contradiction was between communists and revisionists, and necessary force was used to repel the man who had singled out a woman to attack.

The local branch in Kansas City (KCDSA) has misled the masses into think that the fight for socialism amounts to little more than hosting book clubs, film screenings, and ineffectual rallies. KCSDA has served as a magnet for cast-off activists and protest hoppers, as well as doing the leg work of local Democratic candidates.

The DSA acts as a conveyor belt for bringing bourgeois ideology to the masses and attempts to organize them behind the party of capitalism with a leftist veneer. The historical antifascism that they gathered to celebrate was not organized through “left unity” or by revisionists like themselves, but by genuine Communist Parties that took up arms against fascists and correctly identified social democracy as social-fascism and combatted it ideologically, politically, and militarily. A real antifascist day of unity cannot include revisionists. Democratic socialism, like all forms of revisionism, poses the utmost danger to the struggle for revolution.

When revisionists are wounded, as they were last weekend in Kansas City, even observers who are otherwise critical of the DSA may cringe, appalled by the violence that took place. And yet many of these observers, for all of their nonviolent protests and online comments, have not managed to deal any serious blows to the revisionism which has clamped down on socialist revolution in the US for most of the past century, which has kept workers exploited, nations oppressed, and the masses downtrodden.

To those who side with the bourgeoisie, the images of blood from last Saturday are disturbing, but to revolutionaries, what happened is fine. Revisionism will not magically disappear on its own. It caters to the least oppressed among the masses and seeks to dupe the rest by parading counterfeit socialism. Saturday’s bloodshed stains this charade; its forgery slowly unmasked as revolutionaries wage a merciless struggle against revisionism and opportunism.