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2026-06-22 Home Front: Politix

The Fantastical Abstract World of the Democratic Socialists

[National Review] The outlet recently posted a lengthy interview with Darializa Avila Chevalier, the Zohran Mamdani-endorsed candidate mounting a primary challenge against the Democratic Party’s Hispanic Caucus chair, Representative Adriano Espaillat. In it, Chevalier’s interlocutors tried valiantly to drag the self-described socialist candidate down from the clouds, albeit to no avail.

They chose an easy one: murder. How would Chevalier, a "prison abolitionist," handle that?

"I think a lot of folks misunderstand what that vision of the world actually is," Chevalier replied before launching into a cerebral diatribe in which she denounced both the murderer and the nebulous environmental milieu that creates murderers.

"Because what we have right now is a system in whenever harm happens, there’s more harm being perpetrated, not only on the folks who engaged in the harm, but also on the victims of the harm," read one ponderous but still representative sentence in the blizzard of newspeak she unleashed.

Her interviewers tried again. "But what do you do to the murderer, though?" one asked. The question was met with yet another dissertation in which a lot was spoken, but nothing much was said. "But did we answer what happens to the murderer?" Chevalier’s increasingly agitated questioner asked. "Do you not incarcerate the murderer?" Somehow, this line of inquiry did not engender a "yes."