Kshama Sawant (email her), an Indian immigrant, is a member of “Socialist Alternative”—a Marxist, Trotskyist party affiliated with the Committee for a Workers’ International. And it’s finally been confirmed that she has also been elected to the at-large seat on Seattle City Council—by a margin of 41 votes, 79,751 to 79,710. [Kshama Sawant Victory Rally—a Win for Everyone, by Charlette Report, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 17, 2013]
Sawant ran on typically ludicrous Leftist issues. For example, her signature issue was a $15 minimum wage, which will assuredly lead to businesses fleeing the city for more sustainable environments.
She also ran on rent control—something almost all economists recognize as a recipe for disaster. As Thomas Sowell and others have explained, rent control simply helps the poor people who happen to have an apartment when the policy has passed—as well as the rich and the affluent. But it does nothing to help those without shelter and discourages the building of new housing.
Is her economic idiocy explained by ignorance? Incredibly, the answer is no. Kshama Sawant has a PhD. in economics and has taught at several colleges and universities.
The answer is far darker—Sawant associates herself with some of the most sinister figures in modern times. Leon Trotsky, the inspiration for her party, was not some benign intellectual theorist. He was responsible for introducing the concentration camp to Soviet Russia, political terror—“our enemies will face not prison but the guillotine”—and forced labor by the entire nation.
Sawant’s other idol: Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara—not only is her unfortunate dog named Che, but two Che posters were among the decorations at her Election Day party.
Guevara was a murderous psychopath who enjoyed delivering the final shot to the head of prisoners while beaming with pleasure. Then there is the small matter of his plan to use the Soviet missiles in Cuba to nuke the USA.
Although Sawant toned down the radicalism for the election, she is of course lying about her true beliefs. She has advocated nationalizing Amazon.com, which would no doubt make it as efficient as the Obamacare website. [The Case for Kshama Sawant, The Stranger, September 25, 2013]
On her campaign website, Sawant’s campaign manager wrote:
“This requires taking the top 500 corporations that dominate our economy (the Wal-Marts, Exxon-Mobils, United Health Groups, Halliburtons, Microsofts, etc.) into public ownership”
Now these kinds of ideals have the power of an elected official behind them, if only in a small way.
So how did Americans get stuck with this communist revolutionary?
Simple: Sawant was a software engineer from Mumbai, India—just like the thousands of others that corpocrats like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have imported. Indeed, her husband, whom she listed as a source of her income, still works for Microsoft. Microsoft employees, perhaps fellow-Indians, were also her top donors. [A weird thing we noticed about "99 percenter" and socialist city council candidate Kshama Sawant, By Erica C. Barnett, Publicola, October 9, 2013]
Of course, Microsoft minions and useful idiots like Congressman Paul Ryan (Treason Party, WI) claim we need thousands more.
The problem is that immigrants like Kshama Sawant are not assimilating and have no interest in doing so. Instead of adopting traditional American values, Sawant operates as an internationalist opposed to American nationalism or patriotism. She advocates “unconditional citizenship for all persons currently in the U. S.”
This is typical. Such immigrants flee from dysfunctional countries, then try to make our country as dysfunctional as the place they fled.
India in particular is hardly a model to follow. A fellow Indian, Kanwal Rekhi, writes:
Our commitment to socialism was ill-founded and has proven disastrous... After 53 years of socialism we have attained neither growth nor equality.
[Why is India Poor? Agenda for a New India, SiliconIndia, February 2001]
How did a totalitarian revolutionary like Sawant win an American election? The problem is inherent to democracy and big government. When big government fails, it creates a rationale for even more government intervention to solve the problem it created. Government is the only institution that profits from its own failures.
For example, the failure of Obamacare may result not in healthcare freedom, but in a completely socialized health care market—the notorious “single payer” system. In the same way, Marxist globalists like Sawant win votes because the problems of immigration and globalization that they advocate undermine the free market system. They benefit from the problems they themselves create.
The lesson for patriotic Republicans (if any): they, not revolutionary socialists, should be getting the votes of those frustrated with the New Fascism of both political Establishments. Republicans—or their political replacements—should be running on stopping mass immigration, punishing outsourcing, scrapping anti-white racial preferences, and creating a business environment that helps small businesses, not the banksters.
But there’s a silver lining if the GOP fails—again—to seize this opportunity.
Though it would be bad for America, it will be hilarious to see Gates, Zuckerberg, and the rest of the Cheap Labor Lobby lose their ill-gotten gains to the socialist policies they enabled.
Jesse Mossman [email him] writes from an undisclosed location somewhere in America.
