Darializa Avila Chevalier Is an Enemy of the American Creed

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Wednesday, June 24, 2026

 

Darializa Avila Chevalier, who is now the Democratic Party’s candidate for New York’s 13th congressional district, has some rather ambitious goals. She wishes to prevent all deportations of illegal immigrants, irrespective of the severity of the crimes they have committed; she hopes to abolish prisons entirely, including for convicted murderers; and — oh yes, this one jumped out at me — she is “fighting for the eradication of Western Civilization.” “Our intifada,” she said two years ago, while at Columbia (where else?), “is an Internationalist one.”

 

I see. Question: Do I get a vote on that?

 

I ask because, all told, that seems somewhat extreme. Western civilization is me. It’s my wife and children. It’s my town, my state, my country. It’s the Constitution to which I have taken an oath. “Intifada,” in Arabic, means “to shake off.” Were Western civilization to be shaken off, all that I cherish would fall with it. I’m against that.

 

By and large, I am an ecumenical sort of chap. I have strong political views, but they are grounded in a classically liberal outlook and an understanding that pluralism is the fastest road to peace. “Intifada,” however, is not on my bingo card. Which leads me to wonder how I am supposed to react to this. In recent years, calls such as Chevalier’s have become common within the DSA set, and yet I have noticed that they engender far less outrage than other provocative views that seem comparatively innocuous. In the present era, at least, there seems to exist an assumption not only that the progressive movement will occasionally go completely crazy, but that when it does, it should be treated as if it were filled with impetuous children. Thus we are expected to ignore the fact that many current candidates for office embraced abolishing the police or suggested that white people are a virus or waved around a Hamas headband while insisting that 9/11 was America’s fault — and to ignore them on the grounds that those words were uttered in the past, as if the mere passage of time grants one immunity, provided that one is really left-wing.

 

Well, it doesn’t. Chevalier is seeking a federal position in the federal legislature that makes the federal laws by which I am bound. And she is crazy. For various reasons, a good number of our commentators seem to have become inured to this, so let me say it once again in slightly different words: Pretty much nobody who has lived in the United States during its 250-year history would ever, under any circumstances, have said or thought that they were “fighting for the eradication of Western Civilization.” I am not talking here about Congress, which is a much smaller subset. I am talking about the entire population of this country, from sea to shining sea, in every moment since the convention at Philadelphia. Chevalier’s declarations are the product of a diseased mind. They represent an unequivocal confirmation that the speaker is incapable of participating in society and of engaging with her fellow citizens on equal terms. So far as I can tell, she has never had a job outside of left-wing activism, which is appropriate, because her worldview ought to make her unemployable in every other arena. That her foray into the world of work may be as one of 435 U.S. representatives defies belief.

 

The literal answer to my question — “Do I get a vote?” — is that I do not. Thankfully, I do not live in New York’s 13th congressional district. But I do get to decide whether to tolerate this trend as if it were a curiosity or a foible or, instead, to use my voice to characterize it for what it is. I choose the latter. There is nothing charming or interesting or harmless about Darializa Avila Chevalier. She is not amusing. She is an enemy of the American creed. Those who wish to keep the sickness that she represents from spreading outside of New York ought to begin the process of repudiation posthaste.