The Democratic Socialists of America have launched an armed security wing, they call it the Red Rabbits Security Commission. The group has since established chapters in Minnesota, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Tucson, Austin, and Portland.
The DSA's own platform language describes the Red Rabbits as preparation for a "national uprising against federal agents and police brutality."
Those are not words taken out of context. They are the stated mission.
As reported by City Journal, the Red Rabbits train members in five areas: de-escalation, Stop the Bleed, firearm safety, unarmed self-defense, and protest marshalling.
Stop the Bleed is battlefield hemorrhage control developed for mass casualty situations. Unarmed self-defense is hand-to-hand combat training. Firearm safety means members are handling weapons. Protest marshalling means coordinating personnel movement under pressure in the streets.
That is not a community safety curriculum. That is military preparation.
The name Red Rabbits references Watership Down, the Richard Adams novel about a rabbit community that flees the destruction of its warren, survives prolonged violence, and fights to build a new society. The choice is deliberate: it frames the organization as a persecuted group building defensive capacity against a larger hostile force. That self-perception matters, because it explains how an armed paramilitary wing gets described internally as "security."
Writing on social media, analyst Stu Smith flagged what the organizational structure actually resembles: a dedicated security commission embedded within a party apparatus, local cells established across six cities, explicit preparation for confrontation with state authority. That is textbook Maoist organizational infrastructure — a security arm nested inside the party structure, framed as defensive, designed to activate when confrontation with the state becomes the party's objective.
The DSA's national platform calls for banning AR-15s and restricting civilian firearm ownership. The Red Rabbits are trained, armed, and preparing for an uprising against federal agents. Those are not separate facts.
Here is the question the story raises. If a right-wing organization had launched an armed security commission at its national convention, established chapters in six American cities, and stated publicly that its purpose was preparation for a national uprising against federal agents — what would the federal response look like?
We have a recent comparison. Members of the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters were federally prosecuted for organizing to oppose federal authority on January 6, 2021. Some received sentences exceeding ten years. The government's legal position was that organized preparation to confront federal agents constitutes seditious conspiracy.
The Red Rabbits have stated their purpose explicitly, in writing, on the DSA's own platform. City Journal reported it. Whether federal law enforcement will apply the same standard it applied to right-wing militia organizing is a question the Justice Department has not yet answered.
The group is in six cities. They are training. They have told you what they are preparing for.
