Flood the Zone: The Bannon move that progressives stole and now act as if they invented. Flood the zone with shit: nonstop press releases, TikToks, encampments, and conflicting slogans until normal people can’t keep up.
A field guide to what they're actually saying when they're saying it.
Think of modern progressive Marxism of DSA discourse as a very online role-playing game where everyone has +10 in jargon, and the final boss is "late-stage capitalism." Here's your cheat sheet, delivered with minimal eye-rolling:
Gramsci’s greatest hit, now available in Brooklyn. The idea that the ruling class controls everything from your Netflix queue to your kid’s pronouns, so the only solution is for us (the enlightened) to seize the cultural means of production. Zohran is trying to hegemonize the entire New York State Assembly one “from the river to the sea” resolution at a time. The irony? They’re all currently the cultural hegemony. They just don’t like that the peasants are starting to notice.
The magic word that turns any normal activity into a moral crusade. Decolonize your diet. Decolonize your bookshelf. Decolonize math (yes, people actually said that). DSA wants to decolonize New York City public schools by teaching that America is irredeemably evil and then wondering why test scores keep dropping. It’s all very post-colonial until the people doing the decolonizing still expect their Whole Foods and their six-figure nonprofit salaries.
A comfy intellectual pillow fort where everyone agrees with you and dissent is treated like a biohazard. You post "ACAB" in your DSA Discord, get 47 fire emojis, and conclude that society has reached consensus. It's like living in a house of mirrors except all the reflections high-five you and call you "comrade." Bonus: algorithms built it for you, then charged you for premium.
The comforting lie that regular people only support capitalism because they’re too stupid or brainwashed to know better. AOC's “The Latina abuela in the Bronx voting for Trump is suffering from internalized oppression, not noticing that my Green New Deal would make her heating bill triple.” It’s the ultimate cope: if they disagree with us, it’s because they’re broken, not because we might be insufferable.
Flood the Zone
The Steve Bannon move that progressives stole and now act like they invented. Flood the zone with shit: nonstop press releases, TikToks, encampments, and conflicting slogans until normal people can’t keep up. DSA chapters and AOC’s circle hit “genocide in Gaza” one week and “defund the police” the next, hoping something sticks before the news moves on. Zohran does it with fifteen radical bills at once so nobody has time to read them. The point isn’t truth or clarity. It’s exhaustion. Wear everyone down until the activists get what they want while the rest of us are still arguing about yesterday’s outrage.
Settler Colonialism
The fancy academic upgrade from regular colonialism. Now every country with borders, especially successful or Jewish ones, is a settler-colonial project. America, Canada, Israel — all illegitimate. Never mind that the Lenape were here before the Dutch, the Dutch before the English, or that most of the planet’s map was drawn in blood. In DSA world only Western success counts as evil. Zohran calls New York City occupied territory while cashing checks from the settler-colonial state legislature. They still want their iPhones, antibiotics, and rent-stabilized apartments built by the evil settlers. The irony never quite lands at the decolonization reading group.
White Fragility
Robin DiAngelo’s million-dollar grift dressed up as sociology. Any pushback, discomfort, or disagreement from a white person proves they’re secretly racist. It’s a perfect trap: deny it their way and you’re guilty. AOC uses the softer version against moderate Democrats. Zohran’s crew deploys it to shut down Jewish New Yorkers worried about campus antisemitism: “Your safety concerns are just white fragility.” Works fine until working-class white, Hispanic, and Asian parents notice their kids’ schools getting worse while the fragility workshops get more funding.
Equity
What they say when they don’t want to admit “equal outcomes by any means necessary.” Not equal rules or opportunity. That’s old liberal stuff. Equity means equal results, usually by punishing whoever is winning right now. DSA version: kill charter schools, gut gifted programs, lower standards for “racial justice,” then act surprised when Asian and white families bail. AOC’s Green New Deal was equity on steroids — redistribute everything except her book deals. In practice it means skin-color spreadsheets for hiring, grading, and lending. They just don’t call it discrimination when they’re holding the clipboard.
