I know it feels like the Democratic Socialists of America's (DSA's) success came out of nowhere, but it didn't. It's been building for so long that their presence was hiding in plain sight. Maybe not necessarily for people paying attention, but for everyone else, their arrival on the scene felt sudden and jarring.
It wasn't that long ago that we were collectively laughing at the DSA, because they were delivering videos of their meetings that featured they/thems and the self-diagnosed complaining about everything under the sun from "points of privilege." But these were always the useful idiots, not the people running the show. The people at the top of the food chain are far more intelligent and way more organized than you might think.
What started as a trickle became a stream, and now that stream has become a river. The first big sign was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's election to Congress, and that has now become Mayor Zohran Mamdani as the mayor of New York City. The Democrat Party is in a quiet civil war that is getting less quiet all the time. I wouldn't be surprised to soon start seeing real blood.
With people like Hasan Piker being given a megaphone by the establishment media, I can't imagine there won't be escalation into real violence. Piker is a fan of it, and he's not shy about saying it. Democrat establishment candidate David Crowley beating the DSA's Rep. Francesca Hong in the primary for the Wisconsin gubernatorial race isn't going to make relations any better, and the radicals live and work by the motto "by any means necessary."
The Democrats should know this. They helped create the radicals that are now trying to eat them alive.
READ: Pure Gold: Hasan Piker Throws a Tantrum Over Hong's Loss in Wisconsin
But this opens up something we should be all too aware of, but I feel we aren't aware of enough. I think our cultural wins on the right have softened the issue in our minds. We've become complacent and overconfident.
We're still being overpowered culturally, and the culture is where the real fight is. The radicals still infect and own the establishment, great and small. While I wouldn't say we aren't putting up a good fight and gaining ground, the issue is that we're not fighting hard enough, and we're not taking back the culture as swiftly as we should be.
This came to me while I was reading about Nevada GOP candidate Marty O’Donnell. For those who don't recognize the name, O'Donnell was responsible for what is one of the most famous video game soundtracks ever created and one of the most recognized songs in the Western world: the theme song for "Halo." An open conservative from day one, O'Donnell was targeted well before he ever had an interest in politics by the left, and for good reason. O'Donnell's mark was a massive one, even if his name wasn't well known, and at this point it's pretty established that if you have cultural significance and are right-leaning, you have to be destroyed.
There can be no pillars to hold up Western society. To collapse it, you have to collapse the names that help shape it.
READ: The Coward's Way to Slay a Hero
In 2014, O'Donnell was terminated from Bungie, the developer who created the "Halo" franchise, "without cause." While the termination included claims that O'Donnell was trying to halt game trailers from going out and wasn't contributing to the work. Activision, which had teamed up with Bungie to release another franchise, had unceremoniously tossed O'Donnell's music for the new game aside, using their own tracks instead. O'Donnell sued Bungie and ultimately got what was his monetarily, but that's not the important part.
It wasn't long after that the ol' "harassment" accusations started. Women who worked at Bungie began claiming O'Donnell had harassed them, citing a Halloween party where O'Donnell wore a mask and pranked people, which some women claimed made them feel "uncomfortable," though no one can actually prove this was harassment of any kind. This is brought up repeatedly, especially now that O'Donnell is running for office.
Fast forward to today, and O'Donnell was supposed to reunite with some of Halo's most famous names and voices for its 25th anniversary at SacAnime Summer 2026. O'Donnell was disinvited by the convention staff over his politics.
According to That Park Place, the staff accused him of wanting to harm LGBTQ+ people, which is something O'Donnell has never said:
The former Bungie composer included a screenshot of a message explaining why the invitation had apparently been rescinded.
“The promoter for SacAnime has shared that his LGBTQ staff does not feel comfortable if you attend the event,” the message read. “Based on your recently reported statements of the political campaign, they have to rescinded [sic] their invitation to not cause any further staff upset.”
[...]
The controversy appears to stem from remarks O’Donnell made while discussing what he considers an ideological threat to Western civilization.
“Talk about an existential threat, this is where we are right now,” he said during an appearance on The WDW Pro Show. “We are on the cliff looking down into the abyss. And the abyss is Marxism, it’s anti-Western philosophy. There’s a weird alliance of all these groups who like to pretend they’re oppressed. The LGBTQ+ people, the Islamists, the Marxists, they’re all together now.”
Those remarks were subsequently shared on July 17 by Headquarters, a progressive social media operation that evolved from Kamala HQ, the former vice president’s campaign account.
HQ framed it as O'Donnell calling for the persecution of LGBTQ+ people, which was not what he said at all. Regardless, SacAnime used it as the excuse they needed to kick O'Donnell off the stage and reduce his cultural footprint.
Do you see the full picture?
Activision, a company known for its adherence to leftist causes, tossed O'Donnell's work out. Bungie, a company that had become infected with leftism, tried to kick O'Donnell to the curb without cause. Accusations of harassment suddenly appeared against him when that didn't work. Now they're trying to stop him from taking his rightful place as an important piece of Western culture through his help in creating one of the most famous games in American history.
To spell it out, at almost every step, from the corporate to the local convention, they tried to erase O'Donnell, and they can do that because they are still in charge of pretty much every cultural pressure point.
If we're going to win, we have to take those points back and push the radicals out. If we don't, then every victory we have will just be a band-aid on a gushing wound. To win back America, voting won't be enough. You have to fight on the cultural level, and that means storming the gates and retaking the castle.
