Darializa Avila Chevalier, the 32-year-old Democratic Socialist running to unseat Rep. Adriano Espaillat in New York's District 13 primary, wrote in a June 2021 Twitter exchange that American violence is "categorically incomparable to the worst things Hamas has ever done or ever could do." Two minutes later, she followed up: "Not to mention the countless other forms of colonial violence that it's enacted but you know."
The posts, surfaced by the New York Post, add to a growing dossier of social-media statements that paint Chevalier as far outside the mainstream, even by the standards of New York City's progressive wing. She is backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, and her candidacy has already drawn an attack ad from the 71-year-old Espaillat, who called her "not ready for prime time."
The June 2021 exchange came roughly two years before Hamas launched its October 7 attack against Israelis, an assault that dozens of countries recognize as the work of a designated terror organization. The Council on Foreign Relations has noted that Hamas uses suicide bombings and other deadly terrorist acts while denying Israel's right to exist. None of that deterred Chevalier from treating the comparison as lopsided in Hamas's favor.
The Hamas comments are not an isolated incident. Chevalier appeared at a Times Square rally on October 8, 2023, one day after the Hamas attack. Even Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, herself a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, said she was "appalled and horrified" by that event.
When a fellow DSA member finds a rally too extreme to defend, it tells you something about who showed up and why.
Chevalier's social-media trail extends in other directions. In 2019, she tweeted a photo of a biracial couple while blasting Black and Arab men for "fetishizing ugly colonizer women." She referred to Joe Biden as a "rapist", Biden has vehemently denied allegations from a former Senate aide that he sexually assaulted her in 1993 and has never been charged, and wrote "F, k Kamala Harris." She also claimed COVID-19 originated in France, citing what the Post described as a Chinese Communist propaganda outlet, at a time when wide consensus held that the virus originated in Wuhan, China, either from a food market or a laboratory.
Taken together, the posts reveal a candidate whose instincts run toward conspiracy, racial provocation, and reflexive anti-Americanism. Mamdani's decision to back a challenger with this kind of record has already opened a visible rift among New York Democrats.
Mayor Mamdani's support for Chevalier is not a casual favor. It is a deliberate political bet. The mayor, a Democratic Socialist himself, chose to put his name behind a candidate who compared the United States unfavorably to a terrorist organization, mocked interracial couples, and promoted a debunked COVID-19 origin theory sourced to Chinese state media.
That endorsement matters because it reflects the kind of judgment Mamdani brings to every decision at City Hall. A mayor willing to vouch for a candidate with this trail of public statements is telling voters exactly where his priorities lie.
Mamdani's political positioning has drawn scrutiny on multiple fronts. His administration faced backlash over a proposed $1 million cut to veterans services, and his broader governing style has raised questions about whether ideological loyalty outweighs competence in his circle.
The District 13 race covers northern Manhattan and parts of the western Bronx, communities with large immigrant populations, working families, and voters who have real stakes in whether their representative treats America as a force for good or as something worse than Hamas.
Rep. Espaillat, the veteran incumbent, has not been passive. His campaign produced an attack ad highlighting Chevalier's tweets and delivering the verdict that the 32-year-old challenger is "not ready for prime time." The ad focused squarely on her own words, a strategy that requires no embellishment when the source material is this vivid.
Espaillat's willingness to fight back is notable in a Democratic primary landscape where incumbents often tread carefully around the party's activist left. Mamdani's political operation has shown a willingness to punish dissent, which makes Espaillat's direct approach a calculated risk.
Chevalier's campaign offered no immediate comment on the surfaced posts.
The Democratic Socialists of America's New York City chapter has become a reliable incubator for candidates who hold views well outside what most Americans, including most Democrats, would consider acceptable. Chevalier fits the mold. The organization's endorsement, paired with the mayor's backing, gives her campaign infrastructure and credibility that her social-media history would not earn on its own.
This is how fringe candidates become viable: institutional support launders a record that would disqualify anyone running without a machine behind them. Voters in District 13 deserve to know what that machine is selling.
The broader environment in New York City government has not inspired confidence. Investigations into shady contracts involving the city's schools chancellor have added to the sense that accountability is in short supply across the Mamdani-era political landscape.
Meanwhile, Mamdani's own attempts to court Wall Street donors have drawn fire for clashing with his anti-billionaire rhetoric, a contradiction that makes his endorsement of a self-described socialist all the more telling about which audience he is actually performing for.
Chevalier wrote that the United States, a country that liberated Europe, rebuilt Japan, and has taken in more immigrants than any nation in history, commits violence "categorically incomparable" to a group that uses suicide bombings against civilians. She attended a rally the day after Hamas's attack. She mocked interracial couples with racial language. She spread a conspiracy theory about COVID-19's origins sourced to Chinese state propaganda. She cursed out a sitting vice president and called a sitting president a "rapist" without a charge to support the claim.
These are not old college blog posts dug up by opposition researchers. They are public statements made by an adult seeking federal office, backed by the mayor of the largest city in the country.
District 13 voters will decide whether this is the voice they want representing them in Congress. But the rest of the country should pay attention to what it means when a major American city's political establishment treats this record as endorsement-worthy rather than disqualifying.
When a candidate says the United States is worse than a terrorist organization and the mayor still signs the check, the problem is no longer the candidate. It's the party that keeps writing the endorsements.
