Article text:
Darializa Avila Chevalier, the Democratic congressional nominee endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who ousted longtime Rep. Adriano Espaillat in Tuesday’s primary, maintained a since-deleted Twitter account with repeated sympathetic references to communism, Marxist ideology and Soviet figures, including Vladimir Lenin.
Avila Chevalier, a sociology PhD student whose victory sent shockwaves throughout the Democratic establishment, has been under fire for a since-deleted Twitter account, previously reported by CNN, that included phrases such as “seize the means of production,” along with calls to abolish police, prisons and borders. Other controversial tweets include one that said Black and Arab men are both “Fetishizing ugly colonizer women” and another that described wiping her dirty hands on the American flag in lieu of a napkin.
As an undergraduate, Avila Chevalier attended Columbia University, where she organized with Students for Justice in Palestine, and after graduation became involved in pro-Palestinian campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza. She also attended a controversial October 8, 2023, pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square — one day after Hamas’ attack on Israel — that featured speeches and rhetoric praising the attack.
She previously told CNN, “I have grown considerably in the years since these tweets, and I am focused on our community and our community’s future.”
On Thursday, President Donald Trump accused Avila Chevalier of being a communist, a charge that she said she wouldn’t respond to while on MSNOW, saying, “I won’t be reactive.”
A further review of Avila Chevalier’s archived Twitter account from 2020-2022 found repeated references to communism and Marxist ideology. The account, “Darializabonet,” appears to have been deleted in June 2022.
The account’s bio read in 2020, “how communist of you.” Archived posts and retweets during this timeframe included a recommendation that Karl Marx’s Capital was an “essential must-read,” a complaint that public libraries did not carry enough Marxist literature by Lenin and other revolutionary writers, and a retweet from a Communist-identifying account lamenting that bookstore “banned books” displays did not include The Complete Works of J. V. Stalin.
One archived retweet from 2020 quoted Assata Shakur, the former Black Liberation Army member who, in 1977, was convicted in the murder of a New Jersey state trooper before later escaping prison and fleeing to Cuba. In the quote, Shakur said she “preferred Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il Sung, Che, or Fidel (Castro)” before studying Marx and Lenin because the two “white dudes” had made contributions to “revolutionary struggle” that were “too great to be ignored.”
In April 2020, Avila Chevalier shared a post lamenting that people wouldn’t accept communism over a lack of varieties of soup – a reference to the critique that the political system leads to fewer consumer choices.
“I just cannot get over the fact that the universe has foisted upon us the perfect illustration of literally every failing of capitalism and people are still like we can’t be communists cuz there won’t be enough types of soup,” the post she retweeted read.
Other posts critiqued or joked about popular culture she viewed as anti-communist.
In one post, Avila Chevalier described the animated film Anastasia as “an explicitly anti-USSR kid’s movie,” and in another post she linked to she wrote: “Time for me to once again sympathize with the people the Bolsheviks put in the blender for like 90 min 😌.”
Avila Chevalier was responding to a viral false claim that Disney had removed Anastasia from Disney+ streaming service because it was anti-Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
In another post, Avila Chevalier joked that Sheryl Crow’s hit song Soak Up the Sun was “bootstrap capitalist propaganda” after noticing it opens with the lyric “my friend the communist,” quipping that the character was “apparently also a bad organizer lol.”
Another 2020 retweet argued for democratic worker control of wealth, dismissing ideological labels by concluding: “You can call that communism, you can call it socialism, you can call it pancakes.”
And previously, CNN had surfaced an April 2020 post where Avila-Chevalier said that while most of the political theory she had read was communist, “the pyromania associated with anarchism is very intriguing to me,” punctuating the remark with a laughing emoji.
Ok I’ll say it: these posts are hilarious. Our first lefty shitposter congressperson
What’s her take on interracial dating that’s so controversial.
The current president is a convicted felon and internationally known pedophile. The nation is ruled by billionaires who are directly responsible for countless deaths, the spread of once vanquished diseases, and international sex trafficking comparable to the most powerful of crime families.
