Florida’s Subpoena against DSA is an Attack on the Entire Left

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is attacking the state’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter. On Tuesday, November 10 — a week after the midterm elections which saw DSA make gains across the country and nearly win a senate seat from Florida — Uthmeier issued a subpoena accusing DSA of having ties to the governments of Cuba and China, citing the organization’s history of participating in delegations to these countries.

This is an act of repression that the entire Left should oppose. As DSA has grown numerically and in relevance in national politics, the organization has been subjected to increasing attacks by both the Right and establishment Democrats. An attack on the largest socialist organization in the country has implications for everyone who identifies as a socialist or is beginning to identify with the term.

The attempt to delegitimize and criminalize socialist organizations by linking them to foreign governments has a dangerous history in the United States. Most recently Secretary of State Marco Rubio has used this method to paint a conspiracy theory that Cuba’s government is infiltrating the United States through relationships with left-wing organizations and activists. This line that any organization which questions the U.S. government’s pro-war foreign policy must be acting on behalf of a foreign government has previously been used to justify investigations and legal attacks against organizations like the Party for Socialism and Liberation and CODEPINK.

This attack must further be understood as part of the Trump administration’s escalating repression against social movements, particularly the movement against ICE and pro-Palestine solidarity. The sentencing of immigrant rights activists who held a noise demonstration outside an ICE jail in Prairieland, Texas showed just how far the administration is willing to go to crack down on dissent. Now the administration is attempting to repeat this attack against 15 activists who confronted ICE in Minneapolis and eight pro-Palestine activists in Michigan. The list of attacks goes on, from the ongoing efforts to deport pro-Palestine activists Mahmoud Khalil and Leqaa Kordia, the bogus assault charges against Green Party leader Jill Stein, and the many cases of attacks on academic freedom including Tom Alter in Texas and the CUNY Fired Fourth.

While many of these examples have important differences, together they demonstrate the larger climate of repression which has developed under Trump, though importantly predates him as the repression of the movement for Palestine began under Biden.

Left Voice fully condemns Uthmeier’s attack on DSA. A socialist organization in the United States should have every right to engage in international exchanges without being slandered as foreign agents. The capitalists are an international class and they regularly convene to exchange about how to exploit workers and make us kill each other in their wars, but international exchange is then treated as a crime when workers and socialists do it. This double-standard should be firmly rejected as its aim is not just to repress the Left, but to keep Americans isolated and obsessed with our own national interest at the expense of greater connection with our class siblings around the world.

In the face of escalating repression it is essential that the Left in the United States stand in solidarity, despite any political differences, against all attacks from the state. Uthmeier should withdraw the subpoena. The labor movement, civil-liberties groups, and the broader Left should oppose efforts to criminalize DSA.