If you’ve been keeping up with New York politics, perhaps you’ve noticed that there’s another young democratic socialist on the rise – some have even said she’ll be the next Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Julia Salazar, the 27-year-old anti-establishment candidate from the Democratic Socialists of America, seems poised to wrest the state’s 18th Senate District from her incumbent opponent, Martin Malavé Dilan – a New York Democrat who began his political career in 1992, while Salazar was still in diapers.
Why the hipster elite of her district prefer her to the establishment pick is obvious: She’s a millennial woman raised by a single mother, and a Jewish immigrant from Colombia to boot. But beyond simply being a “Jew of color,” Salazar hits all the progressive talking points to “fight for social, economic, and racial justice.”
But there’s just one problem; her background is a complete fabrication. She isn’t an immigrant. She isn’t a Jew – at least not ethnically, as she has claimed. And until 2013, she was a Christian conservative pro-life advocate and the president of a pro-Israel student organization.
Julia’s Make-Believe Past
Salazar has, at times, said that she was born in the U.S. However, while she has never been caught explicitly stating that she was born in Colombia, Salazar has said that she wasn’t born in the U.S. by way of claiming the immigrant label. Jason Buttrill, journalist and former intelligence specialist for the Marine Corps, shared a video of Salazar claiming both her Jewish and immigrant status via Twitter:
Democratic Socialist Julia Salazar claims to be an immigrant, but she was born in Miami, and Jewish, but her entire family thinks they are Catholic. pic.twitter.com/Tpn7GqZfDO
— Jason Buttrill (@JasonButtrill) August 25, 2018
From the video:
“I immigrated to this country with my family when I was very little. In Colombia, my mom raised me as a single mother. She didn’t have a college degree. We really struggled.”
Her campaign website once sported the following sentence: “As a proud immigrant myself, I know how important it is to protect the rights of immigrants and ensure that everyone can fully participate in the life of New York State.”
Julia Salazar the democratic socialist with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
She also calls herself a “Jew of Color” in the video presented by Buttrill, saying, “I am a Jew of Color. Many people aren’t familiar with this term, but I’m Colombian-American, and I’m also Jewish.”
At times she has talked about converting to Judaism, but she has also claimed that her father’s family is Jewish, saying that he told her of his Jewish upbringing when she was young.
Julia’s Real Past
Julia Salazar’s mother, an Italian-American, was a U.S. citizen at the time of Julia’s birth, which took place in Miami, Fl. As much as she may wish it weren’t true, Julia Salazar is a citizen by birth. When her lies were called out, Salazar claimed that she never said she was born in Colombia and that it was a misinformed campaign staffer who made the claims to immigrant status for her on her campaign website – a mistake she promises to be more careful of in the future.
But what about that video of Salazar blatantly telling her audience that she immigrated to the U.S. with her mother as a small child? Good luck blaming that on a staffer.
As for being Jewish, she may very well have converted – but she was Christian first. Her brother, Alex Salazar, said that they weren’t raised Jewish. Their father’s funeral took place at a Catholic church, and, according to Alex, one of their paternal uncles was even a Jesuit priest! Clearly, she did not experience life as a “Jew of Color,” as she would have us believe.
Julia Salazar the Christian conservative
Even Salazar’s progressive beliefs are, at the very least, a fairly recent and abrupt change. In 2012, she appeared on GBTV as the president of Christians United For Israel (CUFI) at Columbia University, where she was also an outspoken pro-life advocate.
Julia’s Transformation
So how does one go from being a Christian conservative in 2013 to running for New York State Senate as a democratic socialist in 2018?
As early as 2014, Salazar was, apparently, a left-wing anti-Israel Jew. On September 11, 2014, Mondoweiss published a very anti-Zionist account by one Julia Carmel, who was denied entry to Israel at the Allenby Bridge, which links Jordan to the West Bank. What does that have to do with Salazar? The Julia Carmel author page includes a call to follow Carmel on Twitter at @JuliaCarmel_. Care to guess who we find there?
As late as September 23, 2013, Julia’s e-mail signature tagged her as a campus fellow of the World Zionist Organization (WZO) Office of Diaspora Affairs. That’s right, her transformation took place in under a year.
Salazar, with other CUFI student leaders, posing in Israel with IDF soldiers
Salazar traveled to Israel for the first time in August 2012 with CUFI. After the official part of the trip, she remained in the region and visited the West Bank cities of Bethlehem and Hebron. Did something happen in the West Bank? Or did the leftists at Columbia University finally brainwash her out of conservative Christianity? Either way, she is now a democratic socialist and, oddly enough, an anti-Israel Jew.
Julia’s Real Problem
The fact that she turned a political 180 in the space of less than a year is strange and intriguing, but it isn’t the problem with her current campaign. The fact that she wasn’t born a Jew isn’t the problem either – she can be as Jewish as she wants. The real issue is that she lied, repeatedly, to gain political favor.
Like Elizabeth Warren the fake Indian and Rachel Dolezal the fake black woman, Julia Salazar the fake Colombian Jewish immigrant doesn’t think she can make it in a progressive America without some fabricated minority identity. The question now is whether her brainwashed progressives – many suffering from the same liberal “education” as Salazar – will choose her to represent them despite her lies.