But “oh no, she’s trying to bring diverse political views to a democracy”. I’d say these people can go fuck themselves, but they don’t even deserve that much.
In one post, Avila Chevalier described the animated film Anastasia as “an explicitly anti-USSR kid’s movie,”
I love her.
Archived posts and retweets during this timeframe included a recommendation that Karl Marx’s Capital was an “essential must-read,” a complaint that public libraries did not carry enough Marxist literature by Lenin and other revolutionary writers, and a retweet from a Communist-identifying account lamenting that bookstore “banned books” displays did not include The Complete Works of J. V. Stalin.
Honestly, same girl, same.
Fuck you don’t try to tell us about how terrible Marxism is when we are living and experiencing the absolute worst of capitalism right now in this very moment. We won’t be gaslit into believing that things are fine actually, and that things would be much worst under a different economic system. It’s like a domestic abuse victim being told by their abuser that at least they have a partner that “provides” for them and that they should put up and shut up.
Critical support for someone who at least thinks they’re Marxist even if they have decided to stuff that up by being a DemoKKKrat
I fucking love this.
But she is a retweeter, she is not even the main poster.
What’s wrong with Lenin? Even by liberal standards he was fine. He was even a free market advocate for all but the most critical industries (raw materials etc).
You think liberals know jack shit about Lenin? To them he’s either Stalin’s dad or a Beatle.
The NEP was a temporary strategy, Lenin was not a free market advocate. Markets are pretty useful for socializing disconnected and disparate production into a cohesive system, but central planning is better for large industry. The idea for the NEP specifically was a response to the conditions created by War Communism. The long-term goal was always a single, unified, centrally planned economy.
What’s wrong with Lenin? Even by liberal standards he was fine
He cancelled “Democratic®™” elections by carrying out the October revolution, and then purged “Political Opponents™®”. Definitely not fine by lib standards.
Liberals mad he did a socialist January 6th or something idk
Time for me to once again sympathize with the people the Bolsheviks put in the blender for like 90 min 😌.
Excellent bit lmao
If an elected official in the US did come out and say “yea, I’m a Marxist, fuck you gonna do about it”, wouldn’t there be red scare-era mechanisms in place to remove such officials and have them sent to Gitmo?
The mechanisms arn’t going to be flat out expulsion on ideological grounds. That’s not how the red scare ever worked and no one has ever been expelled from congress on ideological reasons. Unless you count joining the confederacy.
That’s not to say that they won’t jump to those tactics now but I don’t think they will while Trump and maga republicans are perceived as the bigger threat.
I think corporate democrats do consider the AOC wing to be a bigger threat than Trump.
Maybe back in 2018 or whenever they did but not anymore. She’s definitely going to be the next Pelosi in maybe three more decades.
This isn’t to say liberals are more scared of fascists than Marxists. Its just the fascist threat is far more imminent, and most importantly for liberals incompetent.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
Ah yes I see what you mean. But have you considered the following?
Do you wake up and decide “today I will be a total asshole for no reason” or does it just happen organically?
Don’t waste your time
edit Or anybody else’s for that matter
The House could vote to expel them I think? The respective branches of congress can remove members for cause and they could just call her a traitor or something and kick her out with a proper vote I believe. Easier to just kill them in an encounter with police or have their car just explode or drive off a cliff though if they’re actually a problem. To be honest I think Republicans would view a single Marxist as such a great thing to rally against they would be less eager than Democrats (as a party apparatus, individual members would be absolutely chomping at the bit) to kick them out. And there’s always the chance of coercing and enticing them to moderate to help redefine socialism and Marxism as social democracy in practice so lots of ways to go about it. A single member isn’t really a threat though.
At the end of the day unless she’s part of an explicitly Marxist party like PSL and uses her platform to stump for their planks and organization I’m very doubtful she’ll accomplish anything but being a sheep-dog for the left flank of the Democrats. It’s important in that situation not just to hold views but to be part of something so you can pull staffers from within its ranks, so you have strength to fall back on and a way to hold you to account for holding the party line.
