The highly anticipated Michigan Democratic Senate primary was close. Moderate Democrat Haley Stevens lost by a slim margin to progressive, democratic socialist-leaning candidate Abdul El-Sayed. After multiple prominent DSA and DSA-adjacent victories across the country, it is worth examining this movement that is gaining traction in America, especially among my university-aged peers.

With El-Sayed winning over 60% of Washtenaw County’s vote (home of Ann Arbor), the DSA has clearly made a splash with young minds on the University of Michigan’s campus.

It is no coincidence that El-Sayed swept my college town of Ann Arbor, where far-Left progressivism is encouraged as the norm by both professors and students. While he denies holding socialist views, El-Sayed attended fundraising events where organizers referred to him as “a longtime friend of Detroit DSA.”

Being a college town, the only path to winning was through impressionable young voters flirting with Marxism. Last semester, El-Sayed successfully campaigned on campus with Hasan Piker, the popular, far-Left radical Maoist on Twitch who justifies 9/11, mourns Stalin, and denies and downplays the October 7 atrocities perpetrated by Hamas. While on campus, El-Sayed and Piker promoted the unsubstantiated, anti-Israel genocide accusation and described the biggest Jewish American lobbying group as using “dark money.”

In a way, I get it. We arrive at college bright-eyed idealists ready to charge ahead and change the world. But the duality of idealism is where the trouble starts. Idealism is attractive because it’s easy and seems righteous. At the same time, we have little experience dealing with real-world problems.

Instead of modulating our understanding of the world to see what creates effective change, some keep trying to impose idealistic solutions to solve real-world issues. “Collective” control over the government and economy is an attractive universal solution to those who have not studied or experienced the injustices it produces. While DSA’s socialism may seem innocuous in theory, all arguments fall apart when confronted with the horrors produced by these systems.

From what I’ve observed, the basic socialist pitch boils down to offering a cure-all for accountability. You are no longer at fault for your situation — you are now a victim of a rigged “system.” Things will get better once the corrupt system is torn down. Tell me this illusory promise doesn’t sound familiar, and I will tell you about the North Korean asylum seekers, Refusnik Jews, and Cuban refugees who risked their lives to escape.

The Democratic Socialists of America is dedicated to replacing our free-market system with government-run collectivism. They use campus and community chapters to spread grassroots influence, with the University of Michigan’s chapter boasting over 1,000 followers on Instagram. By comparison, College Democrats at U-M has roughly double that following, with about 2,600 followers on Instagram.

I was born and raised in Miami, Florida, so many of my friends came from families that escaped Cuba and Venezuela. These countries were doing very well — especially in the context of the region — before their respective 20th-century socialist revolutions. The imposed government takeovers of their economies led to their current impoverished status. Cubans and Venezuelans are now prisoners of their failed systems and suffer from a lack of resources, opportunities, and personal efficacy.

At a recent Young America’s Foundation student leadership conference, I heard from Venezuelan refugee and economist Daniel Di Martino, who recounted how even shopping for food became an exercise in making do under dire circumstances. At grocery stores, “the government beans [rations] literally had rocks inside that you had to clean up … that is what happens when you have no profit motive.” Despite the dismal quality, he still had to bring piles of cash to cover costs because of extreme inflation. Not to mention that without real market prices, grocery stores could not respond normally to what people were actually buying and running out of. Shortages did not send the same signal to produce more, move goods where they were needed, or find alternatives, leaving shelves empty even when demand was obvious. DSA leaders have yet to produce any viable solutions to these problems.

Although the DSA hasn’t gotten to the point of crimes against humanity, they are on the path that the Castro and Chavez regimes once took. This time, instead of armbands and pamphlets, they have beaded bracelets and TikTok.

Students need to be willing to look past political popularity and examine what the systems they support actually do. That means studying not only their stated goals, but their incentives, trade–offs, and historical consequences. A movement should earn our support because its ideas survive scrutiny, not because its language appeals to our good intentions.

We cannot let this rebranded poison be sold under a new name. If we swallow that pill, it will only contribute to the downfall of our great country.

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Addison Stone is a senior at the University of Michigan pursuing War and Conflict Studies and a 2026-27 CAMERA Fellow. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CAMERA.

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I Saw How Socialists Won Over The University Of Michigan With My Own Eyes