By Chris Talgo
According to the latest polls of New York City’s upcoming mayoral election, Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani has a commanding lead. In Minneapolis, Democratic nominee Omar Fateh could become the next mayor of one of the “Twin Cities.”
What these two have in common, aside from the fact that they both currently serve in their state legislature, is that they are young, influential, popular, loud-and-proud socialists.
Officially, Mamdani and Fateh refer to themselves as “democratic socialists.” However, that is an oxymoron because there is nothing democratic about socialism.
Democracy and socialism are the antithesis of each other. They cannot coexist.
It should not be a big surprise that Mamdani, a self-avowed communist who has advocated for literally “seizing the means of production,” seems to be cruising to victory in the Big Apple.
Like far too many socialist demagogues of the past, Mamdani waxes poetic about how great and fair socialism is while assuring voters that his specific version of it will certainly bring forth utopia. He makes collectivism sound romantic and glorious.
He exacerbates envy. He ridicules hard work. He makes promises that are unattainable. In sum, he is selling an immoral and inherently flawed political ideology that has wreaked death, destruction, poverty, and misery every single time it has been implemented.
Fateh, as well, is gifted with oratory skills that allow him to sell socialism to the people. Although he is less outspoken about his socialist bona fides, he uses similar language and frames socialist policies as beneficial to the downtrodden and working poor.
Mamdani and Fateh are fresh, social media savvy, and telegenic. And they connect very well with young people, in particular.
Guess what? Mamdani’s primary victory included overwhelming support from young voters.
Incredibly, “62 percent of Americans aged 18–29 say they hold a ‘favorable view’ of socialism, and 34 percent say the same of communism,” per a YouGov survey this year.
This is partly because our nation’s public school system has been derelict in its duty to properly educate millions of students.
As Stalin said, “Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.”
For decades, America’s public schools have been weaponized by leftists who have rewritten and whitewashed the history of socialism. I encountered a lot of this stuff when I was a high school history teacher in Illinois and South Carolina.
To my chagrin, I was expected to highlight the good points of socialism/collectivism to my students while downplaying any negatives. I was supposed to tell the students that free-market capitalism caused widespread inequality. American capitalism is driven by greed. And it preys upon the masses to the benefit of billionaires.
When I refused to kowtow to the rhetoric, I made enemies among my peers.
To be honest, simply because I believed the United States is a good country and free-market capitalism produces better economic outcomes than command-and-control methods, I was persona non grata in the social studies department.
Without a doubt, the academic environment has worsened since I left.
Today, I routinely read and hear about American college professors who despise the United States and profess their unadorned admiration for Marxism. How can that be?
Marxism/socialism/communism/collectivism/democratic socialism, whatever you call it, is an evil political ideology. It has caused the death of at least 100 million people!
It pits one against another. It views everything as a zero-sum game. It preys on humans’ worst proclivities and base instincts.
Shame on any American teacher who seeks to brainwash vulnerable students into believing that socialism is a good thing. Moreover, some responsibility must lie with these children’s parents.
As someone who grew up around the end of the Cold War, I remember an America in which socialism was nearly universally recognized as a scourge on humanity. It was a joke.
It seems strange that nearly 40 years after the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union collapsed, and Eastern Europe gained freedom, socialism, of all things, is making a comeback in the United States!
But as they say, history (even the really bad stuff) tends to repeat itself.
Chris Talgo ([email protected]) is editorial director at The Heartland Institute.
Editor’s Note: Zohran Mamdani is an avowed Democratic Socialist and has a real chance to become the next mayor of New York City.
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