The vote to expel her is the one thing I think they might try. It depends on whether or not the want to let her sit and use her to attempt to constantly scandalize and humiliate the left, both electoral and not.
I don’t think it’d even be hard to get a critical mass of Dems on board with removing her. A decreasing but still large amount of the country identifies with anti-communism, probably enough to pull it off. Way more politically effective for them to use/humiliate her than to kill
This would raise the contradictions. The base would see her be expelled, see John Fetterman not expelled, and start to wonder.
Yes of course, I’m just making commentary on likely ways they’d act against her
For the record, the house has only ever expelled 6 members. Three were for joining the confederacy. The other three were for corruption, eg George Santos.
People are overreacting here more than the right will. Look at how much they Tlaib and Omar. Do you really think Chevalier is going to get that much more flak than them?
For Republicans, in their minds people like Avila-Chevalier, Hasan, etc are very “useful”. They can point to them and say “oooooh look they even call themselves COMMUNISTS!” They think that simple red-baiting will score them points with voters.
For now, they don’t see how every day this tactic is becoming less effective and for anyone under 40 or so, it’s actually having the opposite effect of making socialism look good. I don’t expect they will figure it out and change tack anytime soon, though.
Years ago I was reading some “is China really communist?” argument and ran across the following point:
Whatever you think about the current character of the Chinese government, everyone there openly says they’re communist, reads a bunch of communist literature, names their main party “communist,” etc. If they aren’t communist, it’s hard to imagine a better not-already-communist place for an actual communist to rise to power.
Something similar applies to the DSA.
In my experience, most critics (not all) are chronically online people who have never organized their community a day in their life.
Most of my chapter is MLs. Please let us know when the revolution is 😎
I said in another post that harcorest marxistest lenisistest maoistest party in my area should have some sort of positive relationship with our local DSA, since if DSA is truly doomed to fuck up at some point due to their electoral tendencies, you’ll want to recruit everyone who is ready to step things up at that time. Obviously organize (far) beyond that, but calling people a bit to the right of you “liberal liberal liberal” is cutting off the pipeline that’s going to be very useful in the future just to be smug.
The purity policing online is indeed very tiresome. I don’t witness much of that irl … people just come together to solve the problems that need to be solved.
I work with PSL and DSA alike. This online shit is so dumb. (honestly my one PSL colleague doesn’t even really do much with PSL anymore since the org doesn’t do much other than protest marches … this comrade is is way more active in rapid response groups and immigrant solidarity orgs now)
You can actually make that kind of thing happen by just doing a joint project where the chapter is likely to fail those involved. For example, launching a police abolition campaign now. I think that’s pretty likely to get a response along the lines of “that was a good thing to jump on in 2020 but not now”. Focusing on Palestine has a similar effect.
You don’t really need a direct relationship with DSA or whoever is on their main local committee, you just need to be known to the membership and get your events attended by them.
Agree!
In my experience most critics are communists with decades of experience running parties and organizing major events.
And I don’t mean this to be demeaning but if most of your chapter is MLs I’m guessing it is very small, like it has a small enough number of active members that a single clique of 5-10 people controls the political orientation.
I love the quote but don’t know exactly what your point is.
Do you mean that communists can rise up through the DSA, or that the communists within DSA might as well call themselves communist, or something else?
The point about China is that even if you don’t believe they’re Real Communists, they at least all act the part, so a Real Communist could rise through the ranks more easily there than in most other places. Say you’re a Real Communist in France or Mexico, for example. If you openly talk about Lenin, or the dictatorship of the proletariat, or how labor creates all value, you’re going to have big chunks of the political sphere openly call for you to be exiled from political life, if not worse. A Real Communist will not get that pushback in China, because there everyone is at least pretending to endorse those ideas, so Real Communists have comparatively easy paths to power.
In the DSA, everyone is at least pretending to subscribe to socialism. It’s right there in the name! So while someone who really believes that might struggle in other parties, or in the broader U.S. political sphere, they’re going to get comparatively less attacks from the right in the DSA.
I don’t know anything about this lady. I’m saying that if there was a pretty cool politican out there, it would be easier to succeed rising through the DSA than anywhere else in the U.S.
