By The Daily Caller (Opinion) | Created at 2026-06-25 18:55:09 | Updated at 2026-06-25 20:14:10
2 hours ago
Mamdani-backed candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier, 32, is projected to win the Democratic primary for New York’s 13th Congressional District.
Chevalier stormed out of a Spanish-language radio interview Tuesday with La Mega 97.9 after hosts asked about a deleted post in which Chevalier expresses her distaste for Dominican nationalism. Chevalier was born to Dominican immigrants.
“[T]his fucking nationalism is why I don’t be putting that [Dominican] flag in my bio that shit is violent and there is nothing good that can come of it,” Chevalier reportedly wrote in 2022. (RELATED: INGERSOLL: Usha Vance Carries The Answer To NYC’s Rising Radicalism)
When a host asked Chevalier to “address the Dominican community that may feel bad for the things she has said in the past,” Chevalier punted, saying she felt bad about many of her past social media posts and pivoting to a talking point about community justice.
“But I think that what we Dominicans are most hurt by here was the situation with the flag. That’s what was most hurtful,” another host told Chevalier, according to a translation of the remarks by the New York Post.
The hosts continued pressing Chevalier for comment, causing Chevalier to quit the interview.
“I am not going to sit here and be yelled at by various people,” she said, before telling the hosts to “have a beautiful day,” taking off her headphones and leaving.
We should ask: What is controversial or unusual about a far-left candidate condemning nationalism?
The answer is: nothing. Except for when that candidate is condemning nationalism as practiced by a non-white group.
This is pretty funny.
Columbia-educated Chevalier knows that “nationalism” is bad, condemns Dominican nationalism. But fails to realize that nationalism, when practiced in a non-white sort of way, is good, actually.
Now she’s in trouble with Dominicans, despite being Dominican… https://t.co/jDjumTRRvd
— Natalie Sandoval (@NatSandovalDC) June 24, 2026
The DSA censures America’s “nationalist far right” and the “Christian nationalist right.” In left-wing circles, criticizing nationalism — like criticizing colonialism, the patriarchy, racism, or capitalism — is generally not cause for contention.
Consider this article from socialist magazine Jacobin: “The Left Can’t Cede Patriotism to the Right.” The headline correctly suggests that the left has an aversion to patriotism, which the author, Jacopo Custodi, hopes to challenge. It is fair to say that the left, broadly, also has an aversion to nationalism.
And Chevalier has impeccable leftie credentials. She bills herself as a “working-class Afro-Latina organizer.” Chevalier attended Columbia University, where she helped found Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a group which would later define itself as “Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.” She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). She has advocated for “a world without borders … prisons or police,” calling it “possible, necessary, and the only moral way forward.” She has called for the seizure of property from landlords, denounced all deportation as “wrong,” and taken non-white men to task for “fetishizing ugly colonizer women.”
It is entirely in keeping with her other beliefs that Chevalier should dislike nationalism. Chevalier merely applied her anti-nationalism principle — which she surely heard repeated many times while studying at Columbia and in online circles — to the Dominican Republic. (RELATED: Democrat Cowers In Fear While Demanding Party To Man Up, Stop Being Scared Of Socialists)
This was a misstep which exposes Chevalier’s political naivety. It is well and good to spit on Americans or Europeans for promoting a sense of national identity, particularly if that identity includes ethnic or racial elements — but one must not condemn Latinos for promoting a sense of national identity, even if that identity includes ethnic or racial elements. Especially if one hopes to win the Latino vote.
La Mega host Excarlet Molina confessed that “as a Dominican,” she was “offended” by Chevalier’s tweet.
One wonders if Molina was aware of, and equally offended by, Chevalier’s tweet calling the U.S. a “fucking disgrace.” Or a tweet in which Chevalier wrote: “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.”
Chevalier did not refer to the Dominican Republic in nearly such disparaging terms. Still, Dominican-Americans such as Molina appear to care more about Chevalier’s attitude towards the Dominican Republic than her attitude towards the country in which they both reside.
It is telling that a candidate’s opinion on a foreign country should matter so much in an American election.
