The co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America told the New Yorker that the Hamas massacre of some 1,200 Israelis was "in many ways, inevitable", a claim that lays bare just how far left the organization has drifted on foreign policy, policing, and the basic moral line between victims and aggressors.
Megan Romer, who leads the DSA alongside co-chair Ashik Siddique, sat down with the New Yorker's David Remnick for a wide-ranging interview that touched on Israel, police funding, Cuba, and Ukraine. On the subject of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack, Romer did not hedge. She told Remnick the slaughter was a foreseeable consequence of Israeli policy, and then went further, comparing Gaza to a concentration camp.
Her exact words deserve the full context, because they reveal how the DSA's leadership frames a terror attack that killed some 1,200 people as something Israel had coming.
"I think the events of October 7 were, in many ways, inevitable. If you put people into an open-air concentration camp and deny them basic rights, dignity, food, and the ability to live with minimal security for so long, you have to expect that eventually they will rebel."
Romer added a caveat, "that is not defending any harm of civilians", but the framing speaks for itself. She cast Hamas's coordinated assault as a predictable uprising rather than a planned terrorist operation, and placed the blame squarely on the country that was attacked.
The interview also pressed Romer on the DSA's response in the immediate hours after the attack. On Oct. 8, 2023, one day after the massacre, DSA-backed candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier rallied against Israel in New York City. Asked whether she would have attended, Romer said she likely would have, had she been living in New York at the time.
That rally took place before Israel had mounted any significant military response in Gaza. The bodies of some 1,200 Israelis were still being identified. And the DSA's instinct, by its own co-chair's admission, was to march against the country that had just been attacked.
The organization has made opposition to any American defense or economic support for Israel a "solid red line," according to the New York Post's reporting. Romer went further still, outlining the DSA's preferred outcome for the region: a single state called "free Palestine with the capital in Jerusalem." That is not a two-state solution. It is the replacement of Israel.
The DSA has gained traction in Democratic primaries in recent cycles, a trend that raises questions about how much influence the organization's positions carry inside the broader party. A Pew poll found roughly one-third of Democrats favor democratic socialist leaders, even as the DSA's platform pushes positions well outside the American mainstream.
Remnick pushed Romer on Hamas's treatment of LGBTQ people, a point that has long created tension for left-wing groups that champion both Palestinian liberation and queer rights. Romer conceded the obvious.
"I would not call Hamas queer-friendly."
But she immediately redirected. Rather than reckon with Hamas's documented persecution of gay Palestinians, Romer argued that conditions under Israeli military operations were the real threat.
"I would not say that you can get a lot of social rights when you're under siege. I think most queer people that have been killed in Palestine have been killed by Israeli bombs."
She also pointed to Cuba as a model the United States should follow, describing it as having "the most LGBTQ-friendly constitution in the world." Cuba, a one-party communist state where independent journalists face prison and political dissidents are routinely detained, is the DSA co-chair's example of progress on civil rights.
The pattern in the interview is consistent: every question about the failures or abuses of left-wing movements and regimes gets answered with a pivot to American or Israeli fault. The DSA's official platform calls for abolishing the Senate, defunding the Pentagon, and ending deportations, positions that place the organization far outside any plausible governing consensus. Romer's interview suggests the leadership sees no reason to moderate.
The interview covered domestic policy as well, and Romer's answers were just as blunt. On policing, she did not retreat to the softer "reimagine policing" language that most Democrats adopted after the 2020 defund movement collapsed politically. She doubled down.
"That means zero funding. It means taking money away from police departments and investing it elsewhere, fully funding social services, schools, and after-school programs."
Zero funding. Not reform. Not reallocation at the margins. The DSA co-chair wants police departments stripped of every dollar. This is the position of an organization whose endorsed candidates are running in Democratic primaries across the country.
On Ukraine, Romer defended the DSA's skepticism of American military and financial aid, framing it as consistent opposition to projecting American power abroad.
"We don't believe in pouring American money and weapons anywhere in the world. It doesn't make anything better."
That position, no weapons for Ukraine, no support for Israel, no funding for police, amounts to a foreign and domestic policy built on withdrawal. Withdraw from allies. Withdraw from law enforcement. Withdraw from the basic premise that American power and American institutions serve a protective function.
Romer's struggles in the Remnick interview were not limited to foreign policy. In the same sit-down, she could not clearly define her own organization's tax policy when pressed on what "taxing the rich" actually means in practice, a gap between rhetoric and substance that has become a recurring problem for DSA-aligned candidates.
The interview raises a question that Democratic voters deserve to have answered plainly: Do the candidates the DSA endorses share these positions? Do they believe the Oct. 7 massacre was inevitable? Do they want zero funding for police? Do they oppose any aid to Ukraine?
Some DSA-aligned candidates have tried to distance themselves from the organization's most radical stances while still accepting its endorsement and organizational support. One Michigan Senate candidate, for instance, headlined six DSA events and raised thousands for the organization before telling voters he was no socialist.
That kind of selective branding works only as long as voters do not hear what the DSA's own leaders actually say when a microphone is on. Romer's interview with Remnick strips away the ambiguity. The DSA's co-chair called a massacre inevitable, compared a democratic ally to a concentration-camp warden, endorsed the elimination of police budgets, and cited communist Cuba as a constitutional role model.
The same candidate who distanced himself from the DSA label also conceded that his healthcare plan would raise taxes on middle-class workers, another reminder that DSA-backed policy carries costs its champions prefer not to advertise.
Voters can decide for themselves whether those positions belong anywhere near the levers of power. Romer, at least, had the honesty to say what she believes out loud. The candidates who take the DSA's money and manpower owe the same candor.