Got it! Then I completely agree
Just about everyone I’ve met through the DSA has been a self described marxist
The most active cadre tend to be far more often Marxist than paper members
I can introduce you to some DSA anti-Marxists if you’d like lol
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Yeah heavily this. I saw a similar post and that point really stuck with me.
DSA? Not from what I’m seeing.
The point is judging them by their initial elected is like looking at chinese markets and saying its capitalism. Rank and file DSA has always been Marxist and have only grown more radical over the years.
It’s ridiculous to compare the DSA to the CPC. Even if many members within the DSA claim to be communist, the DSA organization itself claims to be reformist not communist. The DSA does not put any effort in developing an independent working-class party, and they directly claim not to be a party at all. Their endorsed candidates are Democrats. There are communist parties in the US, but the DSA is clearly not one of them.
The DSA does not put any effort in developing an independent working-class party
obviously not true at all. DSA is literally developing its own canvassing software as we speak so that it can stop using stuff like NGP VAN.
got me thereKareem Elrefai, a New York member who was elected to the NPC at the end of the convention, said that resolution was one of his biggest takeaways from the weekend, steering DSA in a power-building direction. He recounted that the body debated whether their 2028 candidate should run as a Democrat or a third-party candidate, but he was happy with the ultimate outcome. “There was an amendment that would have strongly urged us to go independent. I am very excited that it has kept us on the Democratic Party ballot line, not because I’m a proud Democrat, certainty not by any means,” he said. “Third-party agitational campaigns fail pretty consistently.”
https://prospect.org/2025/08/14/2025-08-14-dsa-convenes-argues-and-celebrates/
Oops! All reform!
Ah the arrogance of youth to think that no US Marxist has ever tried to start a third party before.
Read up on how primary systems actually work and tell me how you plan on maintaining democratic centralism when its up to both the GOP and the Dems who is register to vote in your primary and who is allowed to run in them.
Having completely independent party infrastructure and squatting the (D) line is the way forward.
who cares about some text on a ballot line? The DSA clearly isn’t the Democratic Party and it’s becoming less so every month. Nobody in DSA likes the Democrats. Focusing on this “break from the Democrats” stuff so closely is akin to saying, “why doesn’t China just press the communism button?” as if infrastructure, organizations, and movements are built in a day.
Change happens slowly. This is a mostly volunteer organization. People are contributing their days off and time after work to build these things. Rhetoric will change when material reality changes.
One cannot say “lets immediately break from the Democrats, and we declare war!” while using the fundraising and canvassing infrastructure built for the Democrats.
If posters here want their own party so bad they could take over the Green Party. IDK how people think because their third party has a hammer and sickle that it will somehow magically fix all the barriers third parties have in the US.
At some point we have to realize that capitalism has put us in a “checkmate” in the US. Violent revolution is not possible with all of the surveillance and the most well armed police forces in the world. Plus half the country worships the cops. I see those stupid “thin blue line” stickers on so many trucks here. Soldiers are mostly chuds and fascists who volunteer to kill brown people overseas. Where are you getting the armed masses to fight your civil war?
Union organization has been drilled out of people’s heads thanks to billions of $ of “individualism” and propaganda. It can work but not overnight. It’s slow work deprogramming people.
I know Hexbear hates electoralism, but I don’t see any other options that actually can work.
Aside from the fact being anything other than a reformist party is currently illegal, DSA also is not operating under a parliamentary system, it maintains independence by acting as a insurgent factional party within the two party electoral framework
DSA chapters and cadres don’t officially share data, coordinate, or maintain organizational ties with the DNC or even non-DSA candidates they endorse (AOC’s people are Warrenites)
DSA maintains an independent infrastructure even if it’s candidates borrow the empty label if ‘Democrat’
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east turkistan
Opinion discarded
You clearly have no understanding of socialism with Chinese characteristics or basic Leninist principles like democratic centralism. Try learning first instead of spouting nonsense.
Sorry, but unless those Tweets are undeleted I’m going to assume AOCification.
