New McCarthyite Campaign Against Mamdani and DSA

A watchdog group that bills itself as crusaders against “disinformation” is calling on the Justice Department to investigate the Democratic Socialists of America, the organization that helped to propel Zohran Mamdani to victory last year.

The nonprofit Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) just rolled out a 29-page report accusing DSA of “convergence with hostile foreign states,” the operative word here being “convergence” because coordination isn’t shown. Instead, the researchers used things like AI modeling to argue that the DSA's talking points on things like sanctions and election integrity "synchronize" with the narratives of the Venezuelan, Cuban, and Chinese governments. This along with some DSA delegation visits to these countries was enough for the report to demand a Justice Department investigation into whether they are foreign agents.

The report is pure McCarthyite guilt-by-association, dressed up in 21st-century tech. It employs charts and graphs to give an air of rigor to claims that essentially boil down to: if your tweets sound like someone else’s, you must be working together. NCRI points to "in-kind benefits"—like a stay at a posh hotel in Caracas—as the hook for a FARA inquiry, turning a political junket into a potential federal crime.