Incoming mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani, who says, and whose allies say, that he is not a communist, not at all, don’t be smearing the dude, but only a democratic socialist, is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America; and the DSA is “pushing China propaganda in new monthly ‘political education’ seminars” (New York Post, December 6, 2025).
To meet a rising interest in the Chinese Communist Party, a new DSA monthly seminar about “modern China and lessons for US socialists” was held Thursday evening.
The DSA and its poster boy, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, routinely insist they’re socialists, not communists—socialism seeks to reform capitalism while communism seeks to eliminate it—but these CCP-themed seminars cast that distinction in a far murkier light….
The session, part of the DSA’s “political education” offerings, made wild claims—like boasting about the communist country’s “strong democracy.”
“This is of course a controversial issue in the West,” said speaker Ben Norton, an American studying Marxism in Beijing, who founded the conspiracy website Geopolitical Economy Report, as he presented findings from the Democracy Perception Index.
“China has some of the highest levels of government approval on earth. Some people look at this and say this is crazy propaganda…. They have a different way of understanding how democracy works.”
Norton made no mention of China’s tight restrictions on freedom of expression that would have heavily tilted its citizens’ responses.
He also called for the US government to follow Beijing’s lead and take control of private companies, from big banks to tech, saying it’ll rein in the billionaire class and benefit workers.
What the CCP is imposing these days is not the communism of old, communist communism, with people routinely getting brutalized or shot for buying and selling stuff, but a version that we may call fascist communism and that the Party and Xi Jinping call “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
Communist versus fascism
Communism is “a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production,” in Merriam-Webster’s good enough definition.
The same dictionary somewhat more lengthily defines fascism as “a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime…that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition.”
Communism is also characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and forcible suppression of opposition. The difference between the two systems, or one difference, is that under communism the state generally owns the means of production; under fascism or a fascist-like system, property can be sort of privately owned but is subject to totalitarian or authoritarian control. Market transactions are not prohibited outright in a fascist system, as they would be prohibited (not altogether successfully) in a fully communist system.
So if Mayor-elect Mamdani wants to say he’s only a fascist socialist or communist, not a communist socialist or communist, I have no particular objection. Or rather, I would have no particular objection if he hadn’t let slip his “end goal of seizing the means of production.” Not to split hairs or anything, but that’s what they do in the communist communism.
Also see:
YDSA: video: “2021 YDSA Winter Conference: Zohran Mamdani”
“…end goal of seizing the means of production” (at 10:13).