Crypto-communism was made up by red scare propaganda, in reality we can’t keep our mouths shut. The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims etc etc. If she really still believes these things, she won’t try to pretend she doesn’t.
I don’t think she even deleted individual tweets, she deleted her whole account after Elon bought twitter bc she wanted to get off the nazi platform
If deleting the posts is the difference between a genuine Marxist-Leninist getting elected into a position of power vs not, then deleting posts is good.
Big online-is-not-real-life moment here. Keeping a shitposting Twitter account is not doing more praxis than like… having a meaningful say in whether your state is able to more effectively facilitate a genocide
I’m just going to mass tag everyone here @SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.ml @Athena5898@hexbear.net @pleiades@lemmy.ml
She’s already in power. Now that these posts have been unearthed, there’s no benefit in trying to do crypto-communsim (if there ever was). She can either own those posts or denounce/distance/deny, and if she doesn’t own them then she’s an AOC lib.
Let’s see what she does.
She’s already in power.
She’s literally not though. She won a primary and is essentially garunteed to win, being in a safe blue district, but she’s not in power yet.
Let’s see what she does.
Yeah, I mean, no shit. I don’t think any of the people you tagged disagree with this. We are (or I least I am) saying that your litmus test is decidedly posting-brained
It’s kind of an n=1 study I guess, can’t really conclude anything with any litmus test.
/j “All political power comes from statements on the internet” -Mao
/j “All political power comes from statements on the internet” -Mao
Political power grows from Based Tankie Posting -Mao ZeDank
your litmus test is decidedly posting-brained
1,000%
She’s already stated she’s not going to comment on the posts at all, which I’d say is an anti-denouncement in its own way
Yeah, good enough for me. I’m not as posting brained as everyone seems to think, I just want people to stand by the things they say.
Oh for sure.
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims etc etc. If she really still believes these things, she won’t try to pretend she doesn’t.
I see your point, but making undeleting her tweets as a sign of her true radicalism is a real “Tell me you think posting is praxis without telling me that you think posting is praxis” kind of cringe.
The reality of the situation is that she’s running for elected office, and that requires cleaning up your image, especially in the internet age. And quite frankly, Any ML running for office should be using it as an opportunity to teach the masses. The masses shouldn’t be learning about Marxism from a Fox News host frothing at the mouth over your dank Lenin meme.
Who is teaching MLism by running for office? Is this person doing that?
There have been big tent communists doing that to an extent in lower offices. Not necessarily MLs only but folks that put focus square on capitalists and a rejection of bourgeois parties.
Rejection of bourgeois politics without a full explication of another system is what causes our long term failure. It’s the exact weakness of non-MLs that forced me to study MLism.
Im still happy with whatever this person is doing because it presents opportunities for marxists to clarify their positions relative to the concrete failures of such endeavors to get the goods. Also whatever this person achieves will likely be material benefits that are nice short term. But im allergic to confusing this with any long term goals
Based on their posting history there’s a decent chance they’ll at least start out with good agitation. Hard to predict more than that since it’s just one person.
Didn’t Rosa Luxemburg have a quote about socialists being forced to deradicalize when participating in bourgeois governments or something like that? (Sorry I can’t seem to find it) I saw it used with regards to Mamdani, I have a feeling the same thing might happen again
She said it a few times but here’s an old banger from this work:
On the other hand, the behavior of the socialist ministers in parliament itself is directed exclusively at bringing about the rule of, and keeping alive, the sad and inwardly lifeless remnants of bourgeois democracy. For this purpose the class conflict between proletariat and bourgeois-democratic policy is completely disavowed and socialist opposition abandoned; ultimately the Jaurès socialists’ own parliamentary tactics resemble those of the purely bourgeois democrats. These disguised democrats are distinguishable from the genuine thing only by their socialist label – and their grater moderation.
Not so much the twitter thing but I do feel the “don’t shut up thing”. It takes so much energy to measure what I’m saying and make it okay for most people…and I still fail a lot.
Vote blue no matter who.
I only vote red
Hot damn, I do love the smell of CNN panik!! in the morning.
