CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Elite Socialists Don’t Get It

Image by William Gibson.

In a recent Jacobin article, Noah Suárez-Sikes, “an organizer with the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America,” criticized mainstream news outlets for gleefully outing DSA leaders who hail from backgrounds that range from upper-middle class to upper class.

Dubbed “Class traitors are welcome in the socialist movement,” a construction perfectly tuned to immediately alienate right wingers and left wingers alike, the piece was framed around a feeding frenzy by the NYC and national conservative press against one Gustavo Gordillo, who Suárez-Sikes first described as “the democratically elected cochair of the New York City chapter of DSA, a thirty-eight-year-old former union electrician.”

A couple of lines later we discover that Gordillo’s dad bought him a house in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Suárez-Sikes was a bit circumspect on matters like the value of the house (requiring readers to do math to figure it out), Gordillo’s background, and what his father does for a living.

Fox News was rather more blunt on the details, however, “The co-chair of New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America has railed against the wealthy and championed the working class — while living in a roughly $1.4 million Brooklyn home purchased and renovated by his parents.

“Property records show that a family LLC purchased the Bed-Stuy home in 2019. Gordillo’s father, a Peruvian immigrant and successful businessman, told the New York Post that he renovated the property and allows his two sons, including the DSA co-chair, to live there.”

The Fox story then mentioned that Gordillo is “a Yale graduate with an art degree” and quoted New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino (R – 19th District) saying “Not only did DSA co-chair Gustavo Gordillo’s parents buy him this rowhouse, they converted it from a two family and renovated it into a luxury single-family home for him.”

For the remainder of his dispatch, Suárez-Sikes went to some lengths to explain that the more fair,........

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