How a socialist Valentine’s Day mixer turned into a messy debate over Zionism
When the New York DSA advertised an event at Silo, the internet missed the point for the details
A DJ performs at the opening weekend of Silo, two years ago. Courtesy of Annie Forrest
By Mira Fox February 3, 2025
When the New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America — colloquially known as the DSA — announced a Valentine’s Day themed mixer, things immediately went off the rails. The event, called “Thots and Trots,” was set for the night before Valentine’s Day, at a Brooklyn music venue called Silo.
The predictable part of the drama, which popped off instantly, involved criticism of the organizers for using a sometimes-pejorative term about women in the event title — “thot” is slang that stands for “that hoe over there,” but is also often used as an ironic endearment. The less-predictable part came next: Silo, many people said, was a Zionist Israeli venue.
The latter complaint is rooted in an article from New York Jewish Week in which the club’s founder, Alex Neuhasen, talks about Tel Aviv nightlife as one of the inspirations for the venue’s late-night hours.
“In Tel Aviv, they all get dinner with their family and everyone hangs out at 10 or 11, and then you hang out before the club until 2 or 3, and then you go to the club,” Neuhausen said in the article. “They keep super-late hours. You turn the entire night into an experience. We want to do that.”
Neuhausen also discussed other aspects of his Jewish upbringing that have no relationship to Israel — family members of all ages dancing at b’nai mitzvah inspired the club’s warm feel and loose door policy. And he talked about the roots of house music, which the space specializes in, referencing Black culture in Detroit and the Civil Rights movement.
Nevertheless, the discourse instantly glommed onto the mention of Tel Aviv, and began to tear down what should have been a tongue-in-cheek event over accusations that the organizers were colonists or, at the very least, didn’t oppose imperialism the way anyone on the left should.
The event host, Anders J. Lee, attempted to stem the tide, pointing out that Silo has hosted fundraisers for Palestinians; other people in the comments affirmed this. But the momentum could not be stopped — and quickly spiraled into something far weirder than just an accusation about Silo’s political aesthetics.
“Israeli clubbing and rave culture cannot be separated from the settler-colony — psytrance events are very specifically cultural rituals for IOF soldiers,” weighed in one tweet about the event. Dozens of people retweeted the sentiment. Trance raves, which are indeed popular in Tel Aviv, are also popular in Berlin, which is known for its trance scene, as well as most major cities. It evolved from electronic dance music, which emerged from Black music in Detroit.
When some commenters pointed out that, like any city in our globalized world, Tel Aviv’s nightlife impacts party culture worldwide, others declared any interest in Tel Aviv nightlife to be part of a “pinkwashing” campaign by the Israeli government to highlight support for LGBTQ+ culture as a distraction from its oppression of Palestinians.
“The problem with Israeli culture is racism, tolerance of apartheid, etc. not clubbing,” wrote the host, who also tweeted to explain that the club’s owners are neither Zionist nor Israeli. This set off a new round of freakouts, this time from Jews who felt that the need to explain the owners are the “good” kind of Jews was inherently an antisemitic purity test.
While some of the specifics of the freakout over Silo are new — it’s the first time I have seen a music genre declared Zionist — the main outlines of this discourse are so well-worn as to be tiresome.
It’s not just about Israel; it happens constantly in certain, usually left-leaning, political circles. Someone tries to say or do something generally supportive of a shared cause, but someone else takes issue with a relatively minor element of the exact way said support was expressed or acted upon. People pick sides, the discourse spirals into increasingly extreme takes and everyone leaves feeling more divided.
If I were psychoanalyzing the trend of divisive dogpiles, I’d say perhaps it’s a desperate grasp for control in a world tilting toward chaos. Or maybe it’s just brain rot driven by the social media algorithm’s predilection to spread anything that provokes anger or panic. Maybe some online personalities are even consciously capitalizing on the guaranteed virality of a hot take to boost their own profiles.
Regardless of how you might feel about the causes at hand, this nitpicking infighting is clearly not an effective mode of organizing. In this case, an offhand positive comment about a narrow facet of Israeli culture was enough to sow chaos over an event designed to help socialists meet other socialists — theoretically growing and strengthening the unity of the movement. Instead, “Thots and Trots” somehow became about division.
On the other hand, though, the event is sold out. So perhaps, like much online discourse, it bears little connection to reality. Or else there’s going to be a fistfight over Israel’s connection to trance raves at the socialist mixer.
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