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🇳🇱 Netherlands /Culture & Society

Woke 1 Was About Identity. Woke 2 Is About Class

From NRC Handelsblad · () Dutch

Translated from Dutch and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Analysis From a news agency Context piece
  • The New York Post has targeted wealthy or privileged members of New York’s Democratic Socialists of America, highlighting lifestyles that appear to conflict with their politics.
  • The article places those attacks in a longer tradition of conservatives mocking affluent socialists and left-wing movements wrestling with their members’ class backgrounds.
  • It argues that privilege does not necessarily prevent someone from trying to help less fortunate people, while pointing toward a newer debate centered on class.

The jury is still out on whether Zohran Mamdani’s promise of “the warmth of collectivism” will bring a new era of abundance to struggling New Yorkers. But his young administration has already handed conservative readers of the New York Post a ready-made target: the privileged lives of some fellow travellers in the Democratic Socialists of America.

Last month, the Post splashed across its pages a story about Gustavo Gordillo, co-chairman of the city’s DSA chapter, under the headline “Anti-rich DSA leader Gustavo Gordillo lives it up in posh $1.5m NYC pad paid for by millionaire parents”. The paper noted that the DSA had “railed against property ownership” and mocked the “lush landscaping” of the row house his parents bought through a dummy corporation. It later reported that Gordillo studied art and literature at Yale, was dismissed from an electricians’ union apprenticeship for failing to attend, and has a mother who drives a silver Porsche.

the warmth of collectivism

· Zohran MamdaniThe phrase describes Mamdani’s political commitment as presented at the start of the article.

Other targets followed. The Post called Tracy Rosenthal, an advocate of abolishing rent, an “anti-rent radical” and a “Mamdani pal” who was “squatting” in Brooklyn, while identifying her as the daughter of a successful music producer. It described Grace Ryan, a 25-year-old chocolate heiress from Ohio, as one of the DSA’s “most shameless” members after she posted a photograph of herself smoking a cigar on a boat while wearing a $400 Ralph Lauren stars-and-stripes sweater. Ryan, who worked during the primary for a successful left-wing congressional candidate, replied on X: “Like have y’all never heard of noblesse oblige?”

Like have y’all never heard of noblesse oblige?

· Grace RyanShe responded on X after the New York Post criticized her wealth and lifestyle.

This is an old political game. Karl Marx depended on Friedrich Engels and his textile fortune, while conservatives have long used wealthy leftists as ammunition. Socialism has also carried a subversive glamour for some bourgeois enthusiasts. George Orwell called its adherents “the worst advertisement for Socialism” and described the typical socialist as either a “youthful snob-Bolshevik” or a white-collar man with “a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting”.

Yet Ryan’s appeal to noblesse oblige raises the harder question beneath the mockery. She may never live like ordinary people, but that does not automatically prevent her from trying to help them. The contrast is between a wealthy person who seeks to improve the lives of the less fortunate and one who remains indifferent to their situation. Amid the posturing, the article suggests that this emerging distinction may be the point where the argument begins to matter.

The worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents

· George OrwellThe article cites Orwell’s criticism of wealthy or socially privileged socialists.
About this summary

Originally published by NRC Handelsblad in Dutch. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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