Late-Stage Capitalism
The doomer slogan that’s been “late stage” since the 1930s. Every recession, every rich guy, every new gadget proves the system is about to collapse. Meanwhile, the loudest complainers have more stuff, medicine, and entertainment than any humans in history. Zohran drops it in housing speeches while blocking the buildings that would actually help. AOC uses it to attack Amazon jobs that pay better than most union gigs. It’s like a goth kid saying everything sucks while living in mom’s basement with unlimited data. The stage never ends because the tickets keep selling.
Restorative Justice
The progressive swap for real punishment. Instead of consequences, throw the criminal and victim in a healing circle to talk about feelings. No cops, no jail, just empathy and maybe a group hug. NYC tried it and subway platforms turned into smash-and-grab zones. DSA loves it because locking up “oppressed youth” feels too colonial. Better to let them “reintegrate into the community” — preferably someone else’s. Crime goes up, activists write essays about how prisons are the real violence, and regular New Yorkers just buy better locks.
Oppression math. Your identity is a spreadsheet of victim points and you better hope your total is higher than the person you’re arguing with. AOC plays it like a video game — Latina + woman + socialist = moral high ground on everything from the border to the climate. Zohran adds “South Asian Muslim” and “democratic socialist,” and suddenly he’s allowed to lecture Jewish voters about antisemitism while platforming people who openly celebrate Hamas. The whole thing falls apart the second someone points out that class still matters more than most of these checkboxes, but nobody wants to hear that at the DSA potluck.
Tax the Rich
The revolutionary battle cry that sounds badass until you realize the people saying it are the ones with the trust funds and the Met Gala tickets. The fun part? It is the ultimate example of wanting to have your avocado toast and eat it too. The same people who wear it on their shirts still fly private and live in the neighborhoods they claim to want to burn down.
The acceptable range of ideas at any given moment. Imagine the political spectrum as a sliding window in a rent-controlled Astoria apartment. Ten years ago, "defund the police" was outside the window, smashing against the glass like a confused pigeon. Now it's inside, chilling on the couch, eating your avocado toast. The fun part? Activists treat it like a video game slider they can drag left by yelling louder and canceling anyone who complains about the draft.
Gene Goodwin
Fancy academic speak for “we need a polite excuse so the normies don't feel bad about doing the thing we already decided to do."
AOC gave everyone permission to call ICE facilities “concentration camps” (a phrase she walked back faster than a congressional primary challenger). Zohran is currently building the permission structure for “globalize the intifada” by calling it “anti-Zionism” and hoping nobody notices the difference between policy critique and cheering on October 7th. It’s all very sophisticated until someone actually has to explain it at a town hall.
The tiny group of enlightened radicals who will lead the stupid masses to liberation, whether they like it or not. Historically, this has worked out great (see: every communist revolution ever). AOC and Zohran are the Instagram version of younger, hotter, better at memes, same authoritarian instincts dressed up as “democratic socialism.” The vanguard always knows best. The vanguard always needs more power. The vanguard is never wrong. Until the body count starts rising, and suddenly it’s “not real socialism.”
There it is. The complete Unredacted treatment. Print it out, take it to your next DSA meeting in Bushwick, and watch the room temperature drop 20 degrees. Or don’t. We’re not your mom. We’re just here to make fun of the pretension while it’s still legal. Now go touch grass. The Overton Window isn’t moving for you anyway.
Pro tip for using these in the wild: String three together in one sentence ("The Overton Window has shifted due to false consciousness maintained by cultural hegemony in our echo chamber") and you'll instantly sound like you have a politics minor from a very expensive college. Bonus points if you say it unironically while wearing $200 "eat the rich" merch.
The game is mostly just rebranding old ideas with fancier words so they feel fresh and morally urgent. Same as it ever was—just with better WiFi. Now go touch grass, comrade. It's still legal... for now.
Gene Goodwin
Gene Goodwin