Raina Lipsitz on DSA Politics

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Verso Books (2022)

This week on CounterSpin: Corporate media sell a lot of messages, but perhaps the overarching one is: This is how it is. You can be mad about it; we’ll give you a personal profile, maybe. But, hey, this is just how it is, and how it is: There were 34.5 million people living in poverty ​in 2025, according to the Census Bureau. The United States has the second-highest poverty rate among major developed nations in the OECD.

Wait, you aren’t happy with that? Well, welcome to corporate media’s echo chamber—where you are naive at best.

When people try to fight for something better, we get a lot of noise about how that can’t work, won’t work, and you know who else wanted social change? Communists! Socialists! The idea is that we will be frightened off from wanting healthcare because, you know what? Russia!

The good news is that ever-increasing numbers of people just aren’t buying what elite media are selling—which is the same old, top-down, racist, “why would you even speak up?” blather that we’ve been listening to for decades. And then the narrating of the nightmare that we’re living through.

It’s not that DSA—Democratic Socialists of America—are the answer. But ask yourself: Why won’t corporate media engage the questions they pose?

We’ll hear from Raina Lipsitz, author of The Rise of a New Left: How Young Radicals Are Shaping the Future of American Politics, from Verso Books—and author of a range of pieces, including some on socialism, for FAIR.org.

Featured image: Photo by Janine Jackson of anti-Mamdani graffiti in Manhattan’s Chelsea.

Originally reported by FAIR by CounterSpin. Read the full story at the